If you’ve had your HVAC system repaired, replaced or serviced in your Lowcountry home, odds are good that you may have heard your HVAC contractor talk about your system’s “air handler”.
Whether they were tuning up the blower motor, balancing the fan or simply just checking out its components, your home’s air handler plays a vital role in your HVAC system’s overall performance.
That said, for those of you that may not know what exactly an air handler is below is a quick rundown of its operation, how it fits into your home’s HVAC system and some recommendations on particular makes and models that Lowcountry homeowners especially favor.
Air Handler Basics
As the name implies, an air handler essentially “handles the air” that moves throughout your home’s ductwork.
Most Lowcountry homes will have an outdoor unit like a traditional central air conditioner or heat pump which works in coordination with your air handler to condition the air in your home (remove heat/humidity).
Mentioned above, your air handler’s blower motor is then used to push and circulate the conditioned air throughout your home’s duct system until your specific comfort settings are met.
Air handlers also may have an optional electrical heating element, which can be used to augment your home’s particular heating source.
The Importance of Your Air Handler
As you can imagine, if your air handler suffers a major breakdown or is operating poorly, you’ll definitely know it right away. That’s why you will want to let an HVAC company near you help troubleshoot its performance issues.
Why Your Next Air Handler Should Be A Trane
Your air handler takes on a heavy load of your overall HVAC system’s operation, so you can probably guess two things:
- 1. Your air handler may use a lot of electricity/power.
- 2. Your air handler may create a lot of noise during operation (from the blower motor).
Now if you really want to optimize your HVAC system’s performance (and help lower your monthly power bills), we’d recommend Trane’s Hyperion Communicating TAM9 in most cases in the Lowcountry.
The Hyperion Communicating line of air handlers use variable speed blower motors, which can adjust your air handlers operation at a more granular level — instead of the traditional on/off operation of traditional systems.
This “fine-tuning” of operation means that it will efficiently use energy throughout its normal operation and give you much quieter operation as well.
The “communicating” part of the Hyperion Communicating namesake means it can tie into Trane’s Comfortlink II system and smart thermostats to collect and optimize your system’s performance even further.
We could go on about Trane air handler benefits, but to wrap things up in this post we hope that you now have a better understanding of your home’s air handling equipment and can now see the pivotal role it can play within your home’s overall system performance.
