Making the Most of Modern Portable Air Conditioners

Portable air conditioners are a good way to get cool air into a room without needing to install a massive central air conditioning system. The portability of the system makes it much easier to transfer the cool, climate controlled air from room to room without needing to wrestle a ponderous window unit from place to place, install it in a window (blocking the view), and undergo the other inconvenience such a plan would involve.

Instead, as your daily schedule unwinds across the hours, you can take the cool air with you, without using money to pay for cooling those rooms you will not need again today. Using a "portable" offers the opportunity to make imaginative use of this limited-space climate control, too. For example, if your refrigerator is running constantly in the sweltering heat, you can direct the stream of cool air from the device's fan onto the coils, preventing the refrigerator from burning out.

A portable air conditioner can be used to cool a room accidentally left closed all day with sun streaming in the windows, your garage before you work on your car, your workshop or hobby area if it has gotten hot, and so on. Many of the features on modern conditioners of this variety make them useful for secondary purposes, also.

Features of a modern portable air conditioner

A conditioner of this type may weigh around seventy pounds, but rests on the floor rather than the window, sparing you the need to lift it onto the sill and balance it there. You can wheel it from place to place as needed, and manhandle it only when strictly necessary.

The excess heat transferred out of the general atmosphere in the room has to go somewhere. In the case of a portable, hot air is vented to the outdoors through a hose five to six feet long, which couples to a "window kit" that can be adjusted for various widths of window. Humidity is often vented along with this hot air, though in very humid, sticky conditions, extra moisture is condensed out into a "condensate tank", which you will need to manually empty now and then.

A full suite of controls should be present on any decently designed model, including several levels of cooling, remote control, timers so that you can have air conditioning begin shortly before you return home or occupy a room so that pleasant coolness will greet you, and so on.

Multifunctional conditioners

With the modern era's focus on convenience and multifunctional performance, you may want to look for a portable air conditioner that incorporates functions that will make it useful in all seasons. Many now sport heating elements so that they can double as space heaters in the winter, or can run purely to dehumidify the air, collecting excess moisture in the condensate tank for later emptying. Such devices will more than repay the investment you make in them, helping ensure your year-round comfort.