HVAC Orlando is the system that heats and cools your home, keeping you comfortable in winter and summer. It includes a furnace, air handler, thermostat and ductwork.
Furnaces create warmth by burning a fuel source, such as natural gas or propane. The warm air is then distributed throughout your house via ducts to increase indoor temperature.
The heating and cooling systems in your home are a big part of what makes it comfortable. When something goes wrong with one or both of them, your quality of life can dramatically decrease and it’s important to know who to call for repairs. HVAC is a huge industry that encompasses a wide range of interrelated units like air conditioning, heating, ventilating and more. Having some familiarity with the industry terminology can help when you’re searching for a technician or making purchases.
The “H” in HVAC stands for heating, which is a major component of the system that focuses on indoor air comfort. During the winter, the heating system works to warm your house’s interior, while during the summer, the cooling system is working to cool it. The system also includes a ventilation process that brings fresh outdoor air into the building, which removes toxins and impurities like smoke, odors, dust, pollen, bacteria and other particles.
Heating systems in HVAC can be powered by gas, oil or electricity. In modern homes, most people use gas-powered furnaces and heat pumps to keep their houses warm and cozy during the cold months. These systems work to pull warm air from the outside and circulate it through the house using a network of pipes known as ductwork. The air is heated or cooled depending on the season, and the temperature is controlled by a thermostat located inside the house.
For more energy efficiency, you can use a modulating system instead of a traditional fixed speed system. These systems are able to run at different speeds, which improves efficiency beyond the minimum SEER rating of 14.
A HVAC system may include other units to control and monitor indoor air quality, such as whole-house humidifiers and dehumidifiers. You can even integrate these systems with smart home devices to increase automation and access them from anywhere. The most important thing to remember when shopping for an HVAC system is to get an in-person quote from a reputable contractor that will be able to assess your home’s layout, size and other factors that influence pricing. Then you can compare costs and warranties and choose the best option for your home.
Cooling
At the most basic level, HVAC systems take in air and then cool or heat it before blowing it into a space. They can also remove excess humidity from the air to improve comfort levels and reduce energy consumption. Most systems consist of an air conditioner or heat pump, an air handler, ductwork, and sometimes other units like an air purifier or humidifier.
When buying a new cooling system, look for one with a high HSPF or SEER rating. These ratings measure the energy efficiency of an air conditioner or heat pump over an entire season. A higher number means more efficiency, meaning lower utility bills.
During operation, the evaporator coil inside an air conditioning unit absorbs heat from the air in the home or business, then transports it to the condenser coil located in the outside unit, where it is expelled and the refrigerant is reabsorbed. The compressor in the outdoor unit then pumps the refrigerant back into its liquid state, and the cycle starts again.
Most HVAC systems also include a fan that moves the warm or cold air throughout the ductwork and into the space. Depending on the size of the home or business and the climate, an air conditioner can have a single or multiple blowers, and can be central or ductless.
If you want to control the temperature in a specific area of your home or office, a central air conditioning system with zoning features can be installed. This option has motorized discs or dampers in the ductwork that allow you to redirect the flow of cool air from the blowers to specific areas, called zones.
The indoor air quality (IAQ) of your home or business is a significant part of your overall health. A clean and properly functioning HVAC system keeps the air in your home or business clean and healthy, helping you to avoid respiratory problems and other health issues.
A clean and comfortable indoor environment is essential for a good night’s sleep, allowing you to wake up refreshed. The proper temperature for sleeping helps ensure you get a restful night, and the proper ventilation system can prevent unwanted pests from invading your living spaces.
Ventilation
Ventilation is another important part of HVAC, and it helps with both heating and cooling. The ventilation system moves air throughout your home or building via ducts that contain blowers. This movement of air helps regulate temperatures in the space, and it also filters out contaminants like dust, dirt, spores, and bacteria. The ventilation system can also control excess humidity.
The main components of a HVAC system include an outdoor unit, an indoor air handling unit, ductwork, and vents or registers. The outdoor unit contains tubing with refrigerant that connects to the evaporator coil in the indoor air handler. Air is drawn in through a filter, then the evaporator coil cools it before being circulated to other rooms in your house or building. The air is then pushed through the vents or registers to distribute.
If you have a package system, the evaporator coil is inside the indoor air handling unit, which is then connected to a remote condenser using refrigerant lines. The ducts take conditioned air from the indoor unit to diffusers or vents throughout your house or building, and you can usually see the indoor unit through a window. Split systems use a similar setup, but the evaporator coil is located outdoors instead of indoors.
Other common heating systems include electric space heaters, which use an electrical current to heat a contained element that then radiates radiant warmth into the room, and gas furnaces, which burn fuel like natural gas or propane to warm the air. Solar heating is an increasingly popular alternative to these traditional options, with the technology allowing you to harness the power of sunlight to warm your home.
Controls
Controls are critical to HVAC systems. They monitor and control indoor environmental factors, adjust heating or cooling output to align with thermostat settings, regulate fan speed to optimize energy efficiency, and more.
To perform these functions, the system needs a set of devices that work together to gather information from the environment and transmit it to the central computer system. These devices include sensors that measure a value such as temperature or humidity, relay switches that open and close circuits, actuators that convert energy into mechanical force, and many others.
The sensors send the data to the control modules, which then determine what action should be taken. They typically use an intelligent control logic to compare the actual state of the environment (e.g., temperature) to the desired state and then decide what actions to take to get from one state to the other. For example, if the temperature falls below a certain level, they might decide to start the blower to warm the space up.
While HVAC operations account for a significant portion of building energy consumption, implementing an advanced controls system can result in substantial energy and cost savings. In fact, some utilities and government agencies offer incentives for installing such systems.
A proper control system requires an integrated network infrastructure that consists of a network backbone, which includes CAT-5/6 Ethernet and RS-485 twisted pair wires to carry messages between the head-end and field devices. The network also consists of field devices, which are connected to the control modules through their respective input/output points.
Each field device has a unique input and output point that corresponds to the sensor(s) that the control system uses. The input/output points can be configured through software to indicate an analog in/out, binary in/out, or in/out with a digital signal. The software can also indicate that a particular field device is in a fault condition.
Local control loops typically have one sensor, and the performance of the sensor affects local process control. For this reason, it is important to understand the influence of model error on the individual optimization actions in an HVAC RTOC model. This paper presents a methodology to calculate the impact of model errors on the optimization rewards, and it shows that event-driven optimization can significantly reduce the percentage of negative rewards.