Canada has summer too, eh
I talked about how air conditioners worked in a previous post.
Living in Canada, if houses have air conditioning they are usually tied into a central forced air heating system. Principle 5 – Merging
The same fan, thermostat, and set of ducts and vents can be used for cooling or heating. Principle 6 – Universality
In the bad old days when I lived in cheaper digs, if they didn’t have central air, they had a window unit, which combined the condenser and evaporator into one noisy, energy wasting unit perched precariously into a window frame.
Splitting the difference
On my recent vacation in Mexico I encountered another style of air conditioner, the split AC. This shares some characteristics of both central air and window units, by placing the condenser unit and its noisy compressor on the outside wall and the evaporator inside the house. Principle 1 – Segmentation
This is similar to a central air system except the evaporator only serves one room of the house, not as a cooling unit for a forced air system serving the whole house. This gives the home occupants the ability to only cool areas of the home as needed. Principle 3 – Local Quality