NFR: Does anyone have a portable A/C unit?

[misshark122]

That you recommend? And was it easy to set up?

We don't have A/C... no idea why people around here think you don't need A/C... you DO!! Our house inside is seriously 85 degrees. It is SO hot. I slept like absolute crap last night because of it. Tossed and turned all night. :@

[kris356]

We have 2. We have a boiler (hot water heat with radiators so no duct work). We have a large LG unit in our downstairs and a smaller Fridgidaire unit in our bedroom. We bought both at Home Depot and have had no issues at all with either.

As for set-up, ours are window units, so you need to have regular windows, no roll outs. They do make units that look like a dehumidifier that you merely put a vent in the window.

[misshark122]

Kris, so yours are the kind that actually sit in the window right?

I think I need the kind that vent out the window. Our window is huge and it opens by sliding to the left. I wonder if these kind are easy to set up.

[kris356]

We never went with the portables because they sell out quickly and are more expensive. But they are super easy to set up, you pretty much put the vent in the window and plug it in. You may want to check the size of the vent to make sure the window isn't too big for it.

I found Home Depot's sales assoc. super helpful when I purchased ours.

www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1vZbv64/h_d2/Navigation?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&storeId=10051

[misshark122]

thanks! I appreciate it.

[Deleted]

we have one of the portable ones that you vent through the window since we have either tiny windows or giant ones.

Very easy to setup and does a good job of cooling.

The one drawback to ours is that there is a bucket inside that collects the water (kind of like a dehumidifier) and it fills quickly. And once full, the unit turns off.

[mortomo]

We have a portable Frigidaire in my DS's bedroom. We have a 1950 Cape Cod and he has the entire upstairs and it gets really hot. It does a good job, but it only cools the bedroom portion and not the room and bathroom outside of his bedroom. I think the unit we have covers approximately 700 sq ft and the upstairs total is about 400-500 sq ft.

We have AC in our house, but it's not forceful enough to really cool the upstairs.

Also, it appeared to be easy to set-up (my FI set it up in the window). Just make sure you don't have crank out windows.

[mortomo]

I think you can use it in side slide windows.

[mrsacornblue]

We have a window unit that we put in our upstairs hallway. It's by Maytag and we got it at either Home Depot or Lowes about 5 years ago. It works really well to cool the upstairs and augment our central air which works great downstairs but is horrible at cooling the upstairs.

[adhdfashion]

Costco has a few decent units for less than HD. Easy to install go for it.

[NachoProblem]

We have one similar to what gina described. Our HVAC is super old and it can't keep up with the crazy high temps here. So we use the portable one in the bedroom at night. It's made a ton of difference. The good part about that unit is that its easy to move from room to room if you need to.

[misshark122]

They are all sold out everywhere around here! ha

[statlerwaldorf]

I have one and really like it. It's pretty heavy, so we don't move it often. It has an internal water compartment that fills up fast. We usually set up a hose and let it drain into a bucket. We just have to be careful because it will overfill the bucket if we don't empty it. It's nice because it has a hose that goes out the window and works well with our weirdly narrow windows. It also has a dehumidifying option which really helps. It's programmable and has a remote too. It's pretty easy on the electric bill too. It works better for large spaces than our window a/c units. Plus it is easy to take out of the window to open the window on cooler nights.