How Your Systems Work

How Your Heating System Works

Your thermostat (1) has a sensor that measures room temperature. When the temperature drops below your thermostat setting (or you raise the level above the room temperature), it sends a signal to the controls (2) on your burner (3) to get into action.

A fuel pump (4) draws oil through a filter (5) to your burner. It turns this oil into a fine spray, mixes it with air, and ignites it in the combustion chamber (6), causing the chamber to get very hot.

What happens next depends on the type of system you have:

• If you have a Hot Water (Hydronic) System, water circulates around your boiler's (10) flue passages. A circulator (11) pumps the hot water through radiators or baseboards. An expansion tank (12) adjusts to varying pressures.
  
• If you have a Warm Air System, air absorbs heat in your furnace's heat exchanger (7). A blower (8) sends the air through ducts (9) to heat your home.
  

Eventually, the water or air returns to the unit to begin the cycle again.

If you have a Hydro Air System, it combines the characteristics of hydronic and warm air systems. A hot water boiler heats the water, similar to a hydronic system. The water is circulated through a heat exchanger coil in an air-handling unit. The air is moved across the coil by the blower, absorbing heat and distributing it to your home. The same air-handling unit may have a cooling coil to provide air conditioning through the same system.

Steam systems work similarly, except that steam is generated and rises to the radiators (no circulators are needed). A low water cutoff prevents damage to the boiler by shutting it down in case water levels drop too low.

In all systems, the combustion emissions go up the flue (13), never mixing with either the air or water going through your house.

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Know Your Above Ground Oil Tank And Piping

Your oil tank is very much a part of your heating system, after all without it your oil system would not run! Its not the most attractive part of your system or home but it is very important and even above ground oil tanks need care...click on the brochure and check out our oil tank checklist.

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How Your Cooling System Works

Have you ever wondered how an air conditioner cools a room? Simply put, an air conditioner lowers the temperature in a confined space by absorbing heat from the indoor air and moving it outside. How it accomplishes this is fairly complex.

Every air conditioning system lowers room temperature using a "refrigerant," which is a chemical that is specially formulated to absorb and release heat rapidly. The air conditioner circulates the refrigerant through a closed-loop system that changes its state from gas to liquid and back again continuously.

The refrigerant absorbs heat from the air as it passes through coils and evaporates from a liquid into a gas. The unconditioned air contacts these "evaporator" coils just before being pumped into the room, and the coils absorb the heat from the air, which lowers the air's temperature.

After the refrigerant evaporates and absorbs heat, the air conditioner's "compressor" squeezes the gaseous refrigerant, converting it back to a liquid. As the chemical becomes liquid and denser, the heat that it has absorbed becomes concentrated, and the refrigerant becomes very hot. It is then circulated through the air conditioner's "condensing" coils, which are located on the outdoor portion of the unit. These are designed to dissipate the heat very effectively into the outdoor air. As the refrigerant releases its heat, it cools. It is then reintroduced to the evaporator coils via a tiny opening known as an expansion valve, and the cycle repeats.

A window air conditioning unit is a self-contained system that houses all the major components: the compressor and the condenser and evaporator coils. Most central air-conditioning systems separate the condenser and the evaporator. The condenser is in the outdoor unit, and the evaporator coils are indoors.

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