Sometimes two heads are better than one. Whatever the season, commercial properties often rely year-round on air conditioning to maintain ideal temperatures for their occupants—whether for the sake of comfort and productivity for employees, customers, guests, and faculty or to provide process cooling for essential equipment and prevent overheating.
A commercial split AC unit divides the duties of cooling indoor spaces between an indoor unit and an outdoor unit, providing flexible and modular air conditioning solutions essential to meeting the different needs of commercial spaces.
In this resource, we’ll explore everything commercial property owners need to know about split AC units – cost-saving benefits, how they work, and what to look for when choosing a system.
Benefits of Split AC Units
Split system air conditioning boasts plenty of advantages over single-unit AC systems, including:
- Energy Efficiency: Since split system AC can provide individual temperature control in different parts of your building, they can prevent energy wastage throughout your property.
- Easy to Install: The smaller component units of the split system AC system are easier to install with fewer significant disruptions to your work.
- Less Noise Pollution: The noisiest parts of the split system AC unit are all outside your building, making split AC units quieter for your building’s occupants.
- Versatile Climate Control: By integrating a heat pump into a split AC unit, your building’s climate control solution can provide both heating and cooling year-round.
How do commercial buildings use split AC systems?
Offices, retail stores, restaurants, and small businesses can reap the benefits of commercial split AC units in many ways, including:
- Providing precise individual climate control for separate offices and workspaces
- Maintaining comfortable shopping environments, dining environments, or waiting areas for customers, clients, and visitors in retail, food service, or offices
- Maintaining low ambient temperatures in server rooms and data centers to prevent equipment overheating
- Regulating temperature and humidity in retail stockrooms and storage areas
How do split AC units work?
By splitting an AC unit in half, commercial split AC units divide the responsibility of cooling indoor spaces between four separate components:
- Indoor Cooling Unit: Utilizing an evaporator coil, fan, and air filter, the indoor unit handles taking warm air in a room or area of your building, extracting the heat, and blowing out the cooled air. When warm air passes over the evaporator coil, the refrigerant running through the coil absorbs its heat.
- Outdoor Condenser Unit: Outside the building, the condenser unit takes the heat extracted from within the building and expels it into the outside air by running compressed refrigerant through the condenser coil.
- Refrigerant Lines: Copper refrigerant tubing connects the indoor unit with the outdoor unit and allows the cooling unit to send heated refrigerant to the condenser unit, while the condenser unit sends cooler refrigerant to the cooling unit.
- Control System: Between the indoor and outdoor unit, thermostats, remote controls, and other control systems set the desired temperature of your indoor space and control the operation of your split AC unit.
Commercial Split AC Units vs. Residential Units
Split AC units are a popular, cost-effective climate control solution for both residential properties and commercial properties, but when selecting a split system for your property, keep in mind that commercial split AC units are built to meet the unique needs of larger, commercial properties. Residential split systems are designed for smaller spaces and have lower cooling capability compared to commercial split systems.
Choosing the right commercial split AC units ensures your AC unit:
- Has a higher capacity for cooling
- Can run continuously for longer periods
- Is engineered for durability and has a longer lifespan
- Is more energy efficient
- Meets your building codes and adheres to your industry regulations
How long does a commercial split AC unit last?
Your choice of split system AC unit matters. Selecting the right brand, with the right capacity for your building’s unique needs, can provide decades of cooling. Choosing a less reputable brand or an AC unit that doesn’t quite meet your building’s needs could save money in the short term, but cost later on due to a shorter lifespan, higher maintenance or repair bills, or reduced energy efficiency.
A commercial split system air conditioning unit from a reputable brand that is carefully and regularly maintained and promptly repaired when the need arises can provide 20 years or more of reliable cooling for your property—and we’re here to help you get as many of those years out of your HVAC system as possible.
Chiller Systems Service is metro Denver’s premier provider of best-value, turnkey commercial and industrial HVAC services, providing cost-effective and energy-efficient climate control systems from leading brands and leveraging extensive technical skills and friendly service to keep HVAC systems across the Colorado Front Range Urban Corridor.
From getting a reliable, high-performance, energy-efficient commercial split AC unit for your property to maintaining it, our extensive installation, repair, and maintenance services for split system air conditioning ensure that your AC system meets the needs of your building and provides faithful cooling for decades to come.