First of all, a quick explanation: a kilowatt is 1,000 watts, which is a measure of power. A kilowatt-hour measures the amount of energy needed to run a device, tool or machine for an hour. When it comes to your air conditioner, a kilowatt-hour tells you how much energy your air conditioner is using, which could help you decide what type of appliance you want to buy. While air conditioners don`t heat your home, they specialize in removing unwanted heat (which you can also think of as energy) from it. HVAC professionals use BTUs to measure both heat loss and heat gain, which is why we apply this measure to the performance of your air conditioner. In California, the current minimum SEER rating for new air conditioners is 14 SEER. However, this minimum will be increased to SEER 15 in 2023. The Ministry of Energy has raised national minimum requirements over the years to advance energy conservation efforts. When we talk about air conditioners that remove heat from your home, it`s the same as saying they move energy.
BTU tells you how much energy your air conditioner uses to do all of this. So when you see that your air conditioner has 12,000 BTUs, it means it absorbs 12,000 UK thermal units of heat every hour and moves outside to make your environment feel better indoors. In a heat pump or furnace, the BTU number refers to the heat output of the respective unit. The higher the number, the more heat the device can produce. Air conditioners are a little different. The BTU number on refrigeration units refers to the amount of energy used to remove heat from the air. The bottom line: Combine what you know about BTUs and tonnage to determine the best air conditioning and cooling performance for your home. Wait, why ice cream? Good question! Before the advent of electric air conditioning, people cooled their homes and businesses with large blocks (or tons) of ice. By melting slowly, the ice absorbed heat in the room. The process worked like the modern air conditioner. The ice did not produce the fresh air, but rather removed the warm air from the room to make it cooler and more comfortable.
HVAC professionals continued to use “tons” of ice to measure the amount of heat that air conditioners remove, even when the ice method was outdated in the face of new contemporary air conditioning methods. For air conditioning systems and heat pumps, the SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio) measures the efficiency of the cooling process and the higher the number of SEERs, the more efficient the unit. All new products in the U.S. must have a rating of at least 13.0, but many go up to 21 and above. If you`re looking for a new air conditioner, you`ve probably come across the three letters BTU. These three letters, in that particular order, mean something crucial to air conditioning and how it cools your home. What exactly does BTU mean and why are they so important? Below is a comprehensive guide to what you need to know to understand BTUs. We`ve already briefly mentioned cooling performance, but we need to go into more detail about what this means in terms of BTUs. Once you have an idea of how many BTUs you need for an air conditioning unit, you need to know the appropriate tonnage for your air conditioner. Even small heaters or air conditioners have a high number of BTUs. Typically, entire house units range from 60,000 to 80,000 and above.
The larger your home, the higher the BTU you want, as this means that the heating or cooling unit is capable of producing more heated or cooled air. BTU is a great way to compare the capacity of units with a similar price. Getting an air conditioner without paying attention to their BTU rating could seriously affect your comfort if your system doesn`t have enough power to cool your home. Follow us for a BTU breakdown so you know what to look for when browsing our air conditioner inventory. Choosing the right air conditioner for your home is very easy with the right information. Before you buy an air conditioner, find out how many BTUs you need. This means thinking about the size of the room and what the room is for. Adapting BTU requirements to the size of the room is very important when buying an air conditioner.
When you start buying a new air conditioner, you will probably come across the acronym BTU. And what does that mean exactly? It`s important to know what BTU ratings mean when buying an air conditioner, as that`s where a good fit comes in! You don`t want a new air conditioner with a BTU rating that is too high or too low for your needs. These units consume more electricity, have difficulty keeping homes comfortable, and experience more outages because they don`t work well. This usually means that they also need to be replaced earlier. We`ve found that higher BTUs mean the air conditioner is more powerful. However, this does not mean that you should automatically decide on the largest unit you can find. For air conditioners, bigger doesn`t necessarily mean better. If your air conditioner is too powerful, it will cool your home too quickly. While this may seem like a fantastic thing at first, it`s pretty bad. In addition to cooling your home, your air conditioner also removes moisture. If it cools down too quickly, it means it will turn off immediately, which means your air conditioner won`t have time to remove moisture from the air. .