Portable Air Conditioning Unit

[leehack]

Anyone bought one of these recently and can recommend one? I realise it will be freezing and peeing down by the time i get it delivered, but enough is enough, i want one.

[Mike Hughes]

We got one 8 years ago or so to help keep our son's bedroom cool. My observations are:

1. Very efficient and does generate lots of cold air.

2. You need to vent the AC externally through a window and the foam blocks provided to help seal around the vent didn't work well with the hinged windows we had at the time. They would work much better with sash windows.

3. They're fairly noisy so we had to turn it off when he was going to sleep. The trouble we found was that the room quickly seemed to be get hotter than it was before. Probably a combination of the heat from the unit seeping out into the room once the fan stopped running and maybe the humidity getting higher too. This seemed to happen no matter how long we ran it for to let the room cool down before switching off.

So:

They do work and provide lots of cold air. Expect to have it on all the time that you're using the room.

Mike

PS. This was a cheapo B&Q jobie under £200. No idea if this is typical.

[leehack]

Heat in Travis's room is my main area to address too, the sun beats down on his room all afternoon and through the evening, he couldn't be in a worse room tbh heat and sun wise. Rather than locating it in a specific room i had hoped to buy a reasonably powerful one and site it on the landing for example so it services a couple of rooms, albeit not quite as well i understand. I'm after a general cool to the upstairs more than anything rather than an icebox. Our upstairs is like a bloody sauna since we had the whole house insulated, might save money on heating, they forget to tell you about the need to buy AC in the summer lol.

Thanks for the tips, very useful, i had £100-300 in my mind, reckon that's sensible or has the heat got to me also?

[Jan]

If you have a costco near you, they usually have a couple of models in at this time of year. We use them here to keep the offices cool, they are ok, they work best in small places.

Regards,

[Duncan Rounding]

We also use a portable unit that we got from B&Q for a bit under £300. Works well for a smallish space but needs a vent to expel the hot air.

[guccij]

I have a tower fan onto which I hang a bag of ice cubes.

Tonight I'm going to try the Indian solution of dampening towels and hanging them over the windows (ht Mrs P in the Post Office).

[chris ashdown]

We had a portable unit about 10 years ago with no instructions onboard a survey boat. we just set it up in the room , turned it on and felt the lovely cold air, shut the door and left it for our 12 hour shift, come midnight we went to the room to have a nice cool sleep and went into a boiler room. I now understand why they supplied a large diamiter hose with it

Never sid i was perfect did I

[malbro]

I now understand why they supplied a large diamiter hose with it

Never sid i was perfect did I

The heat extracted by the unit plus the heat it generates during operation has to go somewhere

[jont]

The heat exchange / recycle units used to be subject to grants / tax liability offsets (tree hugging policies) ... not sure this applies to portable units though.

A low cost option is to drag the fridge upstairs.

Plus : no additional hardware, beer on hand upstairs, night light for Travis
Con : the wife will not be happy, risk of damaging paintwork moving it upstairs

[jont]

Hope you saved your receipt for a refund - done nowt but rain since this thread!

[Mike Hughes]

A low cost option is to drag the fridge upstairs.

Maybe he went for the DIY option.

- Drag Fridge upstairs
- Remove Window
- Put fridge in window space with back poking out. Seal around edges
- Open fridge door when cooling needed.

Added benefit of blocking the sunshine too.

Mike

[hobuk]

Lee,

We have a couple of the air con units left over from a promo we did, I owe you so will send it out to you today.

Cheers
Lee

[leehack]

Hope you saved your receipt for a refund - done nowt but rain since this thread!

LOL i was thinking the same, that's why I wanted portable, i can lift it above my head and use it as an umbrella.

[Sean Williams]

http://www.homebase.co.uk/webapp/wcs...IR+CONDITIONER

Bought this one last summer for the office section.
Works a treat.
Not too noisy (one can use the phone quite happily). More of a loud hum.
The cold airflow can be directed from left to right.
Needs to pump the hot air out of course.
Came with a round outlet boss and also a rectangular brick-shaped one too.
I'd imagine that once Travis got acclimatised to the noise (see what I did there ) it would lull him to sleep.

Wouldn't be without it now - much better than having a fan which is irritating and blows paperwork all over the place.

[leehack]

Talking of fans, Travis is attracted to them like a moth to a flame, i have cold sweats about him losing the tips of his fingers. That was until now, check this puppy out - http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/Dyson_A...FUeZ2AodxHyGJw