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A central air conditioner cools your home by removing heat and humidity from the inside and transferring it outside. A properly sized central air conditioning system can keep you comfortable even in the hottest and most humid conditions. Be sure to keep up with regular air conditioner maintenance to keep your system running at peak performance.
Central air units are available in single-stage, two-stage, and variable-speed systems. Learn about Trane’s best air conditioners to help you decide which central AC unit is best for your home.
Contrary to the name, a heat pump can both heat and cool your home. Heat pumps use refrigerant to absorb, transport, and release heat, and they can reverse the flow of that refrigerant depending on whether you need heating or cooling. Electric heat pumps are more sustainable than systems that burn fossil fuels.
Heat pumps are available in single-stage, two-stage, and variable-speed systems. Learn about Trane’s best-rated heat pumps.
Where air-source heat pumps use electricity to heat (and cool), furnaces create heat by burning a fuel source like natural gas or propane. They then distribute that heat throughout your home, to increase the indoor temperature.
Furnaces are available in single-stage, two-stage, and modulating systems. Learn about Trane’s best furnaces.
There are several types of HVAC systems. Work with an HVAC professional to determine which one is right for your new home or system replacement.
Air conditioners employ the same operating principles and basic components as your home refrigerator. Refrigerators use energy (usually electricity) to transfer heat from the cool interior of the refrigerator to the relatively warm surroundings of your home; likewise, an air conditioner uses energy to transfer heat from the interior of your home to the relatively warm outside environment. An air conditioner cools your home with a cold indoor coil called the evaporator. The condenser, a hot outdoor coil, releases the collected heat outside. The evaporator and condenser coils are serpentine tubing surrounded by aluminum fins. This tubing is usually made of copper.
A pump, called the compressor, moves a heat transfer fluid (or refrigerant) between the evaporator and the condenser. The pump forces the refrigerant through the circuit of tubing and fins in the coils.
The liquid refrigerant evaporates in the indoor evaporator coil, pulling heat out of indoor air and cooling your home. The hot refrigerant gas is pumped outdoors into the condenser where it reverts back to a liquid, giving up its heat to the outside air flowing over the condenser’s metal tubing and fins.
Throughout the second half of the 20th century, nearly all air conditioners used chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as their refrigerant, but because these chemicals are damaging to Earth’s ozone layer, CFC production stopped in the United States in 1995. Nearly all air conditioning systems now use halogenated chlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) as a refrigerant. The latest HCFC, HCFC-22 (also called R-22), began to be phased out in 2010 and stopped entirely in 2020. However, HCFC-22 is expected to be available for many years as it is removed and reused from old systems that are taken out of service. As these refrigerants are phased out, ozone-safe hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are expected to dominate the market, as well as alternative refrigerants such as ammonia.
Energy efficiency is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to combat climate change, reduce energy costs for consumers, and improve the competitiveness of U.S. businesses.