My co-op restrict us to two window A/C units. Well, it’s pretty hot here, and we do spend time in more than two rooms. My wife seems to think that there exist portable “room cooling” devices (not fans) that don’t have to be installed and aren’t A/C units.
Anyone familiar with any such device and where one might be obtained?
If the indoor humidity is low enough, you can use a so-called “swamp cooler.” It’s an evaporative air cooler which works on the same principle as sweating: evaporating water cools off a wet surface and air passing over that surface is subsequently cooled itself. The downside is you have to keep putting water in them, and they tend to raise the humidity.
Another solution might be larger window AC units. As long as the door between the rooms you wish to cool is open, you can use box fans or ceiling fans to circulate the air between them. How large a unit you need depends upon the total area of the rooms to bee cooled. This chart can be used as a good approximation; you might need to add several hundred BTU/hr, depending on how much sun the room(s) get, whether one of them is a kitchen and how good the insulation is.
There sure are. Look for “Portable Air Conditioner” I think even Wal-mart might have them for a few hundred dollars. Remember though, it’ll come with a long tube that you’ll have to vent to the outside through a window (or you could vent it into an unused room with an open window, and you’ll have a condensation pan to deal with.
Here’s the first random one I found at Wal-mart. I’m sure Home Depot/Menards/Lowes/Best Buy would have a selection as well.
By the way, this one mentions “Auto evaporation function allows continuous operation without water removal” I’d stay away from that if at all possible. It will cause humidity and heat both of which the AC will have to work to get rid of. It might be okay if you’re not going to be around, but I would try to empty the pan before the auto-evap turns on.
Yeah, I have tried one of those. It’s in the storage unit, it’s kind of sad.
A dehumidifier would be useful, depending on where “in the USA” our OP lives.
I have a small studio apartment, and this one cools it off pretty well. It’s pretty noisy.
And Google shows that a writer from Slate was somewhat unimpressed by that particular unit. But the article should give you an idea as to some of the options out there.
The portable air conditioners with the tube to go out the window are designed wrongly, I think. At first, they had two tubes. One brought outdoor air in, the box heated and humidified it, and the other tube blew it back outside, with its energy content much raised. Then somebody figured out they could exhaust room air to do this and save one of the tubes. Trouble is, that means air is traveling throughout your house to reach the air conditioner, and then getting blown outside. It is preferentially throwing away the best air, and its cooling effect has to migrate upstream to reach you.
Dr Deth, is yours in the storage unit because the humidity gets very high in the room where you use it, and the cooling effect can’t seem to reach very far away from the device? That’s what I observe with one-hose units.
Last time I looked, Maytag listed a two hose unit (though I saw it on their web site, never in the stores stocking the one-tube units).
This is a prime example of a company coming in and ruining a marketplace. Air conditioners with tubes to connect them are a great idea, but somebody comes along with one that tries to cheat on one of the tubes, which doesn’t work for reasons that are not going to be easy to understand - let alone predict - for many consumers. As a result, the entire idea of tube connected air conditioners gets a black eye. I bet nobody can sell a satisfactory product in this field now that the one-tube models have made a mess of the market.
It is a one hose unit. Not sure why it doesn’t do much but the cooling is not more than a fan. It used to fill a tank of water in a day or so of use, but it stopped doing that. Maybe it is just broke, but it was like $300. I Have a $100 window unit that cools many times better.
I tried cooling myself with a portable dehumidifier a few summers back, before I got central air. It didn’t do a lick of good just sitting in my bedroom because in order to dehumify the air it creates a tremendous amount of heat, which is simply blown out the back. I can’t imagine it would be very useful without sealing off the back blower area and venting the hot air outside.
Ah, but some *do *vent outside.
Hard to believe that an apartment has been converted into condos without central air. Perhaps one of these systems could work for you? They are called “split ductless” air conditioners. It’s essentially a large window air conditioning unit, split into two parts. The condensing unit hangs on the wall outside, the coil and fan and control sits inside. The two units are connected by the two tubes, electricity and control wires. They are much more efficient than window units with the advantage of not giving up a window.
Yeah, these are a good idea. I’ve also heard them called ‘mini split systems’. The nice thing is that one outdoor unit can serve up to four rooms, with each room having it’s own indoor unit. Main problem would be getting the co-op to OK the outdoor unit. They are pretty small though and really don’t look any worse than two window units would. In fact, they are probably just a little bit safer in that they are permanently mounted, with no risk of dropping one like a window unit.
Absolutely. I’m sure everyone in your condo would like to:
[ol]
[li]Have all their windows back[/li][li]Be comfortable[/li][li]Be safe[/li][/ol]
The line from Mitsubishi is called “Mr. Slim”, and the units are quite a bit less deep then a window unit. They are far safer than any window unit as they are actually bolted to the exterior of the building. The line set between the indoor and outdoor units can be fairly long, and the exterior unit can be mounted in a less conspicuous location.
Mitsubishi hasn’t done a very good job of selling these units, and most climate companies would prefer to tear your home up putting in a forced-air system (more billable hours).
Edit: I just noticed your location! New Fricken Mexico? And no built in AC? And the condo board is giving you shit on how many window units you can have? In NEW MEXICO?!?
Yeah… split units are great. Very quiet also.
The split units look like they’d be wonderful. But they’re 5 or 10 times more expensive than window units. And I don’t see why.
Several folks have told me it’s an economy of scale issue, because people don’t buy many of the split ones. I thought the trouble with that theory is that all sorts of factories of various size seem to make air conditioners. But, then, the innards often say they’re from the same company. I went to Sears and looked at little window units, and the Sears Kenmore was a bit more expensive than the LG brand (which, at this time about 3 years ago, I hadn’t noticed before). I bought the more expensive Kenmore because I trusted the brand already. When I got it home I could see through the vent holes that the insides were made by LG anyway.
I’ve bolted and epoxied duct connections onto window units several times, to mount them somewhere out-of-the-way. It can be hard to get sufficient flow through them, because their little propeller fans don’t handle much backpressure, but the whole shebang after adding squirrel cage fans to bring the flow back up is still a third or less of the price of an AC made this way - or one made as a split unit.
That’s what I have in my office (contraband) since we don’t have air conditioning here. I do have to empty the water every day, and it cools me only if it’s pointed right at me, but it’s better than a fan.
I’d suggest to search deeper (definately online). In China spilts is literally all they use. So they’ve got be cheap.
You can get them for less (check ebay; you can get new Chinese-made systems there), but you’re still talking about 2-3 times the cost of a standard window unit, and that doesn’t include shipping or installation (I did it myself after purchasing the proper tools, but most people would want to have a pro do it).
Mr. Slim is pretty much the standard to which all other ductless splits are compared, but they are also among the most expensive.
Sure, but compared to installing ductwork and an air handler to supplement a warm water or steam system, they’re cheap. I’ve actually split a large window unit into two units - but then I have access to my brother’s freon recycling machine. Make sure you’re comparing apples to apples, and that the window unit you’re comparing is the same number of BTUs.