OT portable air conditioners

Has anyone tried a portable a/c unit for a room,office or other (they sit on the floor)...thanks in advance

Yes, I've tried portable A/C units, but for my area - southern Nevada desert - I've found that a "swamp cooler" works best, it HUMIDIFIES the air besides chilling it. I have several, both window units and portable counter-top units; and they work great.

mine works pretty good---just have to remember to drain the drip pan.

(quoted from post at 19:33:48 07/22/13) mine works pretty good---just have to remember to drain the drip pan.

Click to expand...

What happens to the heat a ac puts out? Do you have to run it outside? If so, that is lot of trouble and if not, looks like it would be fighting its self

Wife has one in a camper trailer out on her rural property. It rolls around the room, with exhaust tube going out a window. Does not cool much, but this is Louisiana, after all.

Got one sitting on the floor right now. Works pretty good. I have it vented outside through a dryer vent in the wall. Here on sunny southern Arizona at 100 deg and 50% humidity it will produce several gallons of water each day that need to be dumped.

I had a "suitcase" AC that sat in a window.
Literally carried like a suitcase with a handle on top.
Weighed about 20 pounds and would cool a bedroom.
No mounting, just set it in a window and spread out the accordion.
I bought it at a garage sale in Florida for $10 and used it for 10 years!

Yes the protable AC units have to have a 3 inch or so hose ran to a window to dispose of the heat and most of the condensate.

They will just sit in the middle of the room though and run dumping more heat into the room than cool.

plow hand, (sorry rather long)

Depends on how humid it is where you live... may work well in dryer climate. Gets too darn humid in MN.

We bought 2 10,000 BTU units last year. BUT there was so much water to empty that it is about all we got done was empty buckets. (NOTE you can run them with the drain hose plugged - BUT once the container is full of water, the units go into "dehumidify mode" until enough water is evaporated out through the vent hose.

Also the unit is actually "fighting itself" because the motor throws off A LOT of heat inside the room.

And finally, the exhaust hoses are really large and bulky (and also give off a bunch of heat as the hot air flows through them out the window).

Soooooo, though we spent $500 dollars last summer - we disliked them enough to go by 3 new window units for our home this summer. We GAVE the 2 portable units to our daughter and her husband as they had no AC in an apartment so can't even catch a breeze there.

In conclusion... we would never buy the portable units again.

I'm close to Charlotte, NC and we have been cooling the downstairs in our house with two of them, after the central A/C went bad, for 3 summers now. Our house is 1800 sq feet, with 700 upstairs and 1100 downstairs. The upstairs has it's own heart pump which works great. Downstairs we have a 10,000 BTU portable sitting in our bedroom and a 14,000 BTU sitting in the living room. They will keep the house around 73 on a typical summer day, but on those 95 plus degree days the temps will jump as high as 78 or so. We usually maintain around 74 in the living room, year round (heat mainly with a wood stove in the winter). Even when it hits 78 we typically have the ceiling fan, and sometimes a 16" pedestal fan going so the temps are still comfortable as long as the air is moving.

As far as the humidity being a problem we have ran into that only once, when there was some water in the floor around one of the units. Even then I think one of us bumped it and cause the spill as it hasn't happened again even though we've had rain and high humidity nearly every day for several weeks now.

As for the vents to the outside, yes, they can put alot of heat back into the room. That said, I noticed that with ours right off. I keep the hoses as short as possible by keeping them accordined up as much as possible. I then insulated them by wrapping them with a couple of old towels. You can lay your hand on/near them and tell a big difference on the amount of heat radiating off of them into the room without the towels vs with the towels.

Power wise our old system was put in in '94 so it wasn't one of the high SEER units available nowdays. The bill hasn't really changed that much with the two portable units doing their job vs the old central unit cooling the same square footage.

In the end all I can say is we spent less than $500 for the two units and have managed to keep the house cool for three summers now, instead of having to spend close to $5000 we didn't have to have a brand new Gaspac/heat pump unit installed. In my opinion they aren't ideal by any means, but they do work.

there is a 4 inch exhaust hose that hooks on to an extending window insert that fits under the double hung window

I have friends that have them. I have noticed that the flex tube to the window does get very hot but they do cool the room. neither has to empty water because they evaporate it and push it outdoors. The long term heat that we have been having here has me looking into geothermal. i am told that I am a good enough friend of external_link that he will pay for a third of it.

They stink.

They do a good job of converting electricity into heat and noise.

The way these things work is you have a hose that goes out the window. Both the evaporator and condenser are in the unit; hot air from the condenser is blown out the hose, which means they have to suck air into the room from somewhere else. Unless the outside air is from another air-conditioned room, they suck in about as much heat as they exhaust. Of course the air they suck in is humid, so you have to empty the water tank a couple of times a day.

If you have a room where a window unit won't work, go ductless. We installed ductless unit last year; it works great and is nearly silent.

I have 2 portable units. Both work great. One has to be emptied about once every 3 weeks and the other never has to be drained. My Mom has one that has to be drained daily. So there's a difference in different brands and styles. And we have high humidity here. We go weeks on end with humidity levels never going under 90% and this year dew point above 70 too.

I added a dryer vent type receptacle with a flap to exhaust mine and have the unit right up against the wall. Mine have exhaust pipes just over 5" dia. You can run fan, air condition or dehumidify and have remote control.

I like the threw wall pipe with the flap and don't have to change a thing for winter. The flap opens if the unit is running only.

Look for a commercial brand, that's the type I have that sends the moisture out the pipe with the hot air. Cost a little more but worth it.

I was tempted to buy a portable unit once, but then I saw that Home Depot, Sam's Club and other places that sold those also got a lot of them returned - so I dropped that idea and went to a large window unit for the shop, which worked out much better.

we have one on a porch that really works. Having been in the business I decided on a rwo outlet heat pump and man(14000 BTU) does it do the job. It's a Wynter (got it from Amazon which carries a large lineup of portables) and probably one of the best. No need to empty water or drain it. Very pleaased. Just remember that 12000 BTU is 1 ton of AC and the rule of quick figuring is a ton for every 500 square feet. Many thing change that of course like cathedral ceilings, more than average windows, type of glass, skylights etc but will come close