Since being forced to move my window A/C unit has been on the new deck, not having double hung window to fit into.
So with the heat wave coming (92, 102, 102, 96) I said screw it and bought my first portable A/C unit, a Sharp CVP12LX for $650 from Frys. It does 11,500 BTU (which is not the same as a regular A/C due to the exhaust tube), single exhaust (wish it had dual) unit that has a tank for water collection (others exhaust out the tube but oh well) unit.
The biggest pain (other than being 97lbs) is the window fitting. Now this is doable at least, but I didn’t want something permamently screwed into the frame (esp on the front window, where I wanted the A/C) so I tried to fit the sliding panel in. oops, window is 54″, slider extends to 48. So I put it in the kitchen window yesterday, which works, but the air is not directly on me, and while they say it will cool a room 470sq, its a bit of a misnomer because the exhaust tube which leads to the window is reading 120f on the surface. That heat is radiating back into the room of course.
So this morning I cut some cardboard and made an insert to extend the window panel for the front window. I wrapped it in Reflectix which I had left over from the skylight upgrade. This worked awesome, except the window frame is not square, so the top of the fit had a nice 1-1/2″ gap where the bottom was flush. Tilting the window up helped, but for now I decided some quadrupled over reflectix would work. I filled the gaps and then cut a piece of reflectix 58″ long, 6 1/2″ side and laid it down the entire length of the panel.
So now I have 58f air circulating on me because the Sharp has a Louvre mode which moves the air up and down, really nice actually. Its pretty quiet for being in the room, too!
I also cut some reflectix to lay over the tubing as an experiment to see if I could reduce the amount of heat radiating into the room.
The real pain is if I leave, I have to remove all of this stuff and close the window. I could put the bracket in, but that won’t prevent some kid from pushing in the cardboard and tossing water inside, or whatever. Then reverse the process when I want to go back to A/C.
However, yes it was really expensive, but I should only need it for 4-5 days at a time, then I can put it into the garage, or downstairs, until summer is over. I doubt I will move it into the bedroom each night simply for the fact that lifting a bulky machine that weighs 97bs up the stairs is a bit of a risk.
I’ll track what accuweather says the temp is, what my thermostat in the hall says the temp is and how I feel the temp is for today and tomorrow.
I just took a thermal reading on the tube. 107f on the tube, 75f on the reflectix laying on top of it. This will be interesting as if this keeps pace, I can just cut a length and buy some velcro to affix in several places. That will make a nice removable wrap for the tubing, and force almost all of the hot air out the window.
(Thanks to Digi/Megs for the Excel Macro lesson)