Our wooden summer house in the garden (essentially a large shed) was intended to be used as a kiddies play house, but with the recent hot weather it is useless between 9am and 9pm, as it is too bl**dy hot !
I have been looking at whether to install an a/c unit into it. As the building is about 6m x 3m I do not think a portable one is up to the job, so I have been looking at the split units from B&Q and global-cooling
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Does anyone have any experience of installing these units, how good they are, and what the backup and warranty are like. I have been looking at the DC invertor models which apparently are more efficient, but I am not sure if this marketing spiel or not.
I have read some posts on a refridgeration-engineer forum that slates these DIY systems, but I am not sure if this is just sour grapes, as they are losing out on business.
That sounds ecologically and economically ghastly - the resource and energy costs would seem huge for the benefit of the few days a year we have high temperatures. Why not DIY a swamp cooler or build a cooler like this
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, rather than pay over the odds for a better way of burning scarce hydrocarbons.
's a coil of copper tube, fixed to a domestic fan and with cold water pumped through the coil. The cooling is done by a domestic freezer. For an engineering student, it's pretty bad.
I fitted one last year in an attic. Relatively straight forward. I tend not to go in the attic at all in the very hot weather. Although the ac works well the roof is so hot it is like standing next to an extremely hot radiator and no amount of cooling from the ac will remedy that. It is perfectly adequate in moderateley hot weather but you situation is not quite the same as me trying to use the loft. This is for a model railway by the way. As to using energy to make use of a facility that you have I don't see what the problem is. That haven't outlawed V8 4x4's yet or Jags and vitually every office and supermarket in the country is airconditioned. When Tony Blair gives up jetting overseas on holiday then I will know it is time to worry. That would be the place to start.
Used to use a portable A/C unit, with a hose out of the window, in our tiny "toy room" - 9ft by 6ft, 2 beefy computers and two bodies for myself and the wife to play silly computer games for 12 hrs a day. The room is west facing and catches the full sun from mid-day through to sun-down. Relatively new build house - well insulated with double glazing (of course).
The room was unbearable.
The portable A/C unit worked as well as could be expected, but having to vent through a window, it drew warm air back into the room. Noisy, and have to be emptied (condensate) every three or four hours. In the end, gave it away on Freecycle.
Now, got a 9,000 BTU split unit from B&Q. Despite some neighbourly objections to having the outdoor unit on the side of the house (something I'm trying to resolve, despite B&Q's absolutely crap ordering/delivery service - soon going to hit 8 weeks from the original order, still with no delivery!), it actually works very well. It certainly cools this room (which I'm currently imprisoned in, from the heat of the rest of the house) and will gradually cool the rest of the house. We find that it cools the bedroom (next room) sufficiently that we can actually have a decent nights sleep in this weather (for anyone googling this later, currently hitting 34-36C mid-afternoon, on a mid-July day).
Not only does it cool, but it de-humidifies as well - probably as big of an issue in maintaining a pleasant atmosphere. The drain pipe for the condensate is currently dripping about every second, that should give you an idea of how much water it is extracting from the air.
The indoor unit is quiet (you can hear it, but its quieter than a desk fan, for example). The system also doubles up as a climate-controlled heater/cooler, to maintain a temperature, if you need such a device.
Total cost to us was some £450 for the two units, £15 for the wall bracket and £15 for the core-drill. I've now got a 2m extension hose on order (as mentioned above) - £65 to allow the unit to be floor standing
- the unit as delivered only has a 4m hose between indoor and outdoor units.
Is it worth it?, well apart from the apathy from the neighbours which I'm trying to resolve, just to be able to use the house in this weather and to get a decent nights sleep is enough justification for me.
For those about to spout on about more insulation - that's fine provided that you can keep the heat out of the room in the first place - 9 hours in the sun through a 4.5' x 3.5' window, with 2 powerful computers and 2 large people and the insulation is exacerbating the problem because we cannot dump the heat out of the house. The A/C was a solution to this very problem.
Regarding after-sales support - well, I'm rapidly gaining an opinion of what that's likely to be from B&Q - and there's no much in the way of obvious support from the manufacturer - so I cannot comment.
Yup go along with that certainly. My workshop only has 50mm of jablite insulation but it would be well within the capability of a moderate air con unit to heat or cool it from that starting point. Without any insulation however you would be fighting a loosing battle.
If you also fitted a heat pump type air con that would take care of heating the building in the cooler parts of the year.
I'd have thought a couple of decent extractor fans would be a better (cheaper, more efficient) place to start. If you can keep the air moving it'll get rid of most of the heat, but clearly won't get the temperature below that of outside (may not be a problem?).
Evaporative cooling maybe... hmm, would trickling water onto the roof/walls be effective in neutralising the absorbed heat?
Insulate before considering ac, as has been said. But also I'd say shade the whole thing (eg with a deciduous climber) before shelling out on insulation. You may find thats all thats needed. And if you do need to insulate, the shading will work with the insulation to reduce heat input further.
Start by adding shade (external to the shed, trees, sails, fence, etc.). Its a lot cheaper to add shade to keep the heat off than it is to move it later. Even if you do buy AC you will still want the shade so that it doesn't have to work too hard.
Yes, this was my thought too. The idea of spending a ton of money trying to cool a garden shed for a few extra days a year doesn't make sense to me. Alternatively, why not spend the money on a paddling pool instead?
With my kids play house I insulated (50mm) the roof, covered with boarding and fitted a fan in the apex. Wired up using tuff kiddie proof cable (like SWA but the steel mesh) and outdoor rated switch and works well. Kids disappear in and when they do come out don't appear to be too hot.
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