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 🥰

WoW, we have them in France. They aren’t noisy and we go through the wall rather than the window.

A proper air conditioner, as invented by Willis Carrier in the 20's uses two coils of pipe, very thin pipe, one inside and one out. A volatile gas is pumped round the pipework running from inside to out, and fans draw the air inside across the inside coil whilst a separate fan pulls air across the outside coil.

The gas moves round the circuit and transfers the inside heat outside, without moving any inside air out or outside air in.

The portable units work by carriers method, but with one difference, the air used to drive the hot air off the heat dumping coil is drawn from inside, air has to come from somewhere to replace the air slowly being sucked out of the room and comes in by various routes (as no house is totally air tight)

In doing so some heat is drawn in - I have my portable venting through an old cat flap, no doors or windows open, but all internal doors open, and it does a pretty good job at keeping the temperature reasonable around 20 degrees.

Portable air conditioners are a sanity and life saver for me and my family. I live in Australia so it gets hot and/or humid a lot. Currently have three: one in the lounge/living room and one in each bedroom. We rent so we can’t have proper air conditioning installed.

It’s really important to measure to room that you want to cool and calculate if the BTU is enough for it. If not the room won’t cool properly. I have a 14 000 one for the living room and the bedroom ones are about 7 000. The living room one is a beast. Bought it second hand via Facebook. That cut the price in at least half or maybe two thirds. The previous owners used it for one or two summers and then had proper air conditioning installed. They’d lost the remote but I was able to buy a replacement online for about $30.

Skip the fancy new-fangled, environmentally friendly ones. Get a basic one. Our fancy one refuses to work when the temperature is above 30C. Kind of useless for a lot of summer. Replaced it with a basic one from a hardware shop. So much better. The fancy one required regular draining of the water collection tank. The basic ones reuse the collected water to help cool the machine. Ours don’t connect to the internet or an app. Not necessary. A remote or the buttons on the machine are all that’s needed.

Yes they can be noisy but you’ll associate the noise with cool and relief from the heat so it becomes a soothing and welcome white noise. On the shittily hot heatwave nights when temps are 40C or so we leave it on. Absolutely no problems sleeping from the noise. My DD prefers hers to be on to be able to go to sleep. Just on fan mode, not air con unless it’s hot. She likes the white noise of it blocking out other noise.

Fans are no substitute for an air conditioner when it’s hot. Doesn’t matter how fancy the fan is. Definitely put a fan on with the air conditioner to help distribute the cool air.

The electricity bill goes up in summer from using the air conditioners. We just accept that and plan for it. We don’t have any heating costs in winter apart from a small fan heater in the bathroom so it kind of balances out.

We often replace the exhaust hose with insulated flexible exhaust hose that is usually used to vent a kitchen range hood or dryer or something like that. Sometimes because the plastic hose has degraded over time and sometimes because we want an insulated exhaust because it can put out a lot of heat. We buy it from a hardware store. Measure the diameter you need and buy the closest you can get. Buy a roll or two of duct tape too to help secure it in place.

Can you tell me how cold you can get a room with it?

It's something I have considered, but when I stay in hotels I can never get the room cool enough.

We've had several portable units over the last 25 years. They are indeed a bit of a faff, not least because the exhaust hoses that come in the box seem to get shorter and more fragile with each purchase, and the most recent one didn't come with a foam window kit either. However, they are a God-send in heatwaves.

Our most recent portable was an Electriq thing, which I believe is the own-brand of Appliances Direct. We bought it in 2020 and it cost about £200; because we were only cooling small-ish bedrooms in a new build we didn't see the point in buying anything more expensive. Occasionally white-label ones will come round in Lidl for about £150, but they tend to sell out fast if a heatwave is in recent memory.

Yes, they are noisy if you're not used to them. One of the ones we had (Amcor, from Comet which tells you how long ago that was: it had a mechanical timer and switches) had a bigger problem in that it vibrated like my wife's battery-powered rabbit, and the floorboards of the house produced what in Star Trek I think they'd call a 'harmonic amplification effect'.

We have now installed permanent split level systems all through the house which are much more effective and quieter. @sashh - the minimum temperature setting on the thermostats is 16 C and although we've never been anywhere near that to test it it does seem more than capable of reaching and maintaining the set temperature.

They are noisy. Personally doesn’t bother me but if you’re someone who likes quiet to sleep then yes it’s pretty noisy.

We can set ours to 18C on cooling mode and 16C on auto or heating. I think that’s pretty standard. It does get there and stay there even when it’s very hot outside (we did a test when it was first set up), although personally we have the whole house on 24 during the day and just the bedroom on 20 at night. You need to make sure your unit is powerful enough for the size of the rooms you are cooling.

You have to block out around the outlet pipe in the window. Otherwise it's fairly useless. A quick look on amazon shows a lot of options.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Window-Air-Conditioners/b?ie=UTF8&node=3593779031

These are excellent https://www.orionairsales.co.uk/prem-i-air-eh0539-window-air-conditioner-r32-with-remote-control-25kw9000-btu-240v50hz-8460-p.asp

I've ordered one from Amazon and its arriving this afternoon. Can't remember the make but the reviews were good.

Can you extend the hose out the window? Small 2 bed house thinking if I could stretch the unit to the landing

One place I worked the portable AC was vented into the ceiling. I'm not sure if it would work to vent it in to the loft if there is a hatch.

I don't think it would work to vent across the room because the venting does get hot so you might have AC attempting to cool the are and an outlet pumping heat in to the room.

You can hire portable AC so it might be able to try one in different places.

Order another extension hose. That’s what I have done then I just wheel it on to the landing and it cools both bedrooms

That sounds fab.
House is small, bedroom front and back and defo don't want to buy two units as space is an issue.

I think I just need to go for it. This week was unbearable.

If your landing has a hatch into a loft space you'd probably find it better to vent a portable AC up into that than to snake a plastic pipe that'll be hot to the touch through another room to reach a window.

I'm not sure exactly, but plenty cold enough. I reckon if you closed the door and cranked it to max before bed you'd have frostbite by morning!

In reality we don't use it to get it cold, but to stop it ever getting hot so it's not a problem if that makes sense. I leave doors open in the daytime and run it on low and eco mode so it comes on if it tips over 19° for example, and they have a cooling effect beyond the rooms they are in too.

Yes it's an expensive luxury, but it was worth it for us.

@PeonyPants Lol, it comes on if you reach 19 degrees? 🤣 Holy shit, that’s hilarious! If it’s 19 degrees then it’s winter and time to close the doors and windows to stay warm. Yes, I’m in a hot country: Australia. Air con here is usually about 22-25 degrees.

Haha, yeah ok, 19 is cold 😄 I was trying to demonstrate that it can indeed cool your room significantly. Last week when it was hot here I did set it that low because I was feeling fancy and a bit unreasonable from being so hot. However, it didn't actually ever get that cold in the rooms. I had it on the lowest fan setting and doors open and I just wanted it to keep going. I only have units upstairs, and they are relatively new I'm still working out what works for the house. I do defer to the superior AC knowledge you lucky Aussies must have though!

Lol at 19° is winter - winter is colder than that! Today, at the very beginning of summer it is 15° grey and windy here. (Windows are open and the house feels lovely though!)

19 is too warm for me. Well it is if I am spending a fortune to get proper AC fitted.

In the winter I put the heating on when I have a bath, I put it to 18 then.

18 is the lowest setting.

Trust me, if you put it on full ice blast you'll be shivering in minutes, it's not the same as 18° heating.

If portable units can work with your windows though then that's a great option, because let's face it AC doesn't get many weeks a year to shine here! (Mine heat too though and I do like a little warm blast before bed etc.)

They are well worth it. Yes not perfect (see posts about hose etc) but generally the issue is not the little bit of warm air coming in the gaps where the extractor hose goes, but the build
up of warm air in insulated homes! So they definitely help and like others say you can turn off to sleep. Never buy one with the intention of moving it up and down, they are far too heavy

That's an insane way to use a portable AC unit. If you leave doors open and have it set to 19c the compressor must have been running constantly - bad for the environment, bad for your wallet, and bad for the machine. And it wouldn't have been particularly effective.

AC units have a cooling capacity usually expressed as BTUs which is then (incorrectly) mapped to a maximum room size in square metres. They become extremely inefficient and ineffective beyond that. You wouldn't dream of trying to heat a whole house with a fan heater.

For the sake of the planet and everyone on it, present and future, use it to cool one room to your comfort and close all the windows and doors to that room as best you can.

Noted, thank you. Honestly, this was me being hot and bothered and frazzled entertaining the kids all over the house last week, which were actually the first v hot days since we had it installed. Last year end summer, yes, we cooled rooms with doors closed and had much more sensible settings. In my slight defence on the environmental concerns, I actually really do care about that, and we also have as many solar panels as we can so are not actually drawing from the grid. I can do better though.

I will work out the best method. Don't be like me folks! I wasn't being very good at explaining my point - which was to suggest to a pp that it can indeed get a room mighty mighty cold, I didn't mean the derail.

I hope you have found some good portable options op 😊

We just use the curtain to stuff the gap in the window.
my DS uses towels

I have a Mitsubishi permanent split unit and the lowest setting it says is 18C and I have it set on that, brut the thermometer by my bed says it’s 17C. I would have preferred to get down to 16C but when I go from the landing into my closed bedroom, the coolness hits like a wall in comparison to the rest of the house. It’s fine. I am a person who is pleased when I see it’s 13C in the bedroom in winter.

We bought a Pro Breeze one from Amazon. Was amazing last night, was actually quite cold at times 🤣