It’s going to be a hot week for many Americans. If you’ve ever installed a window air-conditioning unit in your old apartment, you know that your AC is inexplicably heavy for the small space that it cools. It takes a lot of copper to produce all that cold air, Kelly explains. Her original piece, from 2011, is reprinted below. With temperatures rising, Americans have begun the annual summer tradition of installing cumbersome removable air conditioners. It's tough to find a window unit that's lighter than 46 pounds—and a machine like that would be able to cool only a fairly small room (150 square feet or less). What makes them so heavy?Air-conditioning systems—both centralized ones and window units—have three important components: an evaporator, a condenser, and a compressor. The evaporator helps cool the air, the condenser readies the refrigerant for the cooling process, and the compressor moves refrigerant back and forth between them. The evaporator and the condenser are both made out of copper coils, and there is some copper in the compressor, too.

Copper is pretty heavy, weighing some 558 pounds per cubic foot, and the copper components account for as much as 60 percent of the weight in smaller units—though the percentage declines as they get heavier. central air conditioner outside unit fan not working(Units can be as massive as 213 pounds, the weight of the heaviest window unit sold by the Friedrich Air Conditioning Co.) power inverter ac dcSteel, which provides structural support and houses or covers the compressor, accounts for the rest of the weight.ac unit for 1500 sq ft home Aluminum, which weighs about 169 pounds per cubic foot, could theoretically be substituted for copper. But manufacturers continue to use copper because it's a better conductor of heat.

(That's important because an air conditioner works by essentially removing heat from the air.) Furthermore, the cost of an air-conditioning unit would increase if manufacturers used aluminum because of the new equipment and employee training they would have to invest in to make the necessary parts. Additionally, so much more aluminum would have to be used—to ensure that passageways in the unit were thick enough to withstand the high-pressure refrigerant moving through them—that units might not be that much lighter. Mechanical engineers aren't particularly interested in making lighterunits. Instead, they're focusing on developing more ecological air-conditioning systems. One technique they're experimenting with is so-called "dew-point cooling," which relies on the natural energy produced by evaporating water, rather than fossil fuels. But it's not clear when greener units will be widely available—or if they'll be significantly lighter. Explainer thanks Jane Deming of Friedrich Air Conditioning, Ron Rajecki of HPAC Engineering, and Douglas T. Reindl of the Industrial Refrigeration Consortium at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Search the news for "copper theft" and look through the headlines. Why are there so many stories? Stealing wire to sell the copper? From a cell tower? What is this, the Great Depression? Reports from the Department of Energy estimate that copper theft is responsible for $1 billion worth of damage every single year. The problem is so rampant that there's a coalition to prevent copper theft. State laws are being passed left and right, requiring close monitoring of all copper sales. It's the economy, stupid. Over the past year alone, the price of copper surged from ~$3.50/lb. to ~$4.50/lb. before shooting down to ~$4.00/lb in the past couple of weeks (two years ago, it was under $2.00/lb.). Those are record prices. A 2007 Department of Energy report says that copper is more in demand than any other point in history. And considering that up until recently, most electrical wire was made entirely from copper, it's damn abundant. Put two and two together and it's easy to see how one could make a quick score from a copper heist.

Maybe things aren't quite as bad as they were in 2008, but unemployment is still an issue. The U.S. credit rating has been downgraded, and the stock market seems to be unraveling. When the economy isn't good, the construction industry generally suffers. Know who would be good at harvesting copper from things? Sociologists have always correlated the rise in temperature with an increase in crime. The reasoning is that we're more active when its warm, thus criminals are more likely to engage in crimes because it's easier to do so. But there's another reason directly related to copper: it's in air conditioners. So while people have their window units out during the summer, it provides more opportunity for copper theft.According to that same Department of Energy report, people like stealing copper wire (and scrap metal in general), because the risk of punishment is minimal. The report says that the likelihood of getting caught, prosecuted and convicted are all low.• Well there was one man in Illinois who died after trying to rip out a live copper wire from a power substation.

He was literally blown out of his shoes. • In the Northern California city of San Leandro, 10,000 feet of copper wire was stolen in the middle of the night from UNDERGROUND, leaving some residents without power.• That's not the only time a city has gone without power as a result of copper theft. In June, the same thing happened in Cranberry Township, Pa, depriving thousands of power (in a city of only 23,000) • One Man in Australia posed as a technician to gain access to telephone switch junctions and underground power stations to steal wire. He did $110,000 worth of damage. • According to the NY Times, the city of Fresno, Ca began sealing its manholes with concrete to prevent people from getting access to the underground wire systems. You can keep up with Adrian Covert, the author of this post, on Twitter or Facebook.Written The insulation is not in any way shape or form used for temperature. The insulation on the large pipe, aka the suction line, is for condensation.

If it weren't insulated you would have water damage inside the house and green stains on the concrete outside. The suction line is bringing back cold refigerant back from the house outside to the condensor. It is cold, usually in the mid 40's f. Copper is used for many reasons, but temp conduction is not one of them.Written The refrigerant tubing is laid over long distance and in open atmosphere, which is at very temperature. If the tubing is exposed directly to the sun, the refrigerant flowing from the outdoor unit to the indoor unit will get heated and loose all the refrigerating effect before producing the cooling effect in the indoor unit. To prevent this loss of the cooling effect, the tubing is covered with the insulation material. Similarly, the refrigerant travelling through return tubing from indoor unit to outdoor unit is also at medium temperature and may get superheated when exposed directly to the atmosphere. This can lead to the reduction in the compressor efficiency, and overall reduction in cooling effect.