What Is an Outdoor Condenser Unit?

You live in a central air-conditioning world and walk effortlessly back and forth from room to room hardly noticing how hot it really is outside on any given day. While individual window units and central air systems use exactly the same principles to cool a house, window units are totally self contained. However, with central air, the major components are segregated according to their most efficacious locations. They are interconnected with sealed refrigeration tubing. The outside condenser disperses all the heat outside.

Heat Pumps

All air-conditioning systems are heat pumps. They simply move heat from one place to another. Air conditioners gather heat from inside a building and disperse it outside the building.

Dispersing the Heat

The gaseous Freon refrigerant in the air conditioning system gets hot as it is tightly compressed by the compressor in the base of the outside condenser unit, which is a radiator with a cooling fan. As the gas cools, it condenses to high-pressure liquid that is passed back inside the building to an expansion valve where its pressure is reduced.

Getting Cool

Having already dispersed its heat content in the outside condenser, the compressed refrigerant becomes very cold as it loses pressure in the expansion valve and passes through the evaporator, a reverse radiator that, along with the valve and an air blower, comprise the air handler unit inside the house. In the evaporator, the refrigerant absorbs heat from the warm return air inside the house as the refrigerant is evaporated. With its heat removed, the chilled air is then circulated back to each room in the house through the air conditioning ducting. The re-warmed refrigerant flows back to the compressor in the outside condenser to disperse its heat content again in a continuous cycle.

Measurement Units

Air conditioning systems are rated and sized according to their BTU (British Thermal Unit) capacity. One BTU of heat will raise the temperature of one pound of water by 1 degree Fahrenheit. One ton of air conditioning is equal to 12,000 BTUs and is the amount of heat absorbed by melting 1 ton of ice. SEER is the electrical efficiency rating of air conditioning and is determined by dividing the total BTUs moved by the total watt hours of electricity required to move it over an entire cooling season.

Maintaining Efficiency

Air conditioning works best with unhindered air flow inside and outside the house. Inspect and change the air filter in the inside air handler often. Check the outside condenser unit to make sure nothing is blocking the fan exhaust at the top, or the air entry around the sides. Make sure no sharp objects can come near to puncture the refrigerant tubes or dent the cooling fins around the sides of the outside condenser unit.