Some of my quick advice, and probably all that’s left I can offer (I don’t know if OP owns or rents, and am unfamiliar with what modifications he’s allowed to make):
Investigate if you can get a minisplit system installed. This will likely give you more cooling than you are getting now, and can cool multiple rooms. This is the most expensive option and you would need to hire a professional installer. If you rent or even in a condo, rules may prohibit this.
Do you have ceiling fans? If not they can provide a lot of comfort, moreso than many other options, if you are allowed to have htem installed. They aren’t crazy expensive, I’ve installed them myself but not everyone will be able to–I’ve actually let tenants install ceiling fans in units before.
Sunblocking shading really helps. Do some research here. It sounds like unobstructed views out of your residence are important to you, but you can configure the shades so they are obviously only blocking the sun when you want them to do so, and only use them on the hottest days.
Another option is there are window films that can be applied to the glass that also help block out some of the sun as well.
I personally am unconvinced your problem can be solved with replacing your wall unit, although it’s possible a 230v unit >20,000 BTU may keep up somewhat better, but it’s all going to struggle at 100+ if you’re in the top floor of an apartment building especially if it’s made of brick or etc. The 230v option would require an electrician just to be able to install since it’s unlikely you have a 230v outlet in your living room.
Well sorry about that! I had no idea anyone could be so passionate about that and remember it that way. I felt I was being trolled and checked out, again. The temp in the thread was very high, about me, and not the topic as I understood it. The info I declined to give I felt was trivial. But no one wants to defend prior “chinatown”: threads that they gave up on.
Lot of interpretable tech info about room temp, measurement thereof, and machine performance done by posting can be misunderstood and in this environment can be used to just smear and find fault. It can be hard to get through meanings.
When the building was constructed, (1970s) to the best of my memory, we just suffered with it, and used fans. (I lived a few miles away then). It’s like trying to recall before microwaves and cash machines. But it was before global warming.
It’s a brick apt building. The tenant before me put in a second AC, in the bedroom. I’m trying to avoid it. Hey my way works up to the high 80s.
That means the air coming out of the vent will start at 69 degrees. As the room gets colder, it will come out colder than 69 degrees. It will get to 71-15 = 56 eventually, at which point the AC will stop.
That’s the thing though. It can’t. I mean, it can, but saying ‘the room is 84 degrees’ or ‘the intake temp is 84 and the exhaust temp it 77’ means a lot more than saying you feel like you’re suffocating. You had trouble figuring out how to measure the Delta T, it was even explained in that thread that one of the reasons we wanted the make and model was so we could tell you how to place the thermometer probe on your specific unit instead of just giving general advice. We were trying to help.
In one post I wrote a rather lengthy description of possible problems along with possible (DIY) solutions. Your answer was “Dude, the loaner is working fine at 12k BTU”.
Going back to the car analogy, if you said your Dodge wasn’t working but answered every question with “My loaner works just fine” it doesn’t tell us anything.
Why would you think the model of your AC that doesn’t work would be trivial in a thread about fixing your AC?
But that was only because you kept turning it into a thread about yourself. Instead of giving us exact temperatures, you told us how you felt. Instead of giving us the model of the AC you told us you didn’t want to. No one in that thread doubted that there was a problem with your AC, but when we’d try to pinpoint it, you’d start talking about your windows or your transoms or the loaner AC.
Maybe you need to decide what you want out of these AC threads and frame your question around that. We’re all happy to answer your questions, but we can’t guess at what they are.
Looking back at your OP, there isn’t a question there, just a bunch of statements, meaning all we can do is answer the question we think you want the answer to. But things get heated when you start getting annoyed at that.
Personally, I think you need to decide what question or questions you want answered and ask them. If we ask follow up questions that you don’t feel comfortable answering, tell us so we’re not spinning our wheels and you don’t feel like you’re getting badgered.
Sorry man. But if I said I didn’t want to then there was more going on than “information exchange” and I was withdrawing from the thread. Even if it wasn’t you, the threads also contained other things, like pile ons, aggro, and trolling. This one does.
If you don’t give out some info fast enough and someone starts in on you right away like you are hiding stuff, I’m out. I won’t be projected into plots. I don’t want to be here that badly.
I assure you, no one is piling on or trolling you. You’re being asked very direct and very specific questions about an air conditioner. I truly don’t understand why you’re taking offense to that in a thread, that you started, about your air conditioner.
It’s not fair to put that on us. You WERE hiding your the model of your AC. That thread was something like 60 posts long before you finally told us you weren’t going to give us that info. It’s not like you were being asked for your home address or favorite restaurant. You were being asked for specifics about your AC and you’re telling us, again, in a thread about your AC, that it’s trivial information that we don’t need and you’re not going to give to us…and we’re the ones trolling?
In any case, as you can see, people are still more than willing to help. So…you posted this in GQ, what’s the question you’d like answered, there isn’t a question in your OP. We can do our best with the information you’re willing to give us, but we can’t guess at the question.
There was trolling on the last thread because someone came in and ratted me out as a “bad AC thread starter” right? That would seem to be making the thread “about me.”
I appreciate experts. Thanks. Maybe I was really looking for someone else who had run into the same problem and understood at my level. I’m an idiot and couldn’t get practical use out of the technicals in the other thread.
Why do you think, I was “hiding” something though? I didn’t like the tone anymore and was checking out. That’s the way I recall it going down. If you describe it as “hiding something” it’s a little conspiratorial. Now here we are addressing it and I suppose that’s my fault too.
I think when in making the thread I had intended to find others, non experts, who have tried to solve this problem (AC, two rooms, under stress in 95 degrees). It can’t be that arcane or obscure. Based on my experiences here that might have been more helpful to me than expert opinion about AC machines.
Has it frozen up? I’ve seen that happen a lot when A/C is running continuously. If it is freezing up, re-gassing will probably fix it – at least in the short term. If the system is worn out, re-gassing won’t help.
If it’s running too hot, the compressor can’t compress, but that’s less common. Normal systems are designed to sort of work even when mistreated. But if it’s in the sun, and the vents are blocked –
It was a long time ago. I only heard about it by anecdote. I imagine it would solve the temp problem pretty easily with a small machine. But the windows here are not friendly to it. I like standing and looking out my windows and having the cool air come in from the other room.
One general observation. Those of us who live in historically hot places spends thousands and thousands of dollars, once every 15 years or so, for big ass central AC systems. We absolutely would not do that if there was one weird trick that would allow a window unit to handle the sort of temperatures you are talking about. We have 100 years of practice with strategic box fans and aluminum foil on the windows.
@drad_dog, I Am NOT An HVAC Expert, but as a layman who has had more than his fair share of AC issues, it doesn’t seem to me like there’s any sort of mystery. Your window AC unit simply isn’t powerful enough to cool the space you have when it gets really hot.
There’s nothing wrong with it, there’s nothing to diagnose, there’s no trick to get it work better. It might even have the theoretical capacity to cool the area just based on raw BTUs and square footage, but the brute fact is that it in practice it just doesn’t. You just either need to get another unit or live with the discomfort.
Note that on old air conditioners, you can mostly tell just by looking at it that it is frozen up. But on newer models, the cooling coils are completely hidden. When frozen up, air coming out is not cold: ice doesn’t conduct heat well.
I don’t know if it’s ever been clarified, but it seemed like at one point you had a temporary loaner unit that you said was working to keep your residence cool to your satisfaction, did you end up having to return that unit? Or is the issue you’re having now one with a unit that replaced the original unit?
Anyway, core issue is some spaces cannot be easily cooled down by a single window AC. If you want a layman’s opinion, that’s my layman’s opinion. I’ve had to fuck around with cooling a lot of places with window/wall AC units and that’s what I think is happening. If you had a brand new, spare AC to test of a totally different brand, and you tested it and got no better results, that’d be hard confirmation. It sounds like from previous posts that’s (reasonably) above and beyond the level of effort you want to put into it.
Another core issue is if the wall AC is only cooling the main room to 82F when it’s set on 68F, no amount of fans or transoms or etc in the world is going to circulate air from that room into an enclosed bedroom sufficiently to get the bedroom down to a comfortable temperature. The bedroom will simply always be hotter than the 82F of the main room, and probably by the amount you’re observing right now in practice.
Given these limitations, and your own limitations, you can try to mitigate the situation even more with blackout shades, ceiling fans, etc, or you can consider an AC in the bedroom. If the few times a year this is a problem are so terrible for you, a purchase of a temporary window AC you only used during those times would be a cost saving versus something like say, going to a hotel to cool off. But it’s undeniably a pain in the ass to seat a window AC for like 8 days out of the year and store it away for the rest. I’m not sure I’d do that either, but I only mention it because it’s one additional option.
TLDR: there’s a bunch of cheap and easy things you can try that will help you a little bit. There’s a few expensive and intrusive things you can do that would give you more significant results. You have to make the decision as the leaseholder or homeowner where on the aggravation/benefit scale all this sits for you and what option you want to pursue. There is no intrinsically right answer.
No my unit is 2 years old, and 15k BTU. Back then was before I did some mods to my place for better circ. so basically, I forget. I made a transom, which works very well, which is why I was so optimistic about fixing this easily.
It’s the biggest machine I could get. I suppose it’s just going to be a cost benefit about how many days are like that in the year.
Others have said this but you are simply asking too much from the unit.
In both Japan and Taiwan they use individual room units. The units have inside and outside parts so they aren’t window units but you get one for each room, and they come in different sizes.
In my various moves, I’ve taken units from larger rooms in the older place to smaller rooms and had them not be enough because of the thermal characteristics of the rooms were different.
I had one unit which did wonderfully in the previous place just not cut it in the new place despite the size of the new room was only 50% of old place because it went from a shaded first floor to the top floor on the southwest side of a house.
I was able to take a certain number of measures such as putting a reflective film on the windows and such to where it did work.
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