Fan coil unit
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A fan coil unit (FCU) is a simple device consisting of a heating or cooling coil and fan. It is part of an HVAC system found in residential, commercial, and industrial buildings. Since it does not have any ductwork, a fan coil unit is used to control the temperature only in the space where it is installed. It is controlled either by a manual on/off switch or by thermostat.
Due to their simplicity, fan coil units are more economic to install than ducted or central heating systems. However, they can be noisy because its fan is within the same space.
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[edit] Design and operation
The coil receives hot or cold water from a central plant, and removes or adds heat from the air through heat transfer. Fan coil units can contain their own internal thermostat, or can be wired to operate with a remote thermostat.
Fan coil units circulate hot or cold water through a coil in order to condition a space. The unit gets its hot or cold water from a central plant, or mechanical room containing equipment for removing heat from the central building's closed-loop. The equipment used can consist of machines used to remove heat such as a chiller or a cooling tower and equipment for adding heat to the building's water such as a boiler or a commercial water heater.
They use a single-pipe system or a two-pipe system. In a single pipe system, only one of either hot or cold water can be circulated through the coil at a given time. Whether it is circulating hot or cold water is determined by the owners or management of the building, and usually occurs twice a year just prior to the change of season. In a two-pipe system, both hot and cold water are available to the unit year-round, so that the operator has more control over whether they receive air conditioning or heat.
[edit] Areas of use
Fan coil units are typically used in spaces where economic installations are preferred such as unoccupied storage rooms, corridors, loading docks.
In high-rise buildings, fan coils may be stacked, located one above the other from floor to floor and all interconnected by the same piping loop.
[edit] Installation
In high-rise residential construction, typically each fan coil unit requires a rectangular through-penetration in the concrete slab on top of which it sits. Usually, there are either 3 or 5 copper pipes that go through the floor. The pipes are usually insulated with refrigeration insulation, such as acrylonitrile butadiene/polyvinyl chloride (AB/PVC) flexible foam (Rubatex or Armaflex brands) on all pipes or at least the cool lines.
[edit] Unit Ventilator
A unit ventilator is an fan coil unit that is used mainly in classrooms, hotels, apartments and condominium applications. A unit ventilator can be a wall mounted or ceiling hung cabinet, and is designed to use a fan to blow air across a coil, thus conditioning the space which it is serving.
Examples of unit ventilators:
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