Sharp Portable Air Conditioner

The manual says that dehumidifier mode increases room temp., so it’s one or the other.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bz9bkmOI45eMNlB2bjVmaDJxMkk/edit

Bought one just before I decided to buy a house with a very even and strong central AC unit. Its sitting in a closet unused - hopefully it won’t leak its refrigerant.

I’m in for one. If it’s 83 in Seattle on the 5th of May, I expect that it will be another hot one.

This is for a 2nd floor BR with a casement (swing out) window, so it will take some tweaking. Here is a page I found that describes how to modify the install for casement windows:

How to Install a Portable Air Conditioner in Casement or Crank Windows

Another good install guide for portable A/C units, with videos:

Guide for portable A/C units, with videos

Yeah, that’s exactly what I said. This air conditioner literally blows nice cool room air out the window (after transferring the waste heat to it), causing hot outside air to work its way in through whatever openings it can find. I find it entirely unsurprising that folks complain about these things not working well.

I wonder, if I bought one, could I dismantle it and convert it to a two-hose design? I’m sure it wouldn’t be pretty (to say nothing of the warranty), but I can do a lot of interesting things with two-by-fours, styrofoam sheeting and foil tape.

I purchased one of these last year for a room that i run 2 computers in during the day, the reason I purchased it was to replace a small window unit that was noisy. Yes this unit is large, weighs a ton, but its about as quiet of a ac your going to get, does a good job cooling, but most of all half the noise of a window unit, heat exhaust outside. Set up was easy, remote is user friendly, and you can use it as an air cleaner when ac season is over. Not a perfect solution, but for what your paying for this a good one.

In the South Park version, the song was Shock The Monkey.

An air conditioner always *both * cools and dehumidifies.

That’s why window units drip water outside: the water is extracted (dehumidified) from the inside air. This one uses the hot air being exhausted to evaporate the water and carry it out as vapor.

Mechanically, a dehumidifier is exactly the same as an air conditioner. The only difference: after the room air is cooled and dehumidified by passing through the evaporator (cold) coil, it then goes through the condenser (hot) coil (that’s outside in a window A/C unit). The resulting air is slightly warmer, and dehumidified.

Why is it warmer? The thing is not 100% efficient. Whatever power it uses to run the compressor and fan is converted to heat, just like every other appliance in your house (whose rear end isn’t sticking out a window): if your TV uses 150 watts, that’s 1/10th of a space heater’s worth of heat that it produces constantly.

Had this A/C for over a year now. Lots of pros and cons I can tell! We replaced a large window A/C because it was right above our downstairs neighbors and it dripped water on their front steps (aren’t we considerate neighbors!!). We replaced a 12.5k BTU (or 13? Can’t quite remember) with this one, and the difference in ability to cool off about a 550sqft. space cannot be ignored! This one just CANNOT keep up when we have major heat spells of about 85f+, which in New England can be quite a few days in the summer. However, it does have some great features:

Pros:
-Ionic air filtration (EXCELLENT to have in winters when you cannot open windows and air become hella stale!) Winter air is NO LONGER stuffy and gross!! Yay!
-I’ve ID’ed 3 places where gross gunky stuff is filtered and can be wiped or washed off making the unit’s filtration (though nothing near HEPA) quite good for a portable or window A/C.
-Drastically reduced window space taken up and allows me to have much more needed sunlight and space to grow windowsill plants (I grow tons of orchids indoors!!).
-Does OKAY with cooling, but buyer beware if you have heat spells or don’t live in temperate climates. I am cooling a large space, but MY FLORIDA FRIENDS, PLEASE DON’T EVEN CONSIDER BUYING IF YOU HAVE 500+sqft. TO COOL!!
-You’ve got to love the louvers! It’s really nice, especially for drying stuff off with the ion-charged air. It really does make stuff smell better if you put in front of the ionic air for a couple of hours!!

Cons:
-Well, of course, it’s limits are that it doesn’t seem to compare well to the same BTU of a window A/C.
-The hose gets REALLY HOT! Especially when you have multiple 80+ degree days! This KILLS any of my windowsill plants near the hose, so I’m guessing it’s well above 115 degrees. Could be a bit of a problem if your actually trying to cool off the area around the A/C. Found that if you shorten the hose, you shorten the radiant heat area of the tube (otherwise, you’ve got yourself a radiator heating your house in the summer)!. However, catch-22 is if you shorten the hose, you also have the A/C pulling in the hotter air nearest the tube… Single-tube A/C’s all have this similar problem.
-Takes up quite a bit more realty in your space. Plan to put it in a big enough space. We have ours in the dining room simply because we use the space the least and it is quite the behemoth! Sadly, we do not use the dining room table much because we simply can’t get around the A/C!

It’s obviously got its drawbacks, but it works for us (until something better comes along)! Be smart about this A/C, plan for a big space inside, if you want your windows to be free of an unsightly A/C. It’s much more than a window A/C in terms of it’s features, and we use the other features a lot, so it’s used quite a bit during the year.

Never purchase a single hose a/c like this one; only buy two hose units. With one hose, the a/c takes cool room air, cools the unit, and exhausts it outside. Hot ourside air comes into the home to replace the exhaust, so that the process is very inefficient and costly to run. A two hose unit takes in outside air, cools the unit and expells the air back outside through the second hose. Unforturately, most portable a/c’s made are one hose unit; a near scam IMO.

I have one of these from the Woot 9 months ago and it works well for air conditioning/dehumidifying a basement. The system does have an internal tank for moisture collection, which has a plug on the bottom you can put a hose on to drain into something (bucket, drain, empty monkey skulls, etc.) It does a very good job cooling and dehumidifying our 1500 sq ft basement. Also, you should definitely insulate the exhaust tube. I live in Central Illinois, so it is humid most of the summer. Hope that helps stepharlo.

Expect it to get loud over time. After owning it for a few months, it got extremely loud (compressor related, no way to quiet it). When I brought the problem up, they only way to get my problem remediated was to pay to ship it back, which would cost close to half what I paid for mine.

I owned one of these and it does not cool as good as a standard window unit of equal BTU. I was disappointed in the performance of the unit and sold it in a garage sale. I did not buy it from Woot.

@Lukeonia1, I wonder the same thing. Seems like the more efficient dual path design shouldn’t cost much, if any more.

@khammo01, so what you’re saying in almost as many words is, @Lukeonia1 was right.

Bought one last year on Woot. Using it for a large bedroom with slider windows (if we had double hungs I would have just bought a regular window a/c). We are VERY pleased with its performance. Yes, it’s very heavy, but who cares unless you are moving it between floors since it’s on wheels and is easy to roll.

Certainly NOT too early to think about a/c. This ain’t gonna necessarily be available when you’re desperate from shvitzing and will take whatever is available at Home Depot.

We bought ours at Costco, works great! Using it in the bedroom only, don’t have to move it at all. Been running it for two years now, no problems at all. Make sure that you clean the filter often and if it stops working and lights are blinking it is time to empty the reservoir in the back. (orange fluid comes out).

Thanks was just about to post this myself…

i bought one of these from Woot last summer. It’s huge, heavy and very very loud. I can’t sleep when it’s on because of the noise.

will this fit in my car and is there an adapter for the accessory plug?

I do not have one of these, but my son does. When I visited him last summer the one thing I might mention is that you have to empty a water reservoir fairly frequent. If you go out for a bit, when you return home you can find it shut off because the water level in the holding tank is too high. So you come home to a hot house. And it’s no fun carrying a heavy water filled open container rooms away to dump it. Just saying.