How to find the best air conditioning product in New Jersey?

 

How to find the best air conditioning product in New Jersey?

Best given what criteria?
Most effective?
Most efficient?
Roof mounted, attic style, window mounted, ground mounted?
110 or 240?
Tonnage?
Heating included or just cooling?
Available locally?

 

Air conditioners can cross state lines. The best in New Jersey will be the best everywhere.

 

How to find the best air conditioning product in New Jersey?

Define air conditioning
- cools and removes humidity from a room?
- filters air in the room?
- controls (adds) humidity in the room (especially in winter months).

I only ask because your question seems odd for late December (typically "air conditioning" is the first option in American English.

 

Air conditioners can cross state lines. The best in New Jersey will be the best everywhere.

True as far as it goes. Air conditioning needs differ state to state. What Nevada needs is not what New Jersey needs. And would you want to pay shipping coast to coast?

 

Air conditioners can cross state lines. The best in New Jersey will be the best everywhere.

Define best?
Cheapest to buy, or maintain or run?

 

Air conditioning needs differ state to state. What Nevada needs is not what New Jersey needs. And would you want to pay shipping coast to coast?

Wholesalers ship to every state. Go ask your local wholesaler if they have air conditioners built in several states, or, "Does The Carrier Corporation ship to every state in the country?" (or Lennox, or Trane, or Goodman, or York, etc.)
When I topped the last hill into Las Vegas, I could tell by the sound that their air conditioners were the same as what I can get in Florida. A tuned ear can almost tell the outside air temperature by the whine of the compressors.

The part that surprised me was that the city had a sound that was discernible from miles away.

ps, here's a Brand Comparison web page:
http://www.consumersearch.com/central-air-conditioners/brands-vs-brands

 

The TS might have been asking about air fresheners for all we know. Until we learn more, we can only guess what "best" means.

 

we can only guess what "best" means.

Only? I think we have two options.
Some people are guessing while Other people are waiting for more information.

 

The part that surprised me was that the city had a sound that was discernible from miles away.

That would be the sound of the roulette balls clanking inside the wheel.

 

That would be the sound of the roulette balls clanking inside the wheel.

That's some pretty high frequency roulette balls!

 

Wholesalers ship to every state. Go ask your local wholesaler if they have air conditioners built in several states, or, "Does The Carrier Corporation ship to every state in the country?" (or Lennox, or Trane, or Goodman, or York, etc.)
When I topped the last hill into Las Vegas, I could tell by the sound that their air conditioners were the same as what I can get in Florida. A tuned ear can almost tell the outside air temperature by the whine of the compressors.

The part that surprised me was that the city had a sound that was discernible from miles away.

ps, here's a Brand Comparison web page:
http://www.consumersearch.com/central-air-conditioners/brands-vs-brands

No surprise. I would expect similar weather in Florida as Nevada. Wisconsin or Michigan might be different from that.
(edited to add ...)
Interesting reference. Yet another consideration, is it solar cell compatible?

 

No surprise. I would expect similar weather in Florida as Nevada.

Florida has higher enthalpy on a bad day, and that's a lot harder on humans, but the dry bulb temperature is what the compressor cares about. Las Vegas at 105F is enough higher than Florida at 93F that I could hear the difference.

 

Florida has higher enthalpy on a bad day

And I assume that's a fancy euphemism for "humidity".

 

And I assume that's a fancy euphemism for "humidity".

Enthalpy is the sum of the temperature (sensible heat) and the latent heat (commonly known as humidity) as referenced from a known point, like decibels are.

I'm sure you know how to use a dictionary, but I would like to mention that when one understands what enthalpy is, visualizing the interior workings of a refrigeration system becomes much easier than thinking about temperature and pressure. It's kind of like visualizing power in watts instead of thinking about volts and amps.

All of us are in the business of working with invisible forces...heat, electricity, magnetism. My day job for the last 40 years included another form of invisible energy...enthalpy and how it relates to Freon, which I can't see inside the pipes, as its energy content changes. Getting a grasp on enthalpy changed the way I think about electrical systems. On the gross level, I think about energy budgets because they work the same for electrical systems and refrigeration systems.

 

@#12, I've been meaning to ask you this question for a long time but now you've given me the perfect segue.

Suppose you're in summer HVAC mode. You know the psychrometric properties of your indoor and outdoor air, and thus you know the enthalpy of both air sources. You want to minimize A/C costs, so you open your windows to use outdoor air when it has a lower enthalpy than your indoor air.

Is there ANY situation where you would choose to open your windows to higher enthalpy outside air? For instance, could really hot dry air with 30 BTU/lb dry air somehow be better to cool down than the cooler, moister air already in your house at 29 BTU/lb? I think the answer is no, but I do recognize that A/C units don't necessarily remove latent and sensible heat with equal efficiency.

A related question is whether the right enthalpy metric is BTU per pound dry air. I'm about 90% sure that it is, but I can easily confuse myself if I start considering the volume changes as outdoor air is collected or heated to in-house conditions. I remember being taught why using the lb-dry-air basis is the preferred way to go, but I don't remember the justification.

 

I would assume that the extra enthalpy of humid air is important for air conditioning calculations since it condenses some of that water from the air when cooling it.
And it takes a lot of energy to evaporate or condense water so the air conditioner energy required to condense the water can be significant.

 

Is there ANY situation where you would choose to open your windows to higher enthalpy outside air?

Getting right at the question, no. Just as EER (BTUs per watt-hour) is the holy grail in efficiency, enthalpy is the holy grail in energy conversion equations because it considers all heat input to humans from the air. (The walls and windows are part of the environment, but we don't have central wall and window replacement machines.) Consider that, no matter what the enthalpy of the outside air, the goal is to arrive at the requested enthalpy of the indoor air. All calculations end up at some target, like 70F and 50% humidity. That includes theaters, restaurants, and residences because all humans in a locale are acclimated to the same conditions. Realizing that the end goal is fixed for any locale, you can easily see that starting with a higher enthalpy always costs more energy.

You may say, "But 'human comfort' curves. What about introducing air from Phoenix into a house in Florida?" Irrelevant. Not only because you can't efficiently get air from Phoenix to Florida, but because the air inside the building is the reference point to beat. No matter where the building is, you achieve equilibrium inside the building, and then the choice between re-cooling inside air and introducing outside air becomes obvious. Lower enthalpy wins every time. Even if you pack 30 guests in a residence and cook supper for them, thus wrecking all previous calculations about humidity control, enthalpy still wins. The best possible scenario would be to have enthalpy measuring devices inside and outside the house, but they would only change the outside air intake valve when the outside air has lower enthalpy than the inside air. Enthalpy still wins.

ps, the ratio of temperature change to humidity removal is called, "Sensible heat ratio". It's usually about 70% in Florida.

it takes a lot of energy to evaporate or condense water

The textbook answer is 1000 BTUs per pound of water.

 

Lower enthalpy wins every time.

Exactly what I've been going on. Thanks for confirming.

Do you agree that using enthalpy per lb dry air is the right basis? Outdoor air changes density as you condition it to indoor conditions. So like I said, I've been able to confuse myself trying to factor in that volume change. I'm pretty sure that's why we use the lb-dry-air basis, to avoid worrying about density changes.

 

Of course, once you've lowered the humidity of the inside air (and reduced its enthalpy), and there's not a lot of air coming in from the outside, then most of the air conditioning energy is just used to maintain the inside air temperature.