A/C refridgerant lines insulated together or seperately?

[Sam]

i wanted to add air conditioning to my new home. i have copper tubing(4m) ready laid out but i noticed both tubes are taped together inside the same insualting jacket. most a/c installations i see the refridgeant lines are insulated seperatelty.

will it have much of a performance penalty on the A/C or is it ok? anyone have tubing insulated like this?

regards, Sam

[Grunff]

It will have a slight performance cost, but unless they're touching, not enough to worry about.

[Pete C]

Hi,

The cooliing effect comes from the liquid in the 'flow' pipe changing to a gas which returns in the other 'return' pipe, so having them together won't matter.

The insulation is mainly to stop condensation forming on the colder return and dripping everywhere, it will also stop any stray heat coming from the flow pipe too.

cheers, Pete.

[Sam]

but do the two pipes operate at the same temperature? and yes they are touching,copper to copper, physically alongside each other inside the foam.

Sam

[Pete C]

Hi,

I might be slightly wrong on this, it would be worth asking the manufacturer or on somewhere like:

cheers, Pete.

[Pete C]

Hi,

No, the liquid carrying 'flow' pipe from the outdoor unit condenser is likely to be warmer than the gas carrying 'return' pipe from the indoor unit evaporator.

This should not a problem if they are in contact as the colder the liquid in the flow pipe the better. However some air con units allow some expansion on the liquid in the flow pipe at the condenser which could make it colder than the return.

So it would be best to see what the manufacturer says or ask on that forum I gave the URL of.

cheers, Pete.

[N. Thornton]

It will give you a performance and energy efficiency penalty, but by how much is another question. IOW it should be ok but is less than perfect.

Regards, NT

[Z]

In article , Sam writes

Refrigeration insulation is available at Kitsons, It's like a figure of

8 so tubes can be run parallel.