REPOST: How Effective is Your Air Conditioning Unit?

Consumer Reports tested several brands of window air conditioning units to determine their cooling ability. Read the verdict on this article from WFMYNews2.com.

 

Image Source: wfmynews2.com

Portable air conditioners sound like an easy solution for cooling a room that can't accommodate a window air conditioner, but many are returned by unhappy customers.

So Consumer Reports tested to see if there are some good choices.

With temperatures rising outside a seemingly easy fix is a portable air conditioner. It draws in warm air and exhausts it outside through a hose that connects to your window.

Consumer Reports tested eight from brands including Honeywell, Haier and Frigidaire. Prices range from 250 to more than 500 dollars.

Consumer Reports used a special chamber to test their cooling power. The temperature outside is kept at 90 degrees, the humidity at 70 percent. Inside, each air conditioner is set to 75 degrees.
 
Strings of thermocouples record temperatures throughout the room. The results were disappointing.

"None of these units, not even the biggest ones, could get our test chamber below 80 degrees even after an hour and forty minutes," said Bob Markovich, of Consumer Reports.

That was true even of the most expensive unit tested, including a $550 Honeywell which promises it "cools up to 550 square feet." It struggled to cool the test chamber, which is half that size.

"Window air conditioners are much more effective and they tend to cost less," said Markovich.
Consumer Reports found several window air conditioners to recommend. Top-rated for larger rooms, a $350 LG. For medium-sized rooms an LG for $240. And for smaller rooms a $210 GE is a Consumer Reports Best Buy.

Consumer Reports says be sure to pick the right size air conditioner for your space. If the unit is too small, your room won't get cool enough. But an air conditioner that's too big may make it feel cold and clammy.

Hobson Air is a family owned and operated business in Texas that has been servicing HVAC systems since 1962. Visit this blog for more discussions on HVAC improvements.

REPOST: Cooling has key role in building energy

RAC editor Andrew Gaved gives emphasis on what the cooling industry can do to help improve building energy efficiency.

Image Source: blogs.law.columbia.edu

The subject of energy seems to be being talked about nonstop at the moment – from attempts to rein in suppliers to the risk of the Grid reaching capacity to, of course, the rising cost of the stuff.

We have thrown our two penn’orth into the debate by way of our first Building Energy Question Time (see RAC January issue). It was a fascinating discussion which had in about equal parts good news for the industry, depressing news for the industry and challenges for us to rise to.


As is traditional, here’s the bad news first: there is a clear sense that much of the regulation surrounding energy isn’t working, for either the supply chain or for customers. At the Question Time, panellist after panellist talked about regulations that were missing the mark, whether it be Green Deal, which has expensive interest rates, deterring take-up; Part L, which has dropped the consequential improvements element so crucial to keeping heat in a building; or Energy Performance Certificates, and the woeful take-up of the air conditioning inspections – the mandatory inspections remember – which were supposed to help building owners improve energy efficiency.

Image Source: cooling4industry.co.uk

However, the good news is that the cooling industry can play a major role in improving building energy. Former Cibse president Andy Ford painted a particularly compelling picture of using ground source heat pumps to manage heating and cooling across a year, to the extent of linking buildings that have a heat need with those that have cooling. As he wryly noted, this approach ‘introduces the idea that cooling is actually good – not wicked as many green people seem to think’. I hope Ecobuild and its speakers have taken note.


The main challenge is to galvanise our industry to take on these opportunities, and to shout louder than some of the other noisy lobby groups to convince government we have some of the solutions to reducing buildings energy. We will be returning in 2014 with another Buildings Energy debate, so watch this space.


The other thing that a lot of people are talking about (still) is the fallout from the demise of WR Refrigeration and what the industry might be able to learn from it. There has been reaction from across the industry to the opinions of Kelvin Lord in last month’s issue, and we carry some of the responses, as well as a counterpoint from Thermacom’s Trevor Dann in the January issue.

Image Source: ecofriend.com

One of the overarching themes is that the retail contractors’ margins are becoming too low to be sustainable. Doing something about this is of course the big challenge – it has been suggested the only reason retailers get away with consistently driving down prices is because no one is standing up to them. But it isn’t quite as simple as that when the buying team across the desk holds the power over 30 per cent of your business. Or more.


What the industry doesn’t need is for the WR debate to increase tension between contractors and customers. Because now, perhaps more than any other time for decades, the supply chain needs to pull together to meet the demands of a reduced emissions, reduced energy future.

Hobson Air Conditioning Inc. is a full-service air conditioning and heating contractor based in Texas. Visit this website to learn more about its products and services.

What came before the AC

Image Source: wired.com

Many inventors tinkered with modern strategies for keeping cool under the heat. But it was Willis Haviland Carrier’s invention called the 'Apparatus for Treating Air' (U.S. Pat# 808897) that proved the plausibility of manmade weather by controlling temperature and humidity, eventually earning him the title as the father of airconditioning. Carrier started an era of refined understanding of electrical systems through his Rational Psychrometric Formulae, which remains the basis for all the integral calculations in the airconditioning industry.


But the attempts to outsmart the weather before the AC came along also warrant attention. Practical strategies to stay cool existed at the dawn of the 20th century. People braved the hot weather with fans of all shapes and sizes. The Roman Emperor Elagabalus made his mark by warding off third-century summer by commanding 1000 slaves to fill his pleasure-garden with a mountain of snow.

Image Source: hauntedhistorians.com

Fast forward to 1758, Benjamin Franklin and John Hadley discovered that the evaporation of liquids had a cooling effect. Michael Faraday discovered the same in 1820. By the 1830s, Dr. John Gorrie built an ice-making machine in a hospital in Florida. He then patented the idea in 1851 but financial struggles killed off his invention. In 1881, following an attempted assassination of President James Garfield, naval engineers created a makeshift cooling machine that used half a million pounds of ice to keep the injured president cool and comfortable. The machine failed in its mission.

Image Source: thelibertyblog.org

By the 1920s, residential cooling machines were invented, thanks to iconic aircon marque Carrier, which began the science of modern airconditioning for home use.



Hobson Air is among the many cooling and heating systems contractors which uphold Carrier’s science of modern air conditioning. Go here for more exciting discoveries in the airconditioning industry.