Have you ever needed to know the size and age of your air conditioning equipment?
Depending on the age and equipment manufacturer the format and content of data on the name plate varies, but typically the tag will allow you to discover some or the entire considerable amount of data listed here.
- Manufacturer: The air conditioning equipment manufacturer. (Carrier, Rheem, Goodman, Trane, etc…)
- Model Number, Serial Number, and Cooling Capacity: sometimes cooling capacity is coded into the model number but on most new units, cooling capacity is stated explicitly. On older equipment the BTUH cooling capacity may be encoded in the model numbers.
COOLING CAPACITY discusses how to read the cooling capacity in BTUH or tons from air conditioning or heat pump tags or name plates. The serial number of modern HVAC equipment encodes the year and month of manufactured date.
Serial number formats vary by range of years over which equipment was manufactured, and may vary among countries of manufacture for a given company’s equipment, for example between the U.S. and Canada for Carrier air conditioning equipment.
Example: a Carrier Compressor/Condenser Serial# 1389E54894 on a compressor unit.
Air conditioning equipment age from serial number for the example above, the equipment was made after 1980. The first four digits of the serial number are week and year of manufacture, in this case, week 13 of 1989.
FROM MODEL # – Air conditioning equipment capacity from model number
Example: Carrier A/C Compressor Condenser Model# 38XD12400 (same unit as used for the serial number example above), there is variation in how Carrier assigned these numbers but typically the numbers indicate either tonnage or MBTUH. This example has digits in the 4th and 5th positions (right hand 5 digits), so the rating is in MBTUH for this number and “24” signifies 24 MBTUH or 2 tons of capacity.
Give us a call at United Plumbing Heating Air & Electric San Diego, Escondido, and Encinitas to service your Air Condition today.
