The AC pros may know how to install and service a unit, but don\u2019t have any sense of thermodynamics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Imagine that your home is a bucket, and the \u201ccold\u201d is water. You\u2019d \nlike to fill your bucket (home) with water (cold) up to a certain level,\n and leave it there while you\u2019re home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that bucket has holes, a few small holes, running all the way up \nto the top. So the higher the water level is in the bucket, the faster \nthe water leaks out. And that\u2019s the only factor that affects the outflow\n rate \u2014 for a given level of the water line at a particular instant, the\n leakage rate is going to be the same regardless of whether you\u2019re \ncurrently filling or not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Okay, so if you keep pouring water in, you can keep it the water line\n at a constant level if you balance the outflow. And consistent with the\n above, the higher the water level, the faster the outflow so the higher\n you need the inflow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what\u2019s the most efficient approach to deal with the times when \nyou\u2019re not home and don\u2019t care how high the water level is in the \nbucket?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s start with an easy one. Imagine you\u2019re going away for a month. \nIs it better to keep filling that bucket, to keep the water line at \nparticular level? No, you just let all the water run out of the bucket. \nWhen you get home, you fill it back up to the desired level. That\u2019s \ngoing to save a ton of water vs keeping the water line at a given level \nthe whole time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How about if you\u2019re just gonna be gone for 8 hours? Well, it\u2019s not \nquite as obvious, but the answer\u2019s the same. Remember, the lower the \nwater level gets, the slower the leakage rate. So the more you let the \nwater level drop, the less water you lose. When you get home, you fill \nit back up to the desired level and the leakage rate goes back up. But \nduring the day, you lose a lot less water as the leakage rate goes down \nthan if you\u2019d kept it at the same high level all day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The answer in my water bucket analogy is clear. I suppose the \nquestion is, is it a good analogy? The answer is yes \u2014 a key concept of \nthermodynamics is that the higher the temperature differential, the \ngreater the rate of heat transfer. If it\u2019s 90 degrees outside and \n75 degrees inside your house, your house is going to \u201close its cold\u201d at a\n much faster rate than if it\u2019s 90 degrees outside and 89 inside your \nhouse. And at some point, your house is going to stop \u201closing cold\u201d \nentirely (it may or may not be the same temp as the outside temp, \ndepending on greenhouse effects, etc., but it will happen at some \npoint).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now there may be secondary reasons why it\u2019s a bad idea to let your \nhouse heat up to ambient temperature. A big one would if you live in a \nhumid area, which can cause mildew and then indoor condensation when you\n cool it back down. Or if you have pets, or anything else sensitive to a\n fairly narrow range of temps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The AC pros may know how to install and service a unit, but don\u2019t have any sense of thermodynamics. Imagine that your home is a bucket, and the \u201ccold\u201d is water. You\u2019d like to fill your bucket (home) with water (cold) up to a certain level, and leave it there while you\u2019re home. But that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amapiano.co\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amapiano.co\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amapiano.co\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amapiano.co\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amapiano.co\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.amapiano.co\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amapiano.co\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amapiano.co\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amapiano.co\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}