So I broke down and got a 12,000 btu portable room ac for the bedroom. I had been using my 15,000 btu living room wall AC and circulating the air by fan and transom. I use the bedroom a lot more including for movies. The whole previous system couldn’t handle the temps in the 90s lately.
Can I just leave both on and leave all doors open and they will stabilize the apt temp? Is that expensive?
Alternatively I wonder if there is a good reason to close off the bedroom, and cover up the transom. I already have stopped running all the fans even in the transom.
You are looking at about 1.1KW of power used for a 12000BTU unit. If the compressor is running half the time and the fan running all the time, figure about .6KWH. Multiply by 24 and your cost of power and you can figure the cost per day.
You might occasionally use the fans if the AC is off for a while and the rooms get hot. Then you can turn the fans on to help circulate cold air from the ACs. You would be better off if you had a fan exhausting outside to help clear hot air out of the room and cool the room faster.
My first apartment was cooled by two wall mounted AC units. I found it useful to have the one in the main room and the one in my room running most of the time.
It’s gonna cost money, but no matter what you do, keeping cool in these hot summers isn’t cheap.
If you aren’t using it, and don’t plan to use it for a while, then sure.
Only if it is warmer in the room than outside, otherwise, you are drawing warm air in.
True. It’s a matter of where the outside air will be drawn in. In my house the I can turn on the attic fan to clear hot air and it will draw it mainly from the basement where the air is much cooler.
You might be surprised just how quickly that cool air from the basement is used up. It’s also going to be quite humid. Might be ok on mild days but “free cooling” of this sort never seems to work that well.
Works around here. It’s rare that it doesn’t cool off at night. I’ve seen these operate all my life. Obviously AC will produce more cold air over time, but an exhaust fan will work very well for the reason I mentioned to start with, clearing out hot air when the AC has been off for a while.