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portable AC units that don't require you to empty water?
Melinoe
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
It gets pretty hot here in the summer and my apartment only has a single wall air conditioner that does an okay job of cooling down the living room, but has lots of issues reaching the rest of the house. We emailed our landlord about putting in window AC units in the bedrooms, who then emailed the HOA about it. The HOA said that in theory they have no problem with it but putting a window AC unit in a bedroom is illegal in our city because apparently in case of a fire we're supposed to be able to jump out of the second story window onto the cement below and the law assumes that we're too stupid to pull the AC unit out of the window. Whatever, I digress, we called the city government people to confirm that this is an actual law because the HOA people didn't actually cite anything and it is in fact true.
In the email, the HOA said that a workaround to that is to get a portable AC unit and have a hose that goes up to the window to vent air out, which we knew were a thing, but as far as we knew they generally required water to be emptied out every so often and weren't an ideal solution to run while you're sleeping (our roommate works night shift and sleeps during the day which is part of the reason why this is such a problem). But they then said that portable AC units exist that don't require you to vent water out - my boyfriend is the one who has done most of the research regarding this and he hadn't heard of them, so I was wondering if any of you knew about any or had any experience with them?
In the email, the HOA said that a workaround to that is to get a portable AC unit and have a hose that goes up to the window to vent air out, which we knew were a thing, but as far as we knew they generally required water to be emptied out every so often and weren't an ideal solution to run while you're sleeping (our roommate works night shift and sleeps during the day which is part of the reason why this is such a problem). But they then said that portable AC units exist that don't require you to vent water out - my boyfriend is the one who has done most of the research regarding this and he hadn't heard of them, so I was wondering if any of you knew about any or had any experience with them?
Melinoe on
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Is there a way to put a larger AC in the living room, and point some fans into the bedrooms to pull some of that cool air in? That's what we had to do at our old apartment.
And in addition to misleading info about not needing to be emptied, we tried 3 units from different manufacturers. Two of them continued running even after the water bin was full even though they were supposed to turn off when full so that it didn't overflow.
Here's a quote from the linked model's manual
I can go check what brand we have at some point if you'd like, OP? It should be in our garage.
They're supposed to vent extra-humid air through the exhaust or something. Supposed to.
Depending on the humidity and the temperature of your coil, you can be generating many liters of water a day with an AC unit, so setting up a hose system is preferable. Window units almost always have something like this.
If you live in a dry climate there will be less water, but there will still be water. Especially if you like boiling water to cook things on the stove a lot.
here's a quote:
one of the models that has it:
http://www.sylvane.com/american-comfort-acw300c.html
that said, they'll still have a drain pan just in case you live in a humid hellhole like northern Florida (or wherever) where the AC can't get rid of all of the condensate via the hose
They have never been very good at it in my experience. It might work well enough if you live in Arizona or something, but in south GA (or north Florida, as you specified) , you have to empty that pan. It can't get rid of all the water.
Lol. The heat has to go somewhere you dingus.
Swamp Coolers are one of the most dangerous types of cooling you can do. This is literally asking for an electrical fire. That mist? Its blowing around in your house, settling in your carpet and floors, seeping into your walls and electrical outlets. More fires have occurred by folks using this type of cooling than are caused by turkey fires on thanksgiving. It's a terrible idea.
Thanks for the further input everyone. This is mostly what my boyfriend found out which was why we were so surprised when the HOA said that we could totally get one that didn't require emptying. Dumping the water out of the window would be nice but we have window screens that I'm rather attached to because I hate insects.
For reference we live in the south bay area in CA so it can get fairly humid here.
Okay, looks like ours is a DeLonghi "Pinguino", several years old at this point so the model probably doesn't matter much. It does have a tray according to my mom, BUT it doesn't need to be emptied. The box itself says something about a "double compressor" system that makes this possible (complete with a symbol showing crossed-out water droplets) if that helps your search too. We were using this in inland southern California, battling daily temperatures consistently over 100, and it really made a huge difference (and it definitely didn't put water anywhere but out the window, or we would've known). It came with a remote and everything. We had to fiddle around with the settings a bit until we found out the optimal one for cooling things down, but oh god, with the right settings it was like heaven compared to our old fan setup. I dunno if it'd cool a whole house, but it should be awesome for an apartment (our house was always tiny, something along the lines of a two-bedroom apartment in size really, so it worked fine for us).
I have zero doubt that plenty (most?) of those things drip like that, though, because I do know a lot of portable ACs suck. My mom did a lot of research before buying the one she did!
Edit:
Yeah, I don't think we used the dehumidifier bit at all as far as I remember. Same as you, we didn't feel like we needed that since it was usually a dry heat (we just needed SOMETHING to take the edge off the damn heat!). This post earlier supports your idea: