Any recommendations for a reasonably priced portable air conditioner for a 12 ft x 12 ft sized room?
Is a portable AC good enough for this size of room?
How long lasting is a portable AC as compared to window or split ones?
How does it differ from the window or split ACs in terms of electricity consumption?
Thanks in advance, mates!
I have no idea if this is correct but since portables are less efficient than other types I took the recommended capacity for non-portable and doubled it to choose a portable.
It's fine for a room that size assuming you have matched the room size with the capacity of the airconditioner.
Reliability I have no idea of, I'd assume it's around the same but I may be incorrect.
Portable units are considerably less efficient than split or window airconditioners in terms of electricity consumption. This is due to how they operate: waste heat or lack of it is exhausted out of the room which causes air from outside to enter the space.
A small 1Kw Window unit will be cheapest upfront and most cost efficient option. and should easily cool a 4sqm room
Yup. but its installation is a bit expensive and has limitations to the modifications he can make with the installation area (window and surrounding) if someone is living in a small rented house.
Get an old desk/table position it outside the window.
Plonk AC onto table (add bricks/wood blocks as necessary to lift the table height to window height)
Open window
add cardboard/towels around gaps
Installation complete.
For security purposes, you'd want to close the window when leaving the house, so using cardboard to merge the room with the A/C unit could well be the best option.
The amount of power you need depends on whether you have insulation, which direction the windows are facing, size of windows, how high the ceiling is etc etc. With a room that small, however, all the air con size calculators I've tried say that even worst case scenario- no insulation,western facing window- 1.5kw will be adequate.
Not many aircons under 2kw that I can find. The Kelvinator window wall KWH15CME is one of the few. I have no idea how it goes. I bought one last summer for a similar sized spare room but haven't got it out of the box yet.
Thanks a lot. I was referring to the portable ones, not the window ACs though.
Oops, sent my reply without reading carefully.
There is a lengthy debate here every summer about portable air conditioners. A lot of people say the design of single* hose portable air cons is so fundamentally flawed you should not even consider them. Others, who actually own one, say they are ok.
*The mythical dual hose portable air con is also often mentioned, but as far as I can tell they don't exist.
"For a duel hose portable A/C, about 30% of that heat is the waste heat produced by the unit itself. For single hose portable air conditioner, about 50% of that heat is produced by the unit or sucked in by the unit from outside the house. In comparison, a window unit or a central air unit only has waste heat from the indoor fan for removal that could be less than 5%."
http://homeenergypros.lbl.gov/profiles/blogs/warnings-about-…
I was about to ask the same thing but for double the area. Any bargains out there?