Heating

Facts:

A furnace works to keep a home warm in the winter and plays a critical part in the operation of an air conditioning system.
Furnaces produce heat through the combustion of natural gas in the furnace’s burner. The heat produced from this process then passes through a heat exchanger. Air from your home’s return air ducts is blown over the heat exchanger, thus warming the air.
The furnace’s blower then blows the warmed air into the duct work, which carries and disperses the warmed air throughout the home.
During warmer months, the blower inside a furnace continues to circulate return air throughout the home–only this time, the return air has been cooled by being blown over the indoor coil portion of the home’s split-system air conditioning system. The evaporator coil is typically installed downstream of the furnace.

Benefits:

Indoor warmth any time it is required.
Energy efficiency -The efficiency of a furnace can be determined by its AFUE–or Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency. The minimum efficiency level for furnaces currently manufactured in the U.S. is 80% AFUE. A rating of “80% AFUE” means that for every dollar you spend heating your home; 80 cents are actually applied to the generation of warmth. Compared to many of the 60% AFUE furnaces in older homes, 80% AFUE furnaces are a significant improvement. However, for enhanced energy efficiency, you may wish to consider a 95% AFUE furnace, such as Goodman’s line of 95% AFUE Furnaces.
Cleaner air – As your HVAC system draws air out of various rooms in the house through return air ducts, the air is pulled through an air filter, which removes airborne particles such as dust and lint. Sophisticated filters may remove microscopic pollutants, as well. The filtered air is then routed to air supply duct work that carries it back to rooms. Whenever the HVAC system is running, this cycle repeats continually, constantly filtering and cleaning the air in your home.

This cleaning process improves with the installation of a variable-speed furnace. Variable-speed furnaces use variable-speed blowers, which shift between several speeds. These furnaces will run longer at a low speed, which causes them to filter the indoor air more frequently.
And remember – because the furnace plays an important role in the operation of the air conditioner, its variable-speed blower helps maintain both a consistent indoor temperature and improved air quality year-round.

Heating

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Air Conditioning

How air conditioning works is kind of a mystery to many of us. Furnaces are easy to understand, they heat air and blow it around your home in ductwork. Boilers make hot water or steam and move it around your home in pipes. But how do air conditioning systems make nice cold, dehumidified air?
How Air Conditioning Works

Think of an air conditioner as a machine that takes heat from your house and dumps it outside by using five interrelated parts:

Refrigerant
Compressor
Condenser
Expansion Valve
Evaporator Coil
There are many types of air conditioning systems that can be used in the home including window, portable, ductless and central air conditioning systems. However, they all use the following components and direct expansion refrigeration. Refrigerant
The refrigerant is the “blood” pumping through the air conditioner’s system. It changes state from gas vapor to liquid as it collects heat from your house and rejects that heat to the outside. Pretty cool stuff (no pun intended). Refrigerant is special in that it has a very low boiling point meaning that it changes from a liquid to a vapor at low temperatures.

Compressor

Think of the compressor as a sort of “heart” of the system pumping the refrigerant though all the refrigeration components in a big loop. Refrigerant enters the compressor as a low pressure warm vapor and leaves it as a high pressure hot vapor.

Condenser

From the compressor, hot refrigerant vapor moves to the condenser. Here the high pressure hot refrigerant vapor is cooled by air blowing over finned condensing coils by the condenser fan as it moves through the finned coils. As the refrigerant “cools” it changes state from a hot vapor to a hot liquid at high pressure and moves onto the expansion valve. The compressor, condenser coil and condenser fan are all located in the big noisy boxy thing in your back yard often called a condensing unit

Expansion Valve

The expansion valve is really what does the work. As the hot liquid refrigerant passes through a tiny opening at high pressure in the valve on one side, it emerges as a cool low pressure mist on the other side because as a gas expands, it cools. So now we have a low pressure cold liquid mist that moves onto the evaporator coil.

Evaporator Coil

The low pressure cold liquid leaving the expansion valve now runs through the evaporator coil located in the plenum of your furnace. Here the hot air of your home blows across the evaporator coil and heats it up while the cold coil cools off the air blowing across it and back into your home. As the refrigerant heats up, it boils and changes from a cold liquid and evaporates into a warm vapor. From there it moves back onto the compressor and exterior condensing unit and the cooling cycles continues.