It’s HOT here in Colorado, and I’m back to thinking I want an air conditioner. I don’t want to put central air in my house, since I’m moving next year, so I go to Home Depot and start looking at the window A/C units. There’s dozens of 'em! All nice, shiney, & pumping out cold air. Only one problem - they’re all for double hung (ie, you push the window UP to open it) and my entire house has the side-to-side types of windows.
Why the heck don’t they make something for the side to side windows? The ones they do sell have little expandible thingies in case your window is wider than the A/C unit, so why can’t they do the same thing to make the unit fit in a vertical space? Is this really so hard to do? What’s up with it?
Yeah, no kidding, Athena. Plus, we live in an OLD apartment building in Denver that not only has the sideways windows, but they are miniscule and covered with iron bars. We have to keep the front door open just to get some air in.
So, unfortunately the window a/c unit is out for us. However, seeing as I haven’t slept for a week since it’s 80 degress in our bedroom at night, I think we’re going to buy a swamp cooler for the bedroom. Hopefully that will at least make it cool enough to sleep. We already can’t cook as it is because the apartment is so small, it heats up when we turn the burners or oven on.
They’re not particularly efficient and are on the expensive side ($600+), but you might want to look into a freestanding A/C. They vent through a hose (like a clothes dryer) so you don’t need a very wide window opening. Our Home Depot had one last year; check there or your local appliance store.
I tried one of these a couple of years ago. Worked like crap. In other words, it hardly cooled AT ALL. I do NOT recommend them. My advice would be to avoid them like the plague. I say, don’t even try one. Have I sufficiently emphasized my point with redundancy?
We had a similar problem but were able to obtain “casement” style air conditioners from a well-stocked local appliance store.
They cost a lot more than normal air conditioners (maybe twice as much?); they have very little re-sale value; and they have to be professionally installed because you can’t just “clamp” them with the window.
But Mrs. Lucwarm was pregnant at the time . . .
Anyway, I suggest you call around - try to find a “mom 'n pop” appliance store where the people are more likely to understand what you are looking for. And be ready to pay extra.
I think the pragmatics of making such an air condition are working against you. Typically, the glass in a casement window only opens so far, so you’d actually have to remove the window pane to install the air conditioner. That means the air conditioner would have to be a perfect fit, as opposed to the standard double hung where you can change the vertical dimension pretty much at will by opening and closing the window. And casement windows come in a bewildering variety of sizes.
I suppose you could consider a built-in air-conditioner (i.e. chop a square hole in the wall between the studs and fit in the air conditioner). For someone with a reciprocating saw and a bit of fortitude it’s not that big a deal.