Window Air Conditioners - Efficient One Room Cooling

Window air conditioners, also known simply as "window units", are a fairly low cost alternative to the highly expensive central air conditioning systems that cool the entire house. Window air conditioners are usually capable of cooling only a single room, or perhaps two adjoining rooms, depending on their strength and BTU capacity.

A window ac unit is made to fit directly into a window, with its weight resting on the lower sill and the window frame holding it in place. The window must be otherwise closed, and any steps that create a better seal around the window unit's edges will help to produce better results. Simply putting the unit in the window and turning it on will create a poor, leaky seal and indifferent cooling effects. Tape around the edges of the window air conditioner, or otherwise seal them, for best results.

Using a window air conditioner for your comfort

Since these units are heavy and clumsy, it is usually best to set them up in the place where they are likely to see the most use. Most typically, the window unit is placed in a bedroom window to allow more comfortable sleeping in baking heat, since a hot night is probably one of the most common environmental producers of insomnia.

A window ac unit pulls cooler air from outside, cools it further using the standard refrigerating procedure, and blows it into the room with fans (whose speed can typically be adjusted). At the same time, heat is vented to the outdoors where it either rises by convection or is blown away by the breeze, ridding your house of the excess warmth.

Often, large numbers of mosquitoes will be attracted to this heat and the smell of mammalian body chemistry being carried on it, and will die in the external vents. Be sure to clean these out periodically to remove the slain bloodsuckers. Thus, interestingly, the window air conditioner often serves as a type of "bug lamp" as well.

Drawbacks

Although these appliances are excellent, thrifty devices for keeping you cool during the summer - especially in more northern climates - they are not without their failings as well. The most noticeable of these is that they are noisy. A central air conditioner is noisy too, but the sound of its operation is walled off along with the central unit, far from your living spaces, so you do not hear it. Window air conditioners run with a loud humming or buzzing right in the room.

Window units also block up much of one of your windows, excluding light and reducing your view outdoors. However, they are still eminently practical (and affordable) air conditioning devices for those with limited conditioning needs, and have their place in many homes as the main way of getting a cool, comfortable night's rest during the summer.