A window air conditioner is a great way of keeping a room cool in the absence of central air conditioning. These window ACs come as a comprehensive unit that can be mounted on a window or even a specially designed aperture in a room. You do not need to install additional piping or separate condenser units. Installing them is also far simpler than designing and installing central air conditioner units. However, the biggest problem with window air conditioners is that they can sometimes be noisy. Here are some steps that you can follow to troubleshoot a window air conditioner that is excessively noisy or loud. If your window air conditioner has been operating at a steady noise level but suddenly starts making a loud noise, it’s possible a foreign object has fallen into it. This is quite common in these types of air conditioners because the outer part of the unit hangs outside your window, making it easy for small animals or flying debris to enter your air conditioner. If your room is on the ground floor, it’s possible that a ground dwelling animal like a rat or lizard may have made your window unit its new home.

Switch off your air conditioner immediately, unplug it, and open the front grill. Using a flashlight, peek inside the unit. Remove the foreign obstruction, fasten the front grill back in place, and start the air conditioner once more.home air conditioner repair yourself In certain cases, the presence of an intruding object does damage that causes problems even after it’s been removed. how to make ac unit quieterThe fan blades inside your window air conditioner, for example, can become bent if they strike an object that falls inside the unit.air conditioning unit design Check to see if the blades are straight. If not, straighten them until they are properly aligned. This can be done by hand or by using a strong pair of pliers if necessary.

If you are not able to figure out whether the blades are bent or not, consider seeking professional assistance. Window air conditioner units are heavy, have lots of moving parts, and are precariously mounted in window frames. As a result, these units are prone to a lot of vibration if they have not been mounted correctly. Touch the sides of the window frame on which the air conditioner is mounted. If they are vibrating excessively, you should call the people who installed the air conditioner and ask them to fix it so that the vibration is minimized. The front grill of a window air conditioner needs to be removed on a regular basis to clean the filter. These grills are usually held in place by a simple locking mechanism. While a dirty filter is certainly problematic for the unit’s function, it won’t cause excessive noise. However, if the grill is not put back properly following a cleaning or the locking mechanism is defective or damaged, it can vibrate around and cause a lot of noise.

Remove the grill and set it back on properly to eliminate this noise. If the locking mechanism has been damaged, you may have to replace it. If the fan motor is not properly lubricated, it can result in a loud persistent noise. If this is the case, switch off the air conditioner to avoid damaging the motor. In the middle of heat wave, this cause is the worst one to discover at the root of your noise problem. Since most fan motors are sealed, you may have to call for professional assistance to lubricate the fan motor.On a hot summer day, there are few appliances more useful than the window air conditioner. These miracles of engineering move heat from inside your home to the outside, cooling the air inside to make it more comfortable. These devices pump heat from one side to another, shifting the heat to the outside and circulating wonderful cool air inside. And they do this in a remarkably small space, without having to knock holes in the wall. So, how do these miracles of cool work?

Fundamentally, a window AC unit is a pump, one that shifts heat instead of water. It does this by using a chemical that turns from a liquid into a gas with a relatively small shift in pressure. Called a phase transition, this process is at the heart of how window AC units work: by repeatedly pressurizing and then releasing this chemical, the window AC unit moves energy from one side to the other. Combine this with a fan that circulates the air through the unit, and you get air conditioning. At the core of a window AC unit is a loop of pipe, usually copper, with a pump on one side and a small expansion valve on the other. This loop has two radiators on it: one on the outside and one on the inside, which have fans behind them to push the air over them.On most modern units, this loop is filled with a coolant called R-410A, which is a mixture of two chemicals: difluoromethane (CH2F2) and pentafluoroethane (CHF2CF3). This coolant is used because if you compress it, it becomes a liquid. If you then release this pressure, it evaporates to become a gas, and the difference in pressure needed to go between the two states is fairly small.

These two states are the mechanism that moves the heat from inside your house to outside. When the pump is active (which you can usually hear; it's the low-frequency rumble from a working AC), it's compressing the coolant so it becomes a liquid. This liquid passes through the outside radiator, where it sheds heat into the outside air. When it reaches the expansion valve, only a small amount is let through, so the pressure on the other side is much lower. This makes the coolant evaporate, which cools it down. From there, it passes through the inside radiator, and the air passing over this is cooled. The coolant absorbs the energy (the heat) from the air inside the room, cooling it. The coolant then moves into the pump, where it is compressed again and pushed into the outside half of the loop, and the process repeats. The whole process is controlled by a computer that measures the temperature of the air being sucked into the unit and turns the pump on and off as required. Because the coolant takes time to pass through the expansion valve, the pump doesn't run all the time when the unit is cooling: when the pressure on the hot, outside part of the loop reaches a certain level, the controller turns the pump off until the pressure falls.

As the coolant passes through the pressure valve, it evaporates and cools in the inside radiator, and you feel the cool air. That's why you don't feel an immediate rush of cool air when you turn on a window AC unit: the pump has to build up the pressure before the cooling can begin. The cooling power of windows AC units is measured in British Thermal Units (BTU). This is a measure of how much energy (in the form of heat) the device can shift from one side to the other. Specifically, one BTU is the amount of energy it takes to heat (or cool) one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. The higher this number, the more energy (heat) the unit can move, and the larger the area it can cool.Most window AC units range from 2,000 to 25,000 BTU. However, most units over 15,000 BTU will require a dedicated 230V power line, like those used by electric dryers. This process of repeatedly compressing the mix uses a lot of energy, which is why window AC units are notorious power hogs, especially when the pump first starts.