My apartment has an indoor and outdoor HVAC unit?

[MainDotC]

I recently moved from a garden-style apartment to a townhouse-style. In the garden-style we had an outdoor HVAC unit - one of those big square things with a big fan in it like this:

We kept the apartment at 72 during the day in the summer, then when we came home we turned it down to 65 and it cooled down very quickly and it was very quiet - just the sound of cool air coming out of the vents. Now with the townhouse it seems there's an HVAC unit outdoor and another thing inside. It looks kind of like this but it's a bit slimmer:

It does have the intake vent down at the bottom like that and it's very loud. I plan on asking my landlord about it but just thought I'd ask if anyone has any experience with this. Why do I need a unit inside and outside? I'm quite certain we only had 1 unit at our last apartment and it was outdoor.

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[Supermassive]

A/C outside, furnace inside?

 

[karnige]

what I thought unless you have a combo unit inside that makes no sense.

 

[MainDotC]

I don't recall ever seeing an inside unit. If it was there it certainly wasn't audible like the unit we have in our new apartment drowns out the TV. I'll re-check - plan on going over there to chat w/ the landlord - but I don't recall seeing an inside unit.

 

[MainDotC]

Could not hear the OSU game tonight because of that blasted intake vent

 

[IronMosher]

That's your heater in the closet. Totally normal for a house with central air.

 

[karnige]

Could not hear the OSU game tonight because of that blasted intake vent

yah it sucks. maybe you could soundproof the closet as best you can?

 

[MainDotC]

Seems to be more the vent than the closet. I wish there was some way the vent was much quieter. I just did not experience anything like this at my previous apartment and I swear there was no inside unit and AC/heat worked fine.

 

[SniperHF]

Seems to be more the vent than the closet. I wish there was some way the vent was much quieter. I just did not experience anything like this at my previous apartment and I swear there was no inside unit and AC/heat worked fine.

It might have been in a crawl space or somewhere between the walls you couldn't access. Mine is in a little mini attic above the laundry room.

And yeah some air returns are unfortunately louder than others.

 

[theotis77]

That's just a standard split-unit central air system. Almost all modern central heating/air systems use that now. The outdoor unit has a compressor and a condenser. The indoor unit contains an evaporator and the actual blower fans that move air around the house. Most also contain the furnace for when your unit is in heat mode.

Warm air from the intake vent(s) in your house is blown across the indoor unit's evaporator coil, where the heat from the air is transferred to the refrigerant and the air cools. The cooled air is blown back into your house while the outdoor unit pumps the refrigerant through the whole system, taking in the heated refrigerant. Through conversion from liquid to gas and rapid pressure changes, the refrigerant is cooled again, the heat is blown out the top of the outdoor unit, and the refrigerant is pumped back up to the indoor unit to start the cycle again.

 

[MainDotC]

Very well...as I said I do not recall a 2nd unit in my previous apartment but it could have been hidden. In any event it was not anywhere near as loud as this one is.