You’ve always liked taking things apart. When you were a kid, your mom would constantly walk in on you tearing your toys to pieces just to see how they fit together. As you got older, you disassembled computers and phones. For you, understanding how something works allows you to get the most out of it.

Now you live in a home in Palm Shores, Florida, and you’re wondering exactly how that precious air conditioner keeps your home cool. Thanks to refrigerant and some refined technology, and with some proper care, your air conditioner is the heart of comfort in your home.

What Makes Your AC Tick?

Science. Good ol’ chemistry. That’s what makes your AC tick. A standard central air conditioner consists of an evaporator, a condenser, a compressor, and an expansion device. The system pumps refrigerant through indoor evaporator coils as fans blow air across the coil. As air passes over, the refrigerant absorbs heat from the air, cooling the air before it passes through a duct network and into your home.

This heat transfer turns the liquid refrigerant into a vapor, which then moves to the outdoor compressor and condenser unit. Those systems cool the vapor and compress it back into a liquid form, which is then pumped back into the home.

How Can You Keep Your AC Ticking?

While refrigerant is the key to air conditioning, that refrigerant passes through several points in the air conditioning process. So if anything is disturbed along that process, your comfort will fall. Regular preventive maintenance ensures that refrigerant flows as it should. To keep an eye on the process yourself, regularly check the refrigerant lines running from the compressor and condenser unit into the home. If the pipe has frost on it, you probably have a refrigerant leak.

Your system works hard to keep you cool and comfortable, and now that you know how it ticks, you can schedule the TLC it needs to keep chugging along. To ensure that everything in your AC is functioning as it should, call Ellington Air Conditioning and Heat at (321) 248-4838.

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