Attribute Schema Library
Attribute schemaHVACR

Condensing Units Attributes

A condensing unit is the compressor, condenser coil, fan, and receiver assembly that rejects heat from a refrigeration circuit and is paired with a remote evaporator. HVACR distributors sell them to contractors building walk-in coolers and freezers, supermarket cases, and cold storage. The buyer arrives knowing three things: the box load, the application temperature, and the refrigerant.

The data is hard in category-specific ways. The term is overloaded — "condensing unit" means a residential AC outdoor section on one page and a semi-hermetic refrigeration unit on the next. Capacity is not one number but a curve across evaporator temperatures, and means nothing without the ambient it was measured at. Application — low, medium, or high temp — usually lives in the product title, not in a field.

Then regulation moved under the category. DOE 10 CFR 431 Subpart R put AWEF on walk-in systems. The AIM Act Technology Transitions rule put a GWP ceiling on remote condensing units, and that ceiling has already been reset once. Records built before either rule have nowhere to put the answer.

Core

Every SKU needs these. Without them the record is not a product, it is a row.

Manufacturer Part Number (MPN)
identifier
CDT0751M6C

The number the contractor quotes, the supplier ships against, and every cross-reference table keys on. Nothing matches without it.

Refrigerant
enum
R-448A/R-449A

First filter a refrigeration buyer sets. Determines capacity, oil, service procedure, and whether the SKU is legal for the job.

Application Temperature Range
enum
Medium Temp (Cooler)

Low temp (freezer) vs medium temp (cooler) decides whether the unit holds the box. Same cabinet, different compressor and rating point.

Nominal Horsepower
number · HP
7.5

How the trade sizes these units and how every distributor filter rail is organized. A compressor frame size, not a capacity.

Voltage / Phase
enum · V / Ph / Hz
208-230 V / 3 Ph / 60 Hz

115 V single-phase and 208-230 V three-phase builds of the same model are different SKUs. Wrong phase is a non-returnable mistake.

Compressor Type
enum
Semi-Hermetic Reciprocating (Discus)

Scroll, hermetic reciprocating, and semi-hermetic differ in serviceability and price. Semi-hermetic is field-rebuildable; hermetic is not.

Condenser Cooling Method
enum
Air-Cooled

Air-cooled, water-cooled, and evaporative units need entirely different site prep. Not interchangeable at quote stage.

Installation Location
enum
Outdoor

Outdoor units carry a weather cabinet, fan cycling, and low-ambient control; indoor units do not. Drives price and job feasibility.

GTIN / UPC
identifier
00662766123456

Required by marketplaces and by wholesaler data feeds. A missing GTIN blocks the listing regardless of how good the specs are.

Differentiating

What buyers actually compare on. This is where catalogs win or lose the filter.

Net Capacity at Rating Point
number · BTU/h
11,520 BTU/h @ 20°F evap, 95°F ambient

The number that sizes the job. Only comparable when the evaporator temperature and ambient it was measured at travel alongside it.

Suction Line Connection
enum · in ODF
1-1/8 in ODF

The contractor needs to know what he is brazing to before the truck arrives. Drives fittings and line set on the same order.

Liquid Line Connection
enum · in ODF
5/8 in ODF

Pairs with suction size to confirm the unit matches the evaporator and the existing line set. Common cause of a second trip.

Minimum Circuit Ampacity (MCA)
number · A
15

Sizes the feeder conductors. Without it the electrician cannot pull wire and the job stalls at rough-in.

Maximum Fuse / Breaker Size (MOP)
number · A
20

Sets the largest allowable overcurrent device. Inspectors check it against the nameplate; guessing fails inspection.

Maximum Ambient Operating Temperature
number · °F
120

Standard units are rated near 95°F; high-ambient builds run to 120°F. A rooftop in Phoenix needs the second one.

Compliance & identifiers

Standards, regulatory data, and the identifiers channels reject you for missing.

AWEF (Annual Walk-in Energy Factor)
number · Btu/W·h
7.6

DOE 10 CFR 431 Subpart R metric for walk-in refrigeration systems, tested per AHRI 1250. Required to sell the SKU into a walk-in.

Refrigerant Safety Group
enum
A1

A2L units are mildly flammable and change what the install needs. Cannot be inferred reliably from a free-text refrigerant string.

Country of Origin
enum
United States

Drives duty, government and institutional bid eligibility, and marketplace listing. Asked on every large quote.

The fields that aren't in the schema at all

What most condensing units catalogs are missing.

The table above is the schema most catalogs already have. These are the attributes that usually aren't in it — each one surfaced by a signal from the live market rather than by an audit of what's already there. This is what Anglera's Schema Foundry does on a real catalog, in this category.

Competitor signal
+ Application Temperature Range

Distributor pages put the application in the title — "Medium Temperature Discus Condensing Unit" — while the spec table beneath it carries no Application field to filter or validate against.

Buyers cannot separate freezer units from cooler units. A medium-temp unit sold for a -10°F box never pulls down, and the return comes back brazed and unsellable.

Supplier signal
+ AWEF (Annual Walk-in Energy Factor)

Manufacturer literature carries AWEF for DOE-covered walk-in units. On distributor pages the same category shows an AWEF row on some records and nothing at all on others.

Walk-in jobs spec to AWEF. A SKU that cannot show a DOE-compliant number gets dropped from the submittal even when the unit actually qualifies.

Marketplace signal
+ Refrigerant Safety Group (A1 / A2L)

A2L condensing units are already listed beside A1 units with refrigerant stored as a free-text string and no safety class field, so nothing on the listing signals the install rules changed.

Contractor cannot tell which SKUs need A2L handling and leak detection. The wrong unit on site stops the job at inspection, not at the dock.

Supplier signal
+ Maximum Ambient Operating Temperature

Manufacturer datasheets separate standard-ambient from high-ambient builds; the distributor record publishes one capacity number with no ambient qualifier anywhere on the page.

A unit sized at 95°F fails on a 115°F rooftop. Nuisance high-pressure trips come back as warranty claims against a correctly built unit.

Search signal
+ Sound Pressure Level

Buyers on property-line and rooftop jobs look for the dB(A) figure manufacturers publish on the datasheet. The distributor record has no sound field, so the query returns nothing.

Noise-sensitive jobs go to whoever can answer. The RFQ is lost before a quote is written, and the loss never shows up as a return.

How Schema Foundry finds these

Messy in, governed out.

The same value, spelled every way HVACR suppliers spell it. A filter only works once they agree.

Refrigerant
R404AR-404A404AHFC-404AR 404AR-404a
R-404A

Hyphen, space, and prefix variants split one refrigerant into several filter buckets, so no single facet ever shows full inventory.

Application Temperature Range
Low TempLTLow TemperatureFreezer-20F to 0FLow-Temp
Low Temp (Freezer)

Some suppliers ship a class, others an evaporator temperature range. Both must resolve to one class before the facet works.

Voltage / Phase
208-230/1208/230V 1PH230V-1Ph208-230-11/60/208-230
208-230 V / 1 Ph / 60 Hz

The 1/60/208-230 form is phase/hertz/volts reversed. Parsed left to right it reads as a 1 V unit and silently fails validation.

Suction Line Connection
1-1/8 ODF1 1/8" ODF1.125 in28.6 mm1-1/8 in. ODS1-1/8in ODF
1-1/8 in ODF

ODF, ODS, and sweat name the same joint. EU suppliers send metric OD, which never lands in an imperial size facet.

What buyers ask

Every one of these should be answerable from the attributes above. If it isn't, that's a gap.

  • Is this low temp or medium temp — will it hold a freezer at -10°F?
  • What's the actual capacity at 20°F evap and 95°F ambient?
  • What breaker and wire size do I need? What's the MCA and max fuse?
  • Will it run on a rooftop in Phoenix at 115°F ambient?
  • Does it come with the drier and sight glass or do I add them?
  • Is this AWEF compliant for a walk-in freezer?
  • Is this an A2L unit, and does the job need leak detection?
  • What are the suction and liquid line connection sizes?

What channels require

The same SKU, different mandatory fields per destination.

Distributor site filter rail and search
RefrigerantApplication Temperature RangeNominal HorsepowerVoltage / PhaseCompressor TypeNet Capacity at Rating Point
AHRI Directory of Certified Product Performance
Manufacturer Part Number (MPN)Application Temperature RangeNet Capacity at Rating PointAWEF (Annual Walk-in Energy Factor)
HVACR wholesaler data exchange (PIM to PDX feed)
Manufacturer Part Number (MPN)GTIN / UPCRefrigerantVoltage / PhaseCountry of OriginNominal Horsepower
Amazon Business
GTIN / UPCManufacturer Part Number (MPN)RefrigerantVoltage / PhaseCountry of Origin

Condensing Units data, in practice

Why isn't nominal horsepower enough to size a condensing unit?

Horsepower describes the compressor frame, not the capacity of the system. The same 1 HP unit produces roughly 6,200 BTU/h at -10°F evaporator and roughly 16,700 BTU/h at 40°F evaporator — a factor of nearly three across the published curve. Change the refrigerant or the ambient and the numbers move again. HP is how the trade talks and how filter rails are organized, so it belongs in the record, but a buyer matching a box load needs net capacity at a stated evaporator temperature and ambient. Store the capacity curve as data, not as a PDF table the buyer has to open.

What is AWEF and which SKUs actually need it?

AWEF is the Annual Walk-in Energy Factor: the ratio of heat rejected in Btu to the energy required to reject it in watt-hours. It is the DOE efficiency metric under 10 CFR 431 Subpart R for walk-in cooler and freezer refrigeration systems, including dedicated condensing units, tested per AHRI 1250. Test conditions differ by class — medium-temperature systems are evaluated at a 25°F saturated dew point at the unit cooler exit, low-temperature systems at -20°F. If a SKU is sold into walk-in applications, AWEF is not optional metadata; it is the number the submittal is checked against.

How should the schema handle the A2L refrigerant transition?

Keep Refrigerant, Refrigerant Safety Group, and GWP as three separate governed fields rather than one free-text string. EPA's Technology Transitions rule under the AIM Act set GWP ceilings for remote condensing units — 150 for charges at or above 200 lb, 300 below that — then revised them, with an interim threshold applying from January 1, 2026 and the tighter limits returning January 1, 2032. A catalog that stores refrigerant as text cannot answer "which of my SKUs are compliant in which year" without someone reading datasheets. Three governed fields make that a query.

Why don't capacity numbers from different suppliers compare?

Published capacity depends entirely on the rating point: evaporator temperature, ambient temperature, superheat, subcooling, and return gas temperature. Some manufacturers publish at 20°F total superheat because it reflects capacity at design conditions; others publish at different assumptions. A bare "45,670 BTU/h" is not a comparable figure. If the rating conditions are not stored beside the number, two units that look identical on the page can differ materially in the field, and the contractor discovers it after the box fails to pull down.

More HVACR schemas

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Run this against your own condensing units.

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