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Portable Air Conditioners

Portable Air Conditioners

Also see: Top Rated Portable Air Conditioners

Portable air conditioners are movable units that can be used to cool a specific region of a building or home in a modular fashion, not requiring permanent installation. They are used for much the same purposes and in much the same ways as traditional “window a/c” units.

Portable a/c units provide a cleaner looking end product (no bulky unit hanging out of the window) which may allow installation in areas with stricter neighborhood ordinances/association rules, and are generally easier to install (the window design and installation part itself becomes much less of an obstacle for the average person); for this reason they are a popular alternative to traditional “window units” but do have some disadvantages. For example, they generally cost more than for an equally powerful (capacity) window unit e.g. a 10,000 btu portable a/c with a standard feature set may sell for $300 retail versus the same capacity/featured window a/c unit at $150-$200 and they place the compressor and condenser fan components inside the occupied space resulting in somewhat noisier operation (although modern portable a/c units are fairly quiet and unobtrusive). Older portable a/c units also required periodic emptying of a condensate water tank (basically the water/humidity removed from the occupied space as part of the normal a/c process) but modern units are designed in such a way that they rarely need to be emptied or maintained other than periodically cleaning the air filter.

Most portable air conditioners are refrigeration based rather than evaporative.

All refrigerated type portable air conditioners require exhaust hoses for venting. Through this process of air intake, cooling and venting, air is continually cycled through the unit until the room reaches the desired temperature setting. Also, the refrigerant works to not only cool the air but also dehumidify air in the room, owing to the temperature decrease in the air which results in the saturation of the water content of the air, causing condensation when the air is returned to the room. The air will therefore be left without this ional water content. The water loss rate is sufficiently high to require collection or drainage.

Portable air conditioners - Single hosed units.
A single hosed unit has one hose that runs from the back of the portable air conditioner to the vent kit where hot air can be released. A typical single hosed portable air conditioner can cool a room that is 475 sq ft or smaller and has at most a cooling power of 12,000 BTUs. However, single hosed units cool a room less effectively than dual hosed as the air expelled from the room through the single hose creates negative pressure inside the room. Because of this, air (potentially warm air) from neighboring rooms is pulled into the room with the cooling unit to compensate.

Portable air conditioners – Dual hosed units
Dual hosed units are typically used in larger rooms. One hose is used as the exhaust hose to vent hot air and the other as the intake hose to draw in additional air (usually from the outside). These units generally have a cooler power of 12,000-14,000 BTUs and cool rooms that are around 500 sq ft . The reason an intake hose is needed to draw in extra air is because with higher BTU units, air is cycled in large amounts and hot air is expelled at a faster rate. This would create negative air pressure in the room, so the intake hose eliminates reduction of room air pressure which would draw outside air into the room.

Split units
Portable units are also available in split configuration, often with the compressor and evaporator located in a separate external package and the two units connected via two detachable refrigerant pipes, as is the case with fixed split systems. Split portable units are superior to both single and dual hosed mono-portable units in that interior noise and size of the internal unit can be greatly reduced due to the external location of the compressor, and the water collected can be pumped to the outdoor unit using a pump, avoiding the need to drain water from the indoor unit periodically when running in cooling mode.. A drawback of split portable units compared with mono-portables is that a surface exterior to the building, such as a balcony must be provided for the external compressor unit to be located. Unlike window ACs the split AC does not have an option of exchange of indoor and outdoor air.

Heat and cool units
Some portable air conditioner units are also able to provide heat by reversing the cooling process so that cool air is collected from a room and warm air is released. These units are not meant to replace actual heaters though and should not be used to cool rooms lower than 50 °F.