portable air conditioners - recommendations or ones to stay away from?

Visit your public library and check what Consumer Reports says. That's the best place for advice. You might even want to subscribe to the on-line version, which lets you search back many years.

Once upon a time, Amana was a very good brand name. I have no idea if it still is.

A window-mounted A/C generally goes in the kind of window that slides up and down. The mounting stuff slides sideways to fill the horizontal space, and the window itself is lowered until it sits on top of the A/C unit. This leaves space between the two sections of the window, which you seal with foam (usually included, but cheap to buy if you need more).

An A/C must have part inside and part outside. The only way you can "create" cool, dry air is to move the heat from the inside to the outside. Thus it either sits in a window, or in a hole in the wall, or else it has separate sections inside and outside (typical of whole-house units).

The alternative is an evaporative cooler. This is useful only in very dry climates. You fill it with water and it cools the air by evaporating the water. In raises the humidity as it cools the air. This is never as good as a real A/C and is sometimes worse than the ambient air, and does not even function in humid climates. On the other hand, it's a lot cheaper. But if you are in a dry climate, a big room fan is usually adequate.

Hope this helps. Again, check out CU for specific buying advice.

 

P.S. If the temperature drops in the evening where you are, an extremely effective strategy is an exhaust fan, which can be installed permanently in a hole in the wall near the highest spot in the house, or almost as effective, can be a box fan set in a window facing outwards. You then open windows, and the cool night air is drawn in as the fan blows outwards.

Put the fan in a window upstairs but not in your bedroom. Then open only the bedroom window and as the fan blows out the other window, cool night air is drawn into your bedroom. During the night, when the bedroom has cooled off sufficiently, close the bedroom window and open the downstairs windows, and by morning the whole house is cooled off.

I had a whole-house exhaust fan in my house when I lived in North Dakota (where summers are scorchingly hot and can be humid) and I only had to use the A/C during periods when the night-time temperatures remained above 72 or thereabouts).

 

I thought about that option too and decided against it a year or so ago. You need somewhere to vent the thing and that venting comes from a flexible pipe similar to the one that attaches to your dryer so it's really not THAT portable. If you can find an easy way to make the venting as portable as the unit itself, then more power to you. In the end, I just opted to use a window a/c unit in the room that mattered the most (bedroom) just putting up with no a/c elsewhere and used fans as usual. Consumer Reports probably has reliability statistics for them somewhere but I would also google it to get some ideas from the internet. Even though you can't verify the accuracy of reviews you get on the internet, they still offer another point of view.

 

i have a soleus for about 3 years and use it seldom, bought for power outages ie; hurricanes etc,, but every time it fires right up and runs great

 

I've never owned a portable unit, but knowing what I do about split heat-pump systems (just put in two new American Standard heat pump condensers and two new air handlers), I'd recommend you get a dual-hose system.

The condenser coil is where heat from the inside is transferred via the refrigerant. In a dual-hose system, ambient air from the outside is drawn in through one hose, blown over the condenser coil, and the resulting hot air is vented to the outside through the other hose. In a single-hose system, some of the cool air from the inside is used to blow over the condenser coil, and then it is vented outside through the single hose. This is less efficient as some of the cool air you've just produced is being vented outdoors to provide an air source for blowing over the condenser coil. It also creates negative pressure inside the room, which could be undesirable.

 

I have personally owned a Sunpentown WA9020E. It cooled very large rooms efficiently and the exhaust hose hookup wasn't a hassle at all. If you need an AC that needs to be versatile or if you just can't or don't want to mount it in a window, this seems like a pretty good option. 9,000 BTU is enough to cool 250 sq ft, it claims. So, that should be enough to cool the largest of rooms.


I hope this helps.

 

250 sq ft is actually a smallish room. Probably adequate for a typical bedroom. Much smaller than a normal living room, though. Note also that you really need to use cubic feet. Sq ft is only floor space, while an A/C is operating on a volume. Of course, outside temperature and humidity as well as the home's insulation are all very important factors. An A/C that cools a 250 sq ft room in a poorly-insulated house in New Orleans would probably handle a 1,000 sq ft room in a well-insulated house in Spokane.

 

The moveable/non window ones I've seen have a hose going out the window for the condensed water to go out.

A resource for some passive cooling ideas: Passive Cooling Techniques

 

I got a supentown off of ebay and have had it for 3 years. It works great!!! Plus I saved a fortune getting it off ebay. Was lucky that it happened to be where my son used to live so he picked it up for me and checked that it worked when he picked it up.

 

I bought the Raom-air use it heavly during the summer and everything is good. This model has the mositure drain underneath that you have to empty now and then (PIA) I think there are some models that don't have this requirement. Personally I think you could buy 2 to 4 inexpensive window air conditioners for about the same price as one portable and IMO that would be as good if not better. Can't imagine lugging that portable up and down the stairs.

Wildkow

 

I have 14,000 BTU unit, and for more than one year so far so good.....
The big downside is about the noise when working! Therefore I cannot use it in the night when sleeping........


ac

 

A more expensive option, which may be a better fit for a permanent install in some cases, is a "ductless" or "mini-split" system. Many models have extremely high efficiency (more than enough to qualify for the 30% tax credit), and they're WAY more quiet than window/wall/portable units because the compressor is outside (like central air systems) - and even the outdoor unit is pretty quiet.

The major difference from central air is that there is no ductwork - the lines between the indoor/outdoor unit carry refridgerant rather than air, so a 3" pathway is more than enough to run the lines (and the lines have less heat loss than ductwork). It can be more difficult to run these lines in certain spots, but they can go places where ducts wouldn't fit. Generally speaking, these units are not quite as expensive as full-scale central air, but they're not far from being in the same ballpark - so they're not at all similar to window units in pricing.

One disadvantage (if you're sensitive to appearance) is that the indoor portion of the system is wall-mounted and may "stick out" a bit in a room with nothing else on the walls. (Some people use the term "ugly" but a more accurate term is "conspicuous".) Where you put the unit can have a big impact on this.

One more advantage is that you can get a heat pump instead of strictly A/C and use it for more than just cooling. This is useful even in a cold climate since these systems can run down to freezing temps with only a minor loss of efficiency, and can save money by avoiding the need to run a larger and much less efficient oil-/gas-fired furnace in moderate temperatures.

There are a lot of other things to consider, and whether or not these systems are cost-effective mainly comes down to how much property value it adds. It's not a 100% return, but if it's the right fit for the property then it could be as much as 75%, not counting the savings from energy efficiency, which could provide a payback of just a few years or so.

Just wanted to mention this - I think when you're starting to talk 10k-15k Btu, these systems may be worth a look.

 

I have a Soleus. it's pretty decent.