Due to the restric­tions on the vol­ume of premis­es and the length of the fre­on line, char­ac­ter­is­tic of split sys­tems, the demand from our com­pa­tri­ots for the instal­la­tion of fan coil units in res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial premis­es has sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased. Regard­less of the ver­sion, wall-mount­ed, floor-mount­ed or ceil­ing-mount­ed, this device is a fair­ly com­pact heat exchang­er con­nect­ed to the hot and cold cir­cuits of the work­ing flu­id prepa­ra­tion device. In oth­er words, this device can be com­pared with the indoor unit of a con­ven­tion­al split sys­tem. Fan­coils may have dif­fer­ences in design, but each has the fol­low­ing com­po­nents:

• A heat exchang­er that cools or heats the sup­ply air.
• A fan that directs the sup­ply air to the heat exchang­er.
• The fil­ter, which serves to clean the sup­ply air from mechan­i­cal impu­ri­ties.
• Con­trol unit with remote con­trol.

A typ­i­cal sec­tion­al design of a fan coil unit, with the des­ig­na­tion of the ele­ments, can be seen in the fig­ure.

You should be aware that the pres­ence of a hous­ing is not nec­es­sary for fan coil units. There are both cased and unframed vari­eties of this equip­ment.

The prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion of the sys­tem is quite sim­ple: from the pro­cess­ing device (chiller), the work­ing flu­id of a giv­en tem­per­a­ture enters the fan coil unit, where heat exchange takes place between the air and the walls of the heat exchang­er. Air can be sup­plied to the heat exchang­er in two ways:

• Out­door, from the sup­ply ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem through a duct sys­tem;
• Inter­nal, from the premis­es. In this case, the air mass­es are heat­ed much faster than in the case of sup­ply­ing fresh air.

Such a sys­tem is called a chiller-fan coil and can work both for cool­ing and for heat­ing the air in the room.

Varieties of fan coil units

To date, there are four main types of such equip­ment:

1. Con­sole frame­less.
2. Con­sole in the case.
3. Hor­i­zon­tal.
4. Fan­coil cas­sette.

Depend­ing on the instal­la­tion, each type of this cli­mat­ic equip­ment can be wall-mount­ed, floor-mount­ed, ceil­ing-mount­ed or built-in. Depend­ing on the tasks, fan coil units can be equipped with two or four pipes. When using a two-pipe pip­ing, the device can only work for cool­ing or heat­ing the air in the room. The use of a four-pipe pip­ing allows the use of both a cold and a hot chiller cir­cuit, while oper­at­ing the unit for both heat­ing and cool­ing, mak­ing set­tings from the con­trol pan­el. Due to the com­plex­i­ty of imple­men­ta­tion, the cost of installing fan coil units with a four-pipe pip­ing is much high­er than with a two-pipe one.

Features of installing fan coil units

Most often, such equip­ment is installed not one by one, but in groups that are dis­trib­uted over rooms and floors.

• Equip­ment with the same hydraulic resis­tance, mount­ed on the same floor, is installed accord­ing to the scheme shown in Fig­ure 1.
• Equip­ment with the same hydraulic resis­tance intend­ed for instal­la­tion on dif­fer­ent floors is mount­ed accord­ing to the scheme shown in Fig­ure 2.
• Fan coil units with dif­fer­ent hydraulic resis­tance, installed on the same floor, are mount­ed accord­ing to the scheme shown in Fig­ure 3.
• Devices with dif­fer­ent hydraulic resis­tance, installed on dif­fer­ent floors, are mount­ed accord­ing to the scheme shown in Fig­ure 4.
• The main advan­tage of schemes 1 and 2 is that there is no need to adjust the cir­cuit with the work­ing flu­id. The advan­tage of schemes 3 and 4 can be con­sid­ered a low­er flow rate of the pipeline.

Differences in the installation of various types of fan coil units

Cased two-pipe fan coil units are mount­ed, dis­trib­ut­ing them even­ly around the entire perime­ter of the room. Instal­la­tion of four-pipe mod­els, as a rule, is car­ried out under the win­dows. The abil­i­ty to quick­ly change the oper­at­ing mode, from cool­ing to space heat­ing, allows you to com­pen­sate for heat loss through the glaz­ing. For all types of fan coil units, it is nec­es­sary to make a pip­ing, with shut-off valves, and con­nect to a com­mon hydraulic sys­tem. Frame­less devices are locat­ed in the space between the ceil­ing and the sus­pend­ed ceil­ing. The main require­ments for the instal­la­tion site of these devices are:

• min­i­mum length of air ducts;
• ser­vice access.

When installing frame­less fan coil units on the ceil­ing of the house, anti-vibra­tion mounts should be pro­vid­ed.

The sim­plest instal­la­tion is typ­i­cal for floor fan coil units. It is enough to con­nect a drainage pipeline to drain con­den­sate, as well as to car­ry out work on con­nect­ing the device to the hydraulic sys­tem, mix­er and pow­er sup­ply. Work on the instal­la­tion of floor mod­els with­out much dif­fi­cul­ty can be car­ried out inde­pen­dent­ly. Instal­la­tion of a wall-mount­ed fan coil unit, as well as ceil­ing mod­els, is much more com­pli­cat­ed and requires the par­tic­i­pa­tion of a spe­cial­ist who will per­form work on:

• assem­bly of the strap­ping unit;
• instal­la­tion of the nec­es­sary devices for mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol­ling the device;
• com­pe­tent lay­ing of pipes and air ducts;
• ther­mal insu­la­tion works;
• pres­sure test­ing of the sys­tem;
• con­nect­ing the device to the pow­er sup­ply.

Instal­la­tion of cas­sette fan coil units is also asso­ci­at­ed with cer­tain dif­fi­cul­ties, since it is sup­posed to be built into a sus­pend­ed ceil­ing. First of all, a hole of the desired size is cut out in the false ceil­ing. After that, the device is fixed to the ceil­ing in com­pli­ance with the mea­sures of anti-vibra­tion pro­tec­tion and sound insu­la­tion. Depend­ing on the mod­el, the mas­ter con­nects one or two hydraulic cir­cuits, mix­ers and sup­ply air to the main unit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cD0K8B48bY

It is extreme­ly impor­tant that after con­nec­tion work is car­ried out to adjust the sup­ply of work­ing flu­ids. That is why all instal­la­tion work must be car­ried out by spe­cial­ists.

Stages of installation work

Work on the instal­la­tion of fan coil units can be divid­ed into sev­er­al stages:

1. Cor­rect choice of mount­ing loca­tion.
2. Fas­ten­ing the device to the build­ing enve­lope.
3. Cre­ation of a bind­ing knot.
4. Lay­ing of a pipeline for the sup­ply and removal of work­ing flu­ids.
5. Instal­la­tion and con­nec­tion of the drainage sys­tem.
6. Con­nect­ing the pow­er sup­ply and con­trol sys­tem.
7. Check­ing the tight­ness of the sys­tem.
8. Job set­up.

Despite the dif­fer­ence in design, the instal­la­tion of fan coil units is car­ried out in almost the same way.

It should be under­stood that the qual­i­ty and dura­bil­i­ty of the oper­a­tion of the entire sys­tem direct­ly depends on the com­pe­tent instal­la­tion of fan coil units, there­fore it is best to entrust such work to pro­fes­sion­als. When con­tact­ing a com­pa­ny for the instal­la­tion and main­te­nance of such cli­mate equip­ment, you should pay atten­tion to the expe­ri­ence of spe­cial­ists and the avail­abil­i­ty of the nec­es­sary equip­ment in the com­pa­ny.