Air-Con experts, please enlighten me

[Teen]

how do you quantify the amount of cooling your air-con is capable of producing by physical measurements?

that is to say, how to prove the air-con is producing, say, 31,000Btu/hr of cooling?

 

[Weird Harold]

how do you quantify the amount of cooling your air-con is capable of producing by physical measurements?

that is to say, how to prove the air-con is producing, say, 31,000Btu/hr of cooling?

I think the btu/hr capacity is probably based on the size of the heat exchangers and the size of the fan that moves the air.

Is this question in aid of proving to a landlord or service technician that the A/C isn't working right? If so, then I think an independent assessment by an A/C specialist would be your best option.

 

[Teen]

Thanks for your reply but size of fan and heat exchangers would require some thermodynamics calculation.

But what I really want is to be able to measure it

 

[Weird Harold]

Thanks for your reply but size of fan and heat exchangers would require some thermodynamics calculation.

But what I really want is to be able to measure it

I don't think you can measure it directly.

You can measure the rate of cooling by measuring the temperature in several places around the house with the A/C turned off, and then track how fast it cools down to a set temperature.

It's still going to require some calculations -- like the volume of air it's cooling (volume of the house) and how many calories/btus it takes to cool that volume one degree.

I'm sure there is a web site somewhere that will give you a chart predicting how fast a given capacity A/C will cool a given volume one degree. Some research and temperature measurements will give you at least an approximation of what your A/C is actually putting out.