Anyone uses portable AC?

[Amanda]

My AC - 6 yrs old - needs service. Beutler is coming on July 27. I got a Soleus (K32, I think) from Fry's for $499. It's 12,000BTU. Are these worth keeping? How about service contract? And ..

today, I saw another Model at Fry's - I didn't see it yesterday. Soleus LX120 which also is

12, 000 BTU but has heater feature. It's the same price (499.95) as the other one after manufacturer rebate. I am thinking to get that one, if I plan to keep it. My question is, is this kind of dual things a good thing to have. BTW, what type of heater is it?

BTW, I am using it a small room - office.

See at

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[Matthew Reed]

Does yours work well? I have the 10,000 btu model. It is a worthless piece of junk. It will cool a small closet and that is about all. They have a fatal design flaw - the high pressure side is cooled with inside air and then vented to the outside, which results in a constant flow of hot air into the room. I'm trying to figure out some way to draw outside air to cool the high pressure side, like most a/c units do.

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[Big Al]

Some of them have two hoses. One out, one in. I was in Lowe's the other day, they had a demo running. Covered the inlet with my hand. Guess what? The outlet was still blasting. So what the hell is the other hose for? Just for grins, I put the two hoses together. So the hot air should have entered the condenser and made it real hot. It didn't.

Al

[Amanda]

Initially (before centra Ac issue), I bought Royal Aire 10,000BTU form seras and used in bedroom useless, IMO.

Ths one was bought because AC broke but now, after reading your design flaw info, I am returning it. Noth worht keeping it. x x x

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[John]

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We live in the deep south and air conditioning is an absolute necessity.

After our central A/C died several times with the outdoor temperature in the

90's or 100's with high humidity (try getting service on a weekend!), I decided to get some window A/C's as backups.

I did some research and bought a 110 volt Frididaire FAC107P1A (10,000 BTUs) for $200 at Home Despot for the first floor. It has a 10.8 EER (which is just a wee bit shy of the the most efficient model of 11.0 EER. The kicker is that it has a full five year in-home warranty.

Now, instead of using the giant electricity-sucking central A/C which costs over $300/month to run and $150 in yearly maintenance costs, I use just this litle window A/C which I can pick up by myself (and I ain't no big Bubba with size 14 boots). The room humidity has dropped from 55% to 45%.

As small as this A/C unit is, it cools the entire first floor to the mid-70's and we have a southern exposure with no shade trees. All the houses here have a lousy 4" insulation.

I turn on the central A/C every few months to keep to make sure that it keeps lubricated but I've stopped using it. Now, I used the central A/C as a backup and cancelled the yearly maintenance.