Portable Air Conditioning for domestic use.

[Westley]

As above, does anyone have experience of portable home air con  ?  The last couple of years and certainly the last few weeks have been a living hell.  Our Lounge is south facing and gets the sun for around 12 hours a day, due to excellent insulation and only  2 opening windows, the temperature becomes unbearable. So, I am looking for a portable air con unit.  Anyone with one of these or knows about makes and types to buy  ?  All help would be greatly appreciated.

[eggy74]

i have one, it was £300 a couple of years ago, it is noisy as hell, it requires a vent to the outside and over the course of 5 hours it reduced the temp in my lounge by 2 degrees! better off just tucking into icecream

 

[Westley]

15 minutes ago, eggy74 said:

i have one, it was £300 a couple of years ago, it is noisy as hell, it requires a vent to the outside and over the course of 5 hours it reduced the temp in my lounge by 2 degrees! better off just tucking into icecream

 

🍦🍦🍦    👍

[strimmer_13]

We've got one of these fans that has a water tank on it that effectively cools the air. It's very good if your near it, and put ice cold water in and you will have frost bite. But it does nothing really to cool the whole room, just the 5ft infront of it. 

We had a industrial aircon unit 2 years ago that was getting thrown out from work and would keep the room/downstairs a nice 18c but it was massive and like eggy says, it needed it's vent outside to work. I've a few saved on my watch list on the bay, sub £300, but I'm after honest reviews as well tbh before I part with some cash which is only going to be used 2 months a year. 

I can't stand the heat after being out most days in chainsaw trousers, might buy a 1000ltr ibc and just sit in it all night 

Edited August 17, 2020 by strimmer_13

[cuffy]

I bought one about 3 year ago . £500 ish .

Not that noisey , does need venting but can turn any room into a fridge .

Normally run it at 22° on the hottest days .

 

[walshie]

We've had ours for about 10 years. Can't recall the make offhand but it wasn't expensive.  Got it from one of the DIY stores.

We had to put it on a timer when we used it at night or by the morning you could see your breath in the bedroom. 

[SPARKIE]

I've just bought a challenge 7kw version from Argos at £350 and its awesome.... not too noisey but easily cools my bedroom and for a night worker its awesome.

[loriusgarrulus]

We have a small Challenge aircon unit in the bedroom from Argos. We have had this one 2 years. Its very quiet. It has 3 settings: cool, dry and fan only. It keeps the room bearable and has timer and temperature settings so it doesn't get too icy. Its has a drain plug to empty the water collection tank as it takes water out of the air on both cool and dry settings. The water removal is great as it stops it getting unbearable with the high humidity we often get.

The dry setting is good for winter to dehumidify as the room gets a lot of condensation in winter. You don't need the external pipe in winter to dry only.

We put the pipe out of the transom window and OH made a perspex fitting for the window so its still secure as we are in a bungalow. We stand the aircon on a small table. You can get a through the wall pipe fitting like you can for tumble dryers.

We have another unit in the kitchen diner so can still cook in Summer and keep the elderly dogs cool. That is vented through the wall.

Like heating you need to match the size of the unit to the size of the room. Unless you go for spot cooling in an area you are working in. OH has one in his workshop which he aims at the area he is working in as it would not cool the large area of the whole workshop. That one is an older unit which is a lot noisier than the house ones. It has the advantage of keeping the the older steel tools dry and rust free unlike the evaporative coolers which blow out moist air.

We have had an evaporative air conditioner you filled with cool water in the past in the house, but found if the air was humid already it made things worse as it made everything damp and was not as effective as the ones we have now.

[Demonic69]

We bought ours, from Netto, knocking on for 13 years ago. It still drops the temp to "flipping cold"! Chuck the hose out the window (we replaced it with a better vent hose) and get used to the noise and it's a life-saver. It's only really big enough for our bedroom, you'd be best calculating the BTUs needed for the volume you want to cool, too low and it'll barely make a difference.

[JohnfromUK]

I have one - Not sure of the make, but I think it is Italian.

Full refrigeration type system with compressor etc, and a hot air discharge pipe.

On the good side, it works well, cools a (smallish double size) bedroom down nicely pre going to bed and has been reliable over a good few years.  Takes room down from around 80 Fahrenheit to low 70s and has a thermostat to keep it there.

On the bad side - it is very noisy, very heavy (it is on casters, but must be about 30 Kg), and eats electricity (typically about 1.5 KW running). 

It can be put on an hour before bed with the discharge pipe out of the window and gives a pleasant cooler room in which to go to sleep, but you couldn't sleep with it on.

[grrclark]

Slightly off topic, but will the apparent trending increase in UK temperature over the longer term mean that we will start to design houses differently in the UK and adopt things like venilated shutters.  More importantly will we move away from the small boxes in a bigger box mentality and start designing houses to have windows on dual aspects in each room for better through ventilation etc.

Given one of the largest challenges to carbon emissions nationally is domestic heating, we are unlikely to want to go down the route of domestic cooling using air conditioning.

[discobob]

When I worked at the European Patent Office in Munich, they had automatic rollers on the outside of the building that adjusted throughout the day covering the  windows, along with pipes in the walls that took the heat away within the structure - seemed to work OK!

8 minutes ago, grrclark said:

Slightly off topic, but will the apparent trending increase in UK temperature over the longer term mean that we will start to design houses differently in the UK and adopt things like venilated shutters.  More importantly will we move away from the small boxes in a bigger box mentality and start designing houses to have windows on dual aspects in each room for better through ventilation etc.

 

[JohnfromUK]

2 minutes ago, grrclark said:

Given one of the largest challenges to carbon emissions nationally is domestic heating, we are unlikely to want to go down the route of domestic cooling using air conditioning.

Agreed - but many people do want just that.  Personally, I try and live reasonably 'with the climate' in that I accept the house in the low 70s (Fahrenheit) in the summer months (as it is today), and only use the air conditioner for a short period if and when it goes above tolerable - which for me is high 70s.

In winter - rarely do I have the heating on more than a couple of hours morning or and maybe 4 hours evening.  It then heats to about 65 Fahrenheit, which is fine in a jersey, but too cool for shirt sleeves.

I spent a small fortune redoing all of the heating and insulation about 4 years ago to make it as efficient as reasonably economically possible given the constraints of a listed building between about 170 years old in the young part and maybe 320 years old in the old part.

However modern living (e.g. offices) seem to need to be at least 75 F degrees in winter which I found oppressively hot.

[enfieldspares]

Make a swamp fan. It's cheaper. Get down to any large supermarket and buy a bag of ice cubes and chuck them in a plastic washing up bowl and use an ordinary fan that blows air. Angle the fan down to blow on to them on the normal setting not the heat setting. Job done. If you don't want to buy the ice cubes use two or three or four of the plastic blocks that have a blue liquid inside that you freeze to take camping to chill food in a cool box. Freeze them. Then use them as you'd use the ice blocks.

Edited August 18, 2020 by enfieldspares

[grrclark]

59 minutes ago, discobob said:

When I worked at the European Patent Office in Munich, they had automatic rollers on the outside of the building that adjusted throughout the day covering the  windows, along with pipes in the walls that took the heat away within the structure - seemed to work OK!

 

There are lots of techniques in building design that can aid cooling.  Although not my area of the project, many years ago i worked on the build of a large local authority headquarters, the external ventilation of that building was taken from the north facing side and the air passed over large surface area concrete sills where the mass of the cold structure helped to cool the air.  It was really simple, but clever.

They also used low e glass and shading on the southern exposure to help cut down solar heating in the building.

1 hour ago, JohnfromUK said:

Agreed - but many people do want just that.  Personally, I try and live reasonably 'with the climate' in that I accept the house in the low 70s (Fahrenheit) in the summer months (as it is today), and only use the air conditioner for a short period if and when it goes above tolerable - which for me is high 70s.

In winter - rarely do I have the heating on more than a couple of hours morning or and maybe 4 hours evening.  It then heats to about 65 Fahrenheit, which is fine in a jersey, but too cool for shirt sleeves.

I spent a small fortune redoing all of the heating and insulation about 4 years ago to make it as efficient as reasonably economically possible given the constraints of a listed building between about 170 years old in the young part and maybe 320 years old in the old part.

However modern living (e.g. offices) seem to need to be at least 75 F degrees in winter which I found oppressively hot.

Agreed, while we continue to have houses that are not adapted to warmer weather we will need to rely on air conditioning.

[oowee]

I had one for years and the better ones are great particularly with the window kit.

[Wiggum]

I was asked by a customer to install some A/C in their conservatory and found these, they do need venting outside. Can’t comment on there performance though as the customer didn’t like the cost. 

[AVB]

We bought a Delonghi unit about 16 years ago. Gets used every year at some point. Works very well and has never missed a beat. Turns the bedroom into a fridge if required. 

[Jaymo]

1 minute ago, AVB said:

 Turns the bedroom into a fridge if required. 

I have a wife who does exactly the same 🙂

[Westley]

10 hours ago, Jaymo said:

I have a wife who does exactly the same 🙂

Yes, BUT, I'll bet she is more expensive to run  ?

Thank you for all of the replies Guys (and Gal !).  Has anyone got one with an inbuilt tank as opposed to the 'hose out of a window' job , and if so, how do you rate it  ?

[AVB]

8 minutes ago, Westley said:

Yes, BUT, I'll bet she is more expensive to run  ?

Thank you for all of the replies Guys (and Gal !).  Has anyone got one with an inbuilt tank as opposed to the 'hose out of a window' job , and if so, how do you rate it  ?

What do you mean by inbuilt tank? Mine discharges hot air out of the window but condensed water into a tank. I though they all worked that way. 

[Westley]

5 minutes ago, AVB said:

What do you mean by inbuilt tank? Mine discharges hot air out of the window but condensed water into a tank. I though they all worked that way. 

I don't know, that is why I have asked.

[strimmer_13]

47 minutes ago, AVB said:

What do you mean by inbuilt tank? Mine discharges hot air out of the window but condensed water into a tank. I though they all worked that way. 

I think that's the way they all work as well

[cuffy]

When mine is in air con mode any water goes out the window with the hot air .

When it's in dehumidifier mode the Windows would be shut and the water goes into a tank or out the drain pipe .

[m3vert]

Not air con but the other half bought one of those fancy Dyson fans that heats and can also be set to blow cool air. It has worked a treat for the upstairs over the last few weeks and has the bonus of being useful in the winter as well. Wasn’t cheap but does the business and looks decent as well with no hoses or tanks.