Why Is Your Air Conditioner So Heavy?
Ok, I'm sure most of you guessed it's the Copper, but it's much more than that. You all know what I mean in May when you start installing that bad boy.
Yeah, it's the copper. There are other things that make your air conditioner so heavy. Have you ever lifted out parts of a central air system? I have and they are really heavy. Like if NASA made air conditioning.
According to Slate there are other parts besides the copper, the evaporator, condenser, and the compressor, all also very heavy. The evaporator is the heaviest. It has a ton of copper as part of it, if fact the copper is run throughout the whole system, but mostly in the evaporator.
According to Slate, copper weighs 558 lbs per cubic foot, so the copper in each part of the air conditioner help to create the weight. It's about 60% of the weight of the air conditioner. (Units can weigh as much as 213 pounds, the weight of the heaviest window unit sold by the Friedrich Air Conditioning Co.) Steel, which provides structural support and houses or covers the compressor, accounts for the rest of the weight.
Why isn't Aluminum used instead of copper? Because copper is better and more efficient for conducting heat and removing it from the air. Plus the cost would increase. Aluminum is more expensive, which I find hard to believe because people recycle aluminum. Having said that, Slate says that it would take much more aluminum to get the job done than copper.