He needs to cool off fast!
August 5, 2012 1:38 PM Subscribe
Need help finding the right air conditioner. My son cannot find a window unit for his apartment - the window is a bizarre 15.25" wide, 11" high. According to calculations, he should need something that pushes out no more than 6,000 BTUs, but his current portable is rated at 8,000 BTUs and is still not cooling off the room. The brand name is "Roam-Air" an older machine my husband took from a building that was closing down. My son lives in Queens and it's HOT....any suggestions?
Response by poster: His room is about 120 square feet. I'm sure that portable no longer works well, we're just trying to figure out what would be the best portable to get since we haven't been able to find any window units that come close!
Thanks!
C
posted by schoenbc at 1:55 PM on August 5, 2012
Thanks!
C
posted by schoenbc at 1:55 PM on August 5, 2012
I can't speak to a particular model of portable unit (in my limited experience, they're all pretty crap -- but like I said, limited experience) but you don't say anything about how your son's unit is currently set up. There may be some cheap or free things you can do that would make his room a lot cooler and possibly allow you to avoid having to replace his air conditioner. Here's a short list of things that can be done to make the unit work better and/or make the room more comfortable, and most of the stuff on it is pretty obvious (you are probably doing some of it already) but you'd be surprised how many people don't think about these things:
posted by Scientist at 2:15 PM on August 5, 2012 [1 favorite]
- Make sure that the hot-air exhaust for the air conditioner is properly vented so that it goes out a window, and that the exhaust pipe is not kinked or blocked in any way.
- Seal up the space in the window around the exhaust pipe with some cut-outs of foam or wood or even just some towels stuffed in and taped into place.
- Clean out whatever parts of the unit can be cleaned, especially the radiator fins for the air exchanger. If they're choked up with dust then the unit is not going to work very well at all -- get in there with a brush and/or a can of compressed air and clean 'em out. Same goes for the fan, if you can access it -- it won't push nearly as much air if its blades are all gunked up. Seriously, you may be able to double or triple the unit's cold air output just by cleaning it.
- Make sure that he keeps the door to the room closed when he's using the unit.
- Tape off or weatherstrip the cracks around the window and door, and put a towel or draft-stopper under the door.
- Keep the window curtained or blinded during the day to prevent sunlight from getting in and heating up the room.
- Run a fan to get the air circulating in the room so that the cooled air can be distributed properly and there can be some general airflow to help things feel a bit cooler overall.
posted by Scientist at 2:15 PM on August 5, 2012 [1 favorite]
I agree with everything that Scientist says.
Basically, if you have a portable air conditioner, you need to dump the hot air out the window, else it just gets recycled back into the room and the room never cools off.
posted by dfriedman at 3:01 PM on August 5, 2012
Basically, if you have a portable air conditioner, you need to dump the hot air out the window, else it just gets recycled back into the room and the room never cools off.
posted by dfriedman at 3:01 PM on August 5, 2012
If you do buy a new air conditioner, there are portable units that only need to run an exhaust pipe out the window, rather than fitting the whole unit. Good for unusual window sizes.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 5:28 PM on August 5, 2012
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 5:28 PM on August 5, 2012
I have a portable rated for 10k, which I use to cool a 900sqft room. It takes a while (hours) to get it down to a reasonable temperature, IF...
Portables supposedly "drain" themselves by misting water into the outlet air. They really, really suck at it, though, and once the tiny internal tank fills up, will never cycle on again (until drained) to prevent an overflow.
With mine, it has a small plastic plug in the back, perhaps half an inch across, with a nipple inside that nicely fits 3/8" vinyl tubing. I put it up on a small table, drain (not "drained" past-tense, you'll need to keep it set up like this or the problem will come back) it into a 5 gallon jug, and manually empty the jug, and it works juuust fine.
posted by pla at 5:51 PM on August 5, 2012 [1 favorite]
Portables supposedly "drain" themselves by misting water into the outlet air. They really, really suck at it, though, and once the tiny internal tank fills up, will never cycle on again (until drained) to prevent an overflow.
With mine, it has a small plastic plug in the back, perhaps half an inch across, with a nipple inside that nicely fits 3/8" vinyl tubing. I put it up on a small table, drain (not "drained" past-tense, you'll need to keep it set up like this or the problem will come back) it into a 5 gallon jug, and manually empty the jug, and it works juuust fine.
posted by pla at 5:51 PM on August 5, 2012 [1 favorite]
Note that when I say that it will never cycle on again, the fan will come on and everything seems just fine, but the compressor never engages.
posted by pla at 5:53 PM on August 5, 2012
posted by pla at 5:53 PM on August 5, 2012
I should have mentioned that if you are not currently venting the hot exhaust directly out the window, you are actually making his room hotter rather than colder. Air conditioners don't "make cold", they actually just pump heat from one place to another and create a fair bit of extra heat along the way due to the effort involved in doing the pumping.
We use them to pump heat from places we don't want it to places that we don't mind it being. Overall though the process actually creates a net increase in heat, and if you aren't exhausting that heat to the outdoors but instead just letting it pile up in his room, then there's actually quite a bit more hot air coming out of the exhaust pipe than there is cold air coming out of the front of the unit.
My answer above assumed that you were aware of this (and maybe you are) but a lot of people actually aren't familiar with this aspect of how air conditioners work (especially since people are usually more familiar with window units or central air units where the exhausting of waste heat is already taken care of) and it's something that's critical to keep in mind when using portable air conditioning units.
On preview: pla is definitely correct. The portables I've dealt with needed to be drained on a regular basis or else they didn't work worth crap -- like pla says, they just blow room-temperature air since the compressor never cuts in. Where I was (an open storefront -- the portables were just to blow a little cool air over the cash register area to keep things bearable for the people working there) we usually dealt with the issue by running the aforementioned 3/8" vinyl hose out to the sidewalk and letting them drip.
posted by Scientist at 5:56 PM on August 5, 2012
We use them to pump heat from places we don't want it to places that we don't mind it being. Overall though the process actually creates a net increase in heat, and if you aren't exhausting that heat to the outdoors but instead just letting it pile up in his room, then there's actually quite a bit more hot air coming out of the exhaust pipe than there is cold air coming out of the front of the unit.
My answer above assumed that you were aware of this (and maybe you are) but a lot of people actually aren't familiar with this aspect of how air conditioners work (especially since people are usually more familiar with window units or central air units where the exhausting of waste heat is already taken care of) and it's something that's critical to keep in mind when using portable air conditioning units.
On preview: pla is definitely correct. The portables I've dealt with needed to be drained on a regular basis or else they didn't work worth crap -- like pla says, they just blow room-temperature air since the compressor never cuts in. Where I was (an open storefront -- the portables were just to blow a little cool air over the cash register area to keep things bearable for the people working there) we usually dealt with the issue by running the aforementioned 3/8" vinyl hose out to the sidewalk and letting them drip.
posted by Scientist at 5:56 PM on August 5, 2012
Oh, note that the trick of just running the hose outdoors won't work if the air conditioner is on the floor and the hose has to run out a window. Water won't flow uphill, after all. You could conceivably get it to flow up to the window once the tank was full using a siphon, but a siphon won't work on a drip. If the top of the A/C's water collection tank is lower than any part of where the drainage hose would be, you would have to periodically empty the tank instead using a siphon or just a bucket.
All of this stuff is why I said originally that I've never met a portable A/C that was worth a damn. They're inevitably a lot more hassle than you get for the amount of cooling they do, and they're temperamental and never seem to work very well. Still, it's what you've got to work with so you might as well get it working as well as it can before you spring for a new one that may or may not be any better.
posted by Scientist at 6:01 PM on August 5, 2012
All of this stuff is why I said originally that I've never met a portable A/C that was worth a damn. They're inevitably a lot more hassle than you get for the amount of cooling they do, and they're temperamental and never seem to work very well. Still, it's what you've got to work with so you might as well get it working as well as it can before you spring for a new one that may or may not be any better.
posted by Scientist at 6:01 PM on August 5, 2012
I assume that this is a portable air conditioner, that has a pipe going out the window. Bring the end of the pipe in from the window and look at it. Is it a single pipe or two pipes. If it has two pipes in one (concentric or coaxial pipes) or if it has two separate pipes, then the air conditioner is as good as it's going to be. But if it has only one pipe (or if you look in the end of the pipe and there is only one, not a concentric pair) then read on...
Now, to simplify matters, consider an air conditioner as having a cold piece (inside your house or room) and a hot piece (they're really coils of pipe). The machinery and chemistry of the air conditioner picks up heat from the cold piece, and moves it to the hot piece, where it has to be eliminated.
In a portable air conditioner, both the hot and cold pieces are in the same box. So what they do is blow air over the hot piece, and exhaust that hot air through the pipe through the window. But if I'm blowing air out of a room (as the AC unit is doing to "cool" the hot piece), then outside air must be coming into the room to replace the air I blew out.
With a single pipe exhaust, that outside air seeps into the room and since that outside air is hot, it warms the room.
With a two pipe "exhaust" one pipe brings outside air in (which will only go over the hot part of the air conditioner), and that ir is then blown out through the other pipe, "cooling" the hot part of the AC making it able to function. Thus the hot part of a two-pipe air conditioner is actually outside the room.
If you are handy, it's not a difficult job to add the other pipe. I did it for my son's AC, and it did improve it.
(As mentioned by others, you still have to manually empty the condensate (water) reservoir, or the compressor will stop, as the AC is designed so that it will not flood your room with the water condensed out of the cooled air.)
posted by mbarryf at 6:25 AM on August 6, 2012
Now, to simplify matters, consider an air conditioner as having a cold piece (inside your house or room) and a hot piece (they're really coils of pipe). The machinery and chemistry of the air conditioner picks up heat from the cold piece, and moves it to the hot piece, where it has to be eliminated.
In a portable air conditioner, both the hot and cold pieces are in the same box. So what they do is blow air over the hot piece, and exhaust that hot air through the pipe through the window. But if I'm blowing air out of a room (as the AC unit is doing to "cool" the hot piece), then outside air must be coming into the room to replace the air I blew out.
With a single pipe exhaust, that outside air seeps into the room and since that outside air is hot, it warms the room.
With a two pipe "exhaust" one pipe brings outside air in (which will only go over the hot part of the air conditioner), and that ir is then blown out through the other pipe, "cooling" the hot part of the AC making it able to function. Thus the hot part of a two-pipe air conditioner is actually outside the room.
If you are handy, it's not a difficult job to add the other pipe. I did it for my son's AC, and it did improve it.
(As mentioned by others, you still have to manually empty the condensate (water) reservoir, or the compressor will stop, as the AC is designed so that it will not flood your room with the water condensed out of the cooled air.)
posted by mbarryf at 6:25 AM on August 6, 2012
By the way, in my description, "pipe" refers to the large air moving pipes, not anything used for draining the condensate.
posted by mbarryf at 6:26 AM on August 6, 2012
posted by mbarryf at 6:26 AM on August 6, 2012
Not sure if this is relevant to your situation but the Wirecutter recently rated best window units.
http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/great-air-conditioners/
posted by forkisbetter at 11:46 AM on August 6, 2012
http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/great-air-conditioners/
posted by forkisbetter at 11:46 AM on August 6, 2012
Smallest units i can find are 16"x 12". You may have to go all Apollo 13 on this one. A trick used in the RV community is to set the AC unit near the window and create a ducted box that the AC unit fits in and duct the box to the outside. Some people employ an auxiliary fan to assist ducting the hot air outside.
posted by Gungho at 11:53 AM on August 6, 2012
posted by Gungho at 11:53 AM on August 6, 2012
woot has a portable for a really good price today, for whatever that info's worth. http://www.woot.com/
posted by lemniskate at 11:32 AM on August 8, 2012
posted by lemniskate at 11:32 AM on August 8, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
What's the size/square footage of his apartment?
posted by swhitt at 1:40 PM on August 5, 2012 [1 favorite]