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Hi folks, with a newborn, we are struggling to control the temperature in our bedroom due to the south facing window. We have got blackout blinds etc but it's getting quite stuffy now.
Is there a type of portable air conditioner that can be bought and is easy to use. Not to cool the whole house, but a specific room?
I have seen a variety of ones. However, some need some kind of vent which is a bit of a pain if you don't have a hole in your wall.
Most portable units have a hose you hang out of a window. We have a 9000 BTU model that sits in the upstairs hallway - It can't effectively cool the entire floor but it makes things tolerable and any "waste" cool air flows down the stairs to the lounge. They're not exactly quiet though.
The vast majority of the models that don't use a vent aren't worth the effort.
You can make a ghetto aircon unit by freezing a bottle of water and then sticking it in front of a fan. That’ll blow cold air around the room. Non vented air con units won’t work very well.
I hate these stuffy nights, but my solution is a simple fan. Well, a fan, though not entirely simple.
I use a Meaco 1056. Funny looking thing, a bit like an over-sized football with one face cut off. It oscillates horizontally and vertically and has one or two other tricks but mainly, it is very quiet. Very quiet indeed. Which to me is critical in a bedroom.
It's not air-con, but I find that circulating the air produces a gentle breeze over me by indirect airflow makes it feel cooler, and especially much less stuffy.
They're not cheap. Around £100 for a fan, but Costco were doing them at about £70-ish. But best fan I've ever had, by miles.
Did I mention it's quiet? Near silent, until about speed 5 of 10.
Note to self - try b0redom's trick, too. Sneaky. ;)
There are window kits for the duct, portable AC's usually come with one for sliding windows, but there are some for hinged windows. I've got one that can be outside or inside, because you can duct both the hot and cold air. Most just have a duct for the hot air though.
I can put a hose out a window as long as it isn't a wide hose. I just thought having an open window would allow the cool air to escape.
Does anyone have recommended ones that they have or are using? I will look up the one mentioned and also try the ice trick too.
I have a 5000 BTU A/C unit for my bedroom from Homebase, this one: https://www.homebase.co.uk/5k-btu-po...tioner_p499059
It is good enough for a small room and does need to be vented outside, the hose is around 15cm in diameter and comes with a reducer for the exhaust end that is 9x24cm.
As said you can get window kits like this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/HOOMEE-Univ.../dp/B07BPZGJ3B , I am lucky I still have secondary glazing so it is easy to block off the gap.
If you manage to get enough cool air to fill the entire room to open-window level, you're doing pretty damn well ;) Don't forget that the cool air sinks, so the open window isn't actually going to negate the capacity of the air con that much - it's not like in a car where you have a reasonable chance of getting the entire passenger compartment down to the set temperature - those portable units basically provide a fan-driven flow of cooled air and it's the localised cooling that does the work, rather than trying to recycle and cool an entire room's worth (although with a powerful enough unit you can get there).Quote:
Originally Posted by neonplanet40
I would advise against simply sticking a hose out an open window. Seal your window!
It’s actually worse than ‘letting the cool air escape’. The as the AC unit is exhausting hot air by pulling air from inside your room. This draws a negative pressure and if you’ve got an open window with a hose dumping hot air outside, it will pull the exhausted hot air straight back in via your open window.
I built my own ‘seal’ by cutting a sheet of MDF to fit the PVC window frame, painted on the outside and edges to seal the MDF from moisture, and reinforced the MDF sheet using aluminium L sections. I 3D printed the hose flange adapters and down-facing louvers on the outside to stop rain getting in to the hoses. Also 3D printed clamps to secure the MDF to the window frame, and 3D printed handles for, well, handing.
Also, modded using cardboard, the AC unit itself in to a ‘dual hose’ unit, so that the AC doesn’t pull a negative pressure, and potentially the horrible smells from the rest of the house in to my bedroom.
I was going to recommend the unit in the photo, but I can't find it for sale anywhere.
https://i.imgur.com/9o6Auxw.jpg?1
If the weather suddenly turns.. well.. British in the next week or so I am completely blaming this thread.
I bought a MecoFan 1056. Here are some power measurements. I was bored.
1.2w at idle
1.4w at idle with LEDs off (yup, 0.2w more. Within MoE? Maybe a weird switch mode PSU thing?)
4.1w - Speed 1
5.4w - Speed 2
5.9w - Speed 3
6.0w - Speed 4 (seems to be a pointless setting?)
7.2w - Speed 5
8.0w - Speed 6
9.7w - Speed 7
11.7w - Speed 8
12.5w - Speed 9
14.0w - Speed 10
16.3w - Speed 11
18.7w - Speed 12
Subtract 0.2w when LEDs are off during use.
+2.4w with lateral movement
+3.3w with vertical movement
(+5.7w with both horizontal & vertical active)
Contrast with an old regular noisy Woolworths desk fan of a similar blade size:
27.4w - Speed 1
33.0w - Speed 2
41.5w - Speed 3
Also, @DDY, excellent work on the DIY A/C ducting. I have similar plans. Did you do any sort of retention method to keep the wood in place if it gets windy?
Thought about getting a proper split system installed ?
Why am i looking at a £100 fan for the office...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVSTwSU3Fx4
Because, Apex, it's bleeping good. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Apex
I was .... sceptical. To the point that I confirmed Costco's returns policy. For a fan, it ain't cheap and I'm certainly not wealthy. But sometimes, something that does a simple job utterly brilliantly is just worth it.
It's also not my First £100 fan. After a series of cheap office fans that barely lasted out the year and made a racket, I bought a fancy Bionaire thingy. Floorstander, and it's effectively tw four-blade fans linked together, one behind the other. Full remote except for oscillate, and it's got the 'breeze, setting where it randomised a variable fan speed.
Nice fan. Certainly way better than the usual £10 to £40 junk. And, I thought, pretty quiet. I think it's those double blades, which smoothes the aggressive edge off the fan noise.
And for me, whether in office or bedroom, noise is important. Or lack thereof. In the bedroom, too much noise keeps me awake. In the office, it distracts, ruins concentration and makes it harder to hear people on the phone. Also, if I have music playing, I have to have it that much louder to hear it over even the reasonably quiet Bionaire.
With the Meaco, you stand no chance of hearing the fan over even quiet music unless you've got it up High. It's not offensively loud even on maximum, as that video demonstrated, but on lower settings .... well, in the evenings (we have one in the lounge) I often have to look to see if it's on or not. Settings 1 to 3 are enough for us in most evenings, and at that, it's barely a whisper.
I mean, look at me here, extolling the virtues of a flipping fan. WTH?
It really is that good .... IMHO.
So why are you looking at £100 fan?
How much is a nice cooling breath of air, in the office, without the distraction of the traditional fan racket, worth? To me, it's worth every penny of £100 ....even if I did get it for about £70.
One proviso. The First one I got made an ominous clicking noise on vertical oscillation, After about 3 days. It went back, Costco offered replacement or refund without any issues, and the replacement, now several months old, seems fine. What I can't vouch for, having only had it a few months, is longevity.
But if you want a very good, quiet fan for the office and can bear the thought of £100, it gets my unreserved approval.
Thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by smargh
The MDF sits in a trough up against the internal face in the PVC frame so it can only be removed 'outwards', this also means rain can't get in. To prevent it being pulled outwards by the wind or an intruder, I've fitted clamps on the inside which grab on to the inside (e.g. room) face of the PVC frame. The nuts holding the clamps on are tightend such that the clamp can be simply rotated on and off the PVC frame for quick removal/installation of the whole MDF panel.
In the above photo, you can see one of those clamps on the bottom of the window with a bit of gaffer tape to soften the interface bewteen the clamp and the PVC.
The only problem I have with wind is actually the opened window pane, which gets caught in the wind and opens and (partially) shuts quite forcefully. Rarely is the wind strong enough to do that so I've not bothered to devise a permanent solution, so for the two days a year it is too windy, I use duct tape to hold the window in a 50% open position.
Double edge sword there, remove the current noise generator that is my Bionaire BT19 (we have 4 of these in the house currently) and suddenly you will be hunting for noise from other items and down the rabbit hole we go :D - will say anything is a improvement over the floor fan i had on last summer, yes 18" fan move a lot of air and cooled the room down but even on the lowest setting if i got disturbed while nodding off the noise it made would make it difficult to drop back off (but boy did it cool the room down)Quote:
Originally Posted by Saracen999
But yes to remove the noise from the office so that i can lower the volume in either my headphones or speakers would be welcomed; so for now i'll stick the fan on price watch and wait for it to lower below the £100 mark - the only negative i have is that i would like to have seen this in different colours, while it doesn't make it work better it would 'sit' better in the area and not stick out.
I assume you've checked Costco?
I know they had them for some weeks, though they do tend to constantly change the non-standard items. They certainly appeared to restock (locally) at least once, but I guess once local customers reach saturation point for items like this, out they go.
A caution for you, though. I spent about 2 months last summer waiting for John Lewis to get them back in stock, "next week ". If you're going to get one, and we hit a really hot patch, they will become as common as rocking horse poop or pink unicorns. Don't watch too long. ;)
Only ever had one item from Costco (online) and had forgot they operate; will have a shufty over the site.
Its a nice to have, like i said we have 4 of the BT19 tower fans in the house so not short of fans
£15 membership fee for online purchase, the hell.
Didn't know that. We have a 'store' membership, which us about double that, because we have a very convenient local 'store'. More like a warehouse, actually. But then, fuel is (in my experience) always 5p or 6p per litre cheaper than anywhere else round here. We'd pay the membership fee on those savings alone. But I guess 50ltr of unleaded is hard to order online. Or rather, hard to deliver. If you aren't close enough to use a physical warehouse site, it's a much more dubious proposition. Don't entirely dismiss it though. They have (at least in-store) a surprisingly good, wide and High quality collection of foodstuffs, as well as everyday staples (from Kellogg's Cornflakes to Hovis bread). Cornflakes and caviar, or brown loaf and a pot of potted shrimp. And a very good cheese range too, far better than the mass-market stuff in most supermarkets. It's clear they aim in large part at small businesses, like local restaurants. A friend of mine is a professional chef, and is pretty impressed with their quality. They even have an in-store butchery section, behind a glass wall.Quote:
Originally Posted by Apex
When we first joined, I got quite a shock. It wasn't at all what I expected, which was largely cheap tat, piled High. Instead, we found major brand TVs, kitchen blenders from Vitamix, kettles from Kenwood, Dualit, etc, bean-to-cup coffee machines,and so on. And even, on one occasion, a decently discounted BMW M6.
The only disadvantage, food-wise, is that it's typically in either large packs, or multipacks. That can be great for cornflakes, or loo-roll, etc, provided you have sufficient storage space. For example, a bag of retail loo roll with like 9 rolls per pack, but we buy in a large pack, with about 6 of those 9-roll packs in one. Very good pricing, and the added convenience of shopping for such items far less often ... provided you have the storage space.
But when you start adding up the savings from loo roll, kitchen roll, hand soap, toothpaste, cornflakes, and so on, you can save quite a lot, and more importantly, do such shopping trips far less often. We normally get enough of such things to last us about 6 months.
And then there's the cheap fuel.
If you have one accessible, it's perhaps worth a look. Quality one-offs, like the Meaco fan, come and go and you never know what to expect, but there's always a solid range of hoysehol regulars, including brand names. Cheap, they may be, but very little "tat".
In case you're still looking, my local Costco have these in stock. £64,99 ex VAT so still undercutting Meaco direct and John Lewis (who are still out of stock!)
It is large... Debating if the smaller 650 would be suitable for the space it's going into. I may have to order a 650 and see side by side.
FYI, I also have an older Dyson tower (AM04?) that's seen heavy use. It's done well, but plenty of rattles and other misc noises, means it's relegated to living room duties.
Why, whats wrong with them?Quote:
Originally Posted by mcbride
I was but am not a Costco member so would have to be online and they charge £15 for that before you order....Quote:
Originally Posted by Guy
Today, it's 30°C outside and 21°C in my bedroom-home-office.Quote:
Originally Posted by mcbride
£200 portable air conditioner.
Aww heck yeah!
I've rarely if ever ordered online, the value provided from the stores (for me) far outweighs the membership cost. You'd be surprised how quick you recoup the annual fee.Quote:
Originally Posted by Apex
Any friends, family, colleagues with a card?
NopeQuote:
Originally Posted by Guy