Portable air conditioners

[Pickledonions12]

Morning everyone. I'm thinking of buying one of these. Does anyone have any advice and/or specific models they'd recommend?

Thanks 🥰

Thank you so much for all the extension hose advice! You are all fab.

Oh my! Am I reading this correctly? There's a unit which is fixed to the outside wall (outside) and a unit which is connected to that outdoor unit, indoors? But the indoor unit isn't able to be moved to other rooms?

Ah I see @Imunravelled. So .....with a portable unit it's not just a case of park it near a window, poke the plastic hose out of the window and jobs a goodun?

Some thought has to be put into how to "seal" or cover the open part of the window through which the plastic hose is poked?

We sent ours back because you can't just poke the pipe out a window. It's 'portable' in that technically you could move it to another room, but then you'd have to seal up another window around the pipe. It's all a colossal faff, very noisy, and expensive to run.

Very, very expensive compared to a decent fan.

So we returned it and got three decent fans for much less money.

Yes - there's videos on YouTube of people installing portable air conditioner units by basically sticking some sort of plastic sheet over the window that has a hole for the duct to fit in. (I may have been thinking about air-conditioning the last few days too 😊)

I've got a cheap one, paid about £300 a few years ago. It does the job for sure, keeps the room nice and cool. I can't sleep with it on though. I'm not usually particularly bothered about noise when I sleep, but the compressor clunks when it switches on and off and disturbs me.

I have a twelve year old portable air conditioning unit that has long since earned its keep by keeping me alive whenever the indoor temperature goes above 26 degrees.

I was disappointed when I first unboxed it to realise that the exhaust hose is only 2m long. Far too short to reach the top window (the small ones that opens above the main windows) unless I got someone to help me lift the entire heavy machine onto the window sill. (Luckily this is an old house built of half metre square solid stone blocks, so the windowsills are wide enough and strong enough.) I had assumed that it would be possible to extend the exhaust hose so that I'd have more choice of places to stand it. Turns out you can't do that, because the machine is only strong enough to pump the heat out to the end of the original hose, and no further.

I'm nowhere near strong enough to lift it on my own, and am also now too doddery to teeter on a stepladder while setting up the venting arrangement inside that high top window to prevent hot rushing in around the tube.

So now I put off using it for as long as possible, and then roll it into the kitchen and shove the hose out the cat flap, with a towel wrapped round it to stuff the rest of the hole. Luckily it runs very smoothly on casters so it is easy to drag from the corner of the bedroom where it lives under a dust sheet and across the living room to the kitchen. With the hose out the cat flap I can angle the machine so that the cold air blows into the living room, and from there it cools the entire downstairs of the house.

It's noisy, disturbingly loud, and after a while the air indoors seems very dry, but now that I'm old and unwell I wouldn't like to be without it.

Usually I just run it for long enough to cool the downstairs of the house to 23 degrees. (My bedroom is on the ground floor). The last time it was 36 degrees outside for long enough to heat the thick stone walls and make it uncomfortable indoors I discovered that it was costing 6 quid extra in electricity each day it was left running. Too expensive if we got the kind of summers they get in southern Greece, but well worth it if the heat risks making you seriously unwell for the few unpleasantly hot days we get here. When my heart is struggling and no combination of icy water, fans, and wet cloths is improving the situation it is worth a lot more than 6 quid to reduce the indoor temperature to less dangerous levels.

When my old unit karks I shall search for the best combination of affordability, decibels and cooling power and order a replacement. Though of course I'll only know that it has died when I'm melting and it's hotter than hell outside. When everyone is trying to find air conditioners and the prices are at their annual peak. Perhaps

Oh @Gardengargoyle your post did make me smile and feel for you, all at the same time. Thank goodness for cat flaps and a salutary lesson to check the length of all Aircon hoses ! 🥰❤️

Wow, that's expensive, I think I will have to just sweat it out!
I would sleep in the garden but am concerned the local foxes might scent mark me!

@OttersOnAPlane could you link your fans, please, and if you've got time, could you explain how they cool the air when they don't have coolant? Or do they have a coolant? 💛

We have a recommended air conditioning unit with high BTU and I concur with others: it really isn’t the panacea to hot weather I’d been hoping for (and ads and rave reviews had led me to believing it was). It doesn’t help that the tube wont fix securely so after a while it drops out and pumps all that lovely hot air back into the room. I don’t know if others have experienced this.

Even when somehow it does stay on, and me blocking as much of the window vent as possible, it only brought temperatures down a bit and that was after a couple of expensive hours! I can see what an uphill battle it has.

I think using shutters / blinds / thermal-backed curtains plus sitting in front of fans were more effective and at less cost

If there is any way of stopping the heat hitting glass outside then of course that is the best thing of all but once again we’re faced with those pesky casement windows which open outwards

We have had a Delonghi one for over 10 years. The hoses are always short and have to be vented either out of an open window or you can permanently make a hole in the wall but for the few number of days we have that are exceedingly hot, the venting out of the window works well.

We just jam it in the window opening, pull it as closed as we can, drop the black out blind and shut the blackout curtains. Some people will wedge a rolled up blanket into the gap above the vent hose, we find the blind/curtain combo works well.

We don't leave it running at night, just in the day to make the room a fridge.

There are permanent solutions called mini splits where you have a wall mounted indoor unit and an outdoor unit connected up. There are lots of videos on youtube showing these, very common in the US and the units provide heat too. My FIL has one in his conservatory. The single outdoor unit can usually feed several indoor units but this is all about how you are getting the cabling etc to the indoor units.

I have created a new seal for the window every year using thick card, scissors and lots of duct tape! Works just fine.

I love mine, I just put it on for a couple of hours in the evening before bed, it cools the room down so it’s fine to sleep: I can deal with the hot weather in the day if I get a decent nights sleep, so I’m happy.

I don’t faff about with window seals, I just chuck the pipe out the window and close the curtains around it.

Mines electricQ

Yes, decent air conditioning isn't cheap. I dont know yet how my unit will hold up as I only got it last year but I have 2 fully potable ones also, one is 20 years old now, the other around 12 years and both still work just fine so they do last. I'll sell them on when I get the upgrade for upstairs. If I advertise them during a heatwave they should sell easily!

In countries where you need AC most of the year "Dual Hose" is more common on portable units, as they are 40%-50% cheaper to run than a single hose design, but the purchase cost is higher.

Single hose units are inherently inefficient for two main reasons,

1. As it blows air out of the room, warm air is sucked in to replace it, through gaps in the floor, windows and vents etc.
2. The cooled air in the room is used to cool the "hot side" of the unit. (which might sound sense, but the heat differential is so great you might as well use the ambient air outside, for "free".)

Dual hose systems, don't reduce the air pressure and don't use the air in the room to cool the "hot side"

I've been unable to find anyone selling "dual hose" portable units in the UK, I would love to know if anyone can find one.

Quite a good explanation

Yes, single hose portable units, suck air into the room through gaps and vents etc, because they reduce the air pressure by blowing air out of the room.

It's partly why they are expensive to run. Split units or Dual hose are 40%+ cheaper to run, but more expensive to purchase / install.

Personally I would prefer to buy a Dual hose portable unit, but seem unable to find one in the UK.

@Dbank

Gasbye sell one on Amazon. But ooo la la. The price !!

And not suitable for UK voltage...

When using a single hose portable unit and attempting to make the "perfect seal" around the hose, remember the same volume of air that's coming out of the pipe will "leak" back into the room through gaps, vents etc.

If you did manage to make the room airtight (almost impossible) the unit wouldn't have sufficient air flow to cool itself.

https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/cmac12m/electriq-cmac12m-portable-aircon-air-conditioner?refsource=apadwords&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_id=23871411963&cq_src=google_ads&cq_cmp=23871411963&cq_con=194036555942&cq_term=&cq_med=pla&cq_plac=&cq_net=g&cq_pos=&cq_plt=gp&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23871411963&gclid=Cj0KCQjwz9_QBhD_ARIsADnSCfBWSMn1HZZZLqMh6pZEb0Q-oQoxhN7Kw-1r-KsQeGmDdiyg1sVr0YUaAoxHEALw_wcB

Drat! I've just posted another dual

We have a portable one.. have to stick the hose out of the window and then arrange the curtains around it to stop all the hot air from the window coming in.

We put it in my toddler’s room for a few hours before his bedtime and then move it into our room once he goes to bed.

They are noisy, we only use it on the hottest days and it takes the edge off… it’s not such a furnace when you go upstairs. You could cool one room down really well if you kept the door closed but we try to cool the whole of the upstairs for the kids so it’s not as effective.

Despite the name, they are not very “portable” so it really works best if you’re not moving it from room to room like we do. Also we have a massive airing cupboard to store it in. It would be too heavy to take up and down to the loft in winter.

If you can afford do, I would get a fixed air con unit personally.

Don't stress too much if you can't seal it up

Mine is currently running through a window with no sealing around it

Obviously, a proper set up will give you maximum performance

But running as it is still the difference between 28 and 24 in here

And that's just the temperature quality. It would be horrendously stuffy in here without it. The real benefit is the conditioning bit.

I think I bought mine nearly 10 years ago and it was less than 200 quid because I deliberately bought it in November. In notoriously hot new builds it really is a lifesaver.

editing to add - If you can get proper air-conditioning by all means do. That would be 100 times better.

I had a look at these a couple of years ago but because I don’t have sash windows and can’t deal with much noise at night I gave them a miss. Instead I bought a noisy but very good industrial fan for the daytime and I compared the power and decibels to find a powerful but very quiet fan for nighttime. Money well spent, although they cool the person not the room per se