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.