How to Handle Moving Something Above Your Weight Limit? July 5, 2007   Subscribe Can you safely hire someone to lift something heavier than you can handle? Or are there safe means out there of moving something heavier than your ability to handle? I had previously asked my fellow Mefites about whether or not I should take out my air conditioner when the weather gets colder. Although there were good weatherproofing strategies given, a Mefite who lives a few blocks from me confided in e-mail that after having left her air conditioner in the window last winter, she found herself freezing throughout most of it, despite insulation attempts. That, coupled with other remarks, has made me lean heavily towards taking it out of my window come fall and putting it in this large bin. (I can then drape a blanket over it and just have an endtable of sorts for the winter and following spring.) However, my primary means of getting this done may not be available, and my secondary means is altogether shot.

In the past, my landlord actually required tenants to have the building's superintendent put in or take out their A/Cs, to avoid potential damage to the windows. However, the building is in the process of being sold; I'm unsure of whether my new landlord will be similarly willing to assist. My backup means would have been, had the first fallen through, to ask my best friend to assist me in taking it out of the window. However, that friendship, sadly enough, looks as if it may have dissolved altogether — leaving me doing the "lone wolf" thing for a little bit. I know that I'm able to lift a 50-lb. box of paper from the floor, but I also know that's near my maximum limit: I'm primarily focusing on weight loss at the moment, and plan to focus on muscle-building a little later in the journey. I also strained my back muscles (trapezius, erector spinae) a few years ago, and that's made me real wary of hurting them again and more significantly. The air conditioner is a bit over ninety pounds, so I'm fairly sure it's over my limit.

(I've also seen stronger men then I have difficulty with it, I presume due to its dimensions — the UPS delivery guy was able to get it up the stairs, how I don't know, but the superintendent needed help to do it himself.) If the new landlord proves unwilling to move it, I'm going to need to figure out some other way of getting it out of my window. Is this a situation where I could hire someone — in essence a "professional strongman" — to move the air conditioner into the bin? how to clean my home ac unitAnd if so, what steps could I take to (a) make sure I'm not giving access to my home to a thief, and (b) make sure he doesn't hurt something (or fake a hurt) and then sue me?hvac heat pump system If the possibility of (a) and (b) make the above idea a bad one, any other ideas for how I might safely move the unit into the bin myself without endangering my back? moving ac unit cost

I really don't want to do the "slipped or ruptured disc" thing, as you might imagine ...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. That's why the lights sometimes flicker when a window AC unit turns on: The device is sucking down a lot of juice to get the pump started compressing the mix and beginning the cycle. But let's be honest -- that wonderful rush of cool, clean air on a hot day is worth the electricity bill.