We live in an old farmhouse with a boiler and radiator heating system. Air conditioning is done by window units except for the living room, which has a very old through-the-wall unit. As you can see in the picture linked belo w, the placement is very bad but that's where they put it 30+ years ago.
The unit is under the porch roof on the right side in the picture, right be hind the hanging plant. When it's on, the hot air exhaust blows right acros s the door so you get hit with a blast of hot air when you come in or out. Also, since it's under the roof, circulation is poor so I imagine that a lo t of that hot air gets sucked back into the cooling air ports, reducing eff iciency.
I want to replace the unit this summer and there's really no other spot to put it in the living room. Besides, I'd hate to have to cut another hole in the wall.
I had an idea to get a new unit (the room size requires about 11K BTU) and mount it in the same place. I'd build a sheet metal plenum to catch the hot air exhaust and run an exhaust duct up through the porch roof. This would eliminate the blast furnace effect when opening the door and hopefully make the unit more efficient since it wouldn't be recirculating the hot air. So unds weird, I know. Any comments from the HVAC experts on the group?
The other idea was a split unit but they cost twice what a through-the-wall unit costs and need professional installation.
I could also get two window units as a last resort.
Paul