220V Plug in Thermostat

[Doug Miller]

It doesn't have a temperature control on it already?

[hapless]

Anyone know where I can get a 220V Plug in Thermostat so I can regulate my apartment wall air cond. and don't have utility bills through the roof (figuratively speaking)? Searched, but no luck.

[Robert Allison]

Main power drain is the compressor. Tell your maintenance people to fix it so you can set it correctly or pay your additional cooling bills.

Almost all HVAC systems will do what you are asking for yours to do without any additional equipment. Get your maintenance people to explain your system to you and instruct you on how to set it to achieve the desired result.

[hapless]

[e-mail] (Doug Miller) wrote in news:p0Afi.41704$ [e-mail]:

The do nothing maintenance people took the cover off so it is difficult to determine what setting is low. In any case the blower is on continuously when I am gone. Does the blower itself use that much power or is the main power drain due to the compressor/cooling? I would like to be able to shut the whole damn thing off over a 10 degree spread in temperature, but maybe your right, that this would lead to an early demise in the entire unit.

[Logan Shaw]

Are you sure there's a compressor? If it has settings like Low, Medium, and High, and the blower runs all the time, could it be a chilled water system?

- Logan

[Meat Plow]

Chilled water as in gas fired water chiller for a wall air conditioner?

[mm]

You misunderstood him. He said the blower is on all the time. That's typical of room ac's last I looked.

[mm]

I think it wouldn't be hard to do. Lowest is at one end or the other. Put the knob in the middle. Let it run until the compressor turns off, wait 3 or 4 minutes because it's not good to restart an AC right after it turns off, then turn the know CW and see if the compressor comes back on. If it does, that direction is for greater cooling, lower temp. If not, turn the knob CCW and see if it comes on. it will only come on in one direction.

If that doesn't work, go to the store adn see which direction is cold on the AC's they sell there. I think they are all the same. Look at several brands to find out. Look at your brand. Within one brand, it is are almost certainly all the same.

Why don't you just turn the whole AC off when you are gone, and turn if on when you get home? You can do something outside until it cooles down.

Someone in mcfl must have said that. I don't agree, except maybe to a small degree. If you have 15 more years left on the AC, you might lose 3 months in my opinion.

I rewired my room AC so that when the compressor turned off the fan did too, and vice versa. I did this mostly because the noise of the fan annoyed me, especially later at night when I didn't need AC at all, or the fan. If this was 2 in the morning, I would have had to listen to the fan in my sleep for another 5 hours for no good reason.

Rewriing didn't require any cutting, soldering, unscrewing or screwing. But it did require thinking. All the connections in most of these things are made with slide on connectors, that slide on to spade lugs. Unless things have changed recently. In other words, things that go on both side of other things that are flat. B C Power Cord --- On/Off ---|-----thermostat-----compressor motor- | | A |---- fan motor---

Each of these two things on the right are connected to the other side of the power cord.

Plan this totally before starting. Make a clear drawing of how it was, including wire colors and sketches of the connector, in case you have to put things back the way they were.

Unplug the AC.

Pull the wire from the ON-OFF to the fan motor off at one end or the other, B or A, probably B. Connect the end of the wire to C, so that both the thermostat and the compressor motor are controlled by the thermostat.

There were 3 steps when I did it, because I had to move around a wire that had connectors on both ends.

That should do it. I slept a lot better after I did this.

[Doug Miller]

The answer is to use the temperature control that's already on the unit. Why are you trying to make life more complicated and expensive for yourself?

[hapless]

mm wrote in news: [e-mail]:

yeah ok, but there are two controls, one controls the temp, got that one figured out. The other has 4-5 switch position settings that seem to control the blower speed and/or temp. No markings.

To know what brand it is, I might have to take it outta the wall, I did not notice any brand name plate, but I will look more closely.

Cuz I am trying to keep things comfortable for my cat and it's 105-110 degrees during parts of the day.

Anyone answer the question about the power drain of fan vs fan+cooling?

Yeah, I am reluctant to do that because the unit is not mine. Still looking for an answer to my original question about a 220V plug in thermostat. Anyone?

[mm]

Well, the second one doesn't control the temp because the first one does. You have either a two-speed or three-speed fan.

The AC may also do heating, expecially if it came from a motel, where they often have an AC do double duty as a room heater. If that is the case, the center position is usually off, and one notch on either side is usually low-speed fan and AC or heat. TWo notches on either side is usually high-speed fan and AC or heat. You can tell by listening what position runs the fan at a higher speed.

More likely is that there is no heat, but there are two speeds for ventilation only, with no AC. That would also use a five position switch.

They could make, if they wished, room AC's with 3 speed fans but I don't know that anyone does.

Again, you can learn more about these controls by going to a store and seeing what sort of controls are present on other room ACs.

There might not be one you can find. OTOH, there is often a black and silver plate right under the cover panel that says the model number and how many amps it uses, etc. and that probably gives the brand.

I wouldn't take the AC out of the wall to learn the brand, because most breands do things the same way. In addition, even if somehow you draw the wrong conclusions about how the controls work, you'll realize it doesn't work that way eventually, and you can refine your conclusions.

Very good point.

[Logan Shaw]

Chilled water, as in the apartment complex puts a big central unit in someplace (maybe the roof) and pipes chilled water to all the apartment units. Then the apartment units each have a simple device with a coil and a blower motor.

The central unit that chills the water could either be a larger scale conventional compressor/refrigerant thing or a cooling tower (that uses evaporative cooling).

The reason I mention this is that there is one apartment complex here in town where I live that has a system like this. The complex is built so that there just a few buildings, and each building is a big long rectangle, which made it easy to run plumbing to every unit. Summers are hot here, and people who live there (of which I've known several) have loved that you can crank the A/C down as low as you want with paying a cent more (and same with heat in the winter). The negative side is that the entire system can either cool or heat, so the management has to make a decision about when to switch the entire complex from hot to cold as the seasons change, and residents have no control over that.

- Logan

[Jordan Hazen]

There are usually 2 or 3 "Cool" settings (adjusting fan/blower speed to Low/High, possibly medium, without directly affecting how often the compressor cycles on -- the Temperature adjustment does that), with an equal number of "Fan Only" modes which inhibit the compressor from coming on at all.

Some window units have a heating mode as well, but with only 4-5 dial settings, yours probably doesn't.

Here are some measurements from a small (5200 BTU/hr) 120V, Frigidaire window AC using a Kill-a-Watt meter, taken while outside temperature was about 10F warmer than inside.

Fan only (low) 58W Fan only (med) 70W Fan only (high) 95W

Compressor running, with fan on Low: starting surge 500W running 322W-433W (gradually increasing until compressor cuts off...)

So, subtracting 58W for the fan/blower, and neglecting that very brief startup surge, with this small AC the compressor itself consumes an average of ~320W, 5.5 times what the fan/blower pulls on Low. If it's very hot outside, the compressor can draw more power.

Your 220V window unit is probably at least double the cooling capacity and power consumption of this small one, but its fan vs. compressor wattage ratio is probably similar.

I've never seen this for sale as an all-in-one unit. It wouldn't be difficult to create one, using some contactors and a simple central-AC thermostat, without modifying the window unit itself, but perhaps not worth the trouble.

There are X10 power-control modules available for 220V sockets, though. I used one with a window AC at my old apartment, to let a nearby computer control it via power-line commands. One X10 tabletop controller has a timer feature built in, but I don't know of a simple one that can send commands based on temperature. You might want to try asking on the "comp.home.automation" newsgroup.

[hapless]

[e-mail] (Jordan Hazen) wrote in news:f5q3vj$kb1$ [e-mail]:

Thanks to Victor, finally got a good answer. What exactly does a "power control module" do?

[mm]

It controls the power, modulewise.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

It turns the power on and off. X-10 things are connected by radio waves and are somewhat more expensive because of that. Also because in this case, you would need, iiu x-10 c, an X-10 contol-unit to control the power control module. (I wasn't even trying here.)

[deang]

[Jordan Hazen]

Interesting. That has a British plug on it, which could be a problem if the original poster is from the US or Canada, but might work OK with adapters on either side (unless it cares about 60 vs 50 Hz).

[mrbrilliant]

replying to Doug Miller, mrbrilliant wrote: what a stupid response. If it had a temp control why would he be looking for another one?

[Ed Pawlowski]

What is stupid is replying to a 13 year old comment