What is the Recirculation Button in a Car?

We’ve had a number of people asked recently “What is the recirculation button on your air-conditioning?” So we’re going to answer that for you today. Welcome to Mercie J Auto Care, where compassion and craftsmanship come together. My name is Rick Smith and I’m a master certified technician. First, I want you to think about your car as if it’s a glass of water. Inside the glass of water, we have an ice cube. That ice cube is called the evaporator. We blow air over that evaporator and that’s what cools down the air in our car. Now the recirculate button or on some cars it’s called the max button. The difference between max or recirculated and fresh is on fresh air we pull your outside typically from front of the windshield and we blow it over that ice cube onto us. Recirculate we take air usually about above the passengers knees and we can circulate that are over that ice cube. When should we use them? Bottom line is it depends on the temperature inside the car versus the temperature outside the car. We’re in the Phoenix area right now it is blistering hot outside because it is summer. If your car has been sitting outside the temperature inside the car is usually hotter than outside. At that point you don’t want to use recirculate, you want to use fresh air coming in over that ice cube. Once the temperature inside the car is equal to or less than the temperature outside now we want to re-circulate the air because the cooler the air starts over that ice cube the colder it will blow on our face. I’m just going to throw out a couple other little tips besides the fresh and recirculate button. Number one is put a dash mat on your car, a carpet dash mat, because we have essentially piping that blows on our face. The hotter those pipes are the harder it is the cool the air so that dash mat will help that. Another thing is the to tint your windows. Having that glass of water not be as hot helps the ice cube be able to cool it down faster. I hope this answers your question about fresh and recirculate and until next time blessings to you and safe travels. If you have any other questions, please ask us in the comments! We appreciate your time.