Maybe this should be a separate thread. At any rate, it is now.
The hose in the previous thread is the drain hose for a "portable" AC**,
1/4" ID, 5/16" OD. I have 3 choices.
1) I could get a 20 foot piece of hose and run it all the way to the ground.
2) I could use the 10 foot piece I have now and just let it dangle and dribble water when it's dehumidifying. There's nothing much underneath, just grass or dirt.
3) Because the 2nd floor has an overhang, the downspout goes at a 45^ or more nearly horizontal angle just below the second floor, in order to reach the wall for the first floor. I can use choice 2 for a while and then eventually poke a hole in the downspout in this angled portion and stick the end of the tube in that.
Option 3 appeals to me. Have I failed to notice some problem with it?
I don't know much about portable A/C units. Does the discharge from your po rtable unit include your typical A/C condensate? Are your downspouts connec ted to a storm sewer?
The EPA frowns on AC condensate in storm sewers and I've seen some threads related to town codes frowning on condensate water being discharged onto th e ground. The town codes may be related more to furnace condensate which is more acidic, but the following EPA doc specifically mentions "air conditio ner condensate".
Duh, I don't know. I would think that's the same as distilled water. Unless the aluminum pan the AC consensate sits in provides its own ions or something, which I would not expect. . At any rate, my output is basically distilled water. Every time I pour it down the shower drain, I keep wondering if I should be using it to make a cloud chamber or cool a nuclear pile or something.
No.
I read it, but it didnt' explain what was wrong with AC condensate.
Okay. I'll consider it. ;-) I guess that means at the start of every summer I'll take the hose off and blow through it and decide if it's clogged. It's only 10 feet so blowing shouldn't be too hard. In fact I should do that now to establish a base-line blowing experience.
I suppose it can also happen in the mddle of the summer. I'll get to that later.
For those of you who remember my prior threads, the one about gettting a smooth cut in fiberboard and the one about plunge cuts had to do with making the window adapter for this thing. My friend might have the original plastic one but hasnt' found it yet. It's long enough for a horizontal opening or most vertical ones. Mine, 44 inches high, came out pretty good. The cut with a fine tooth blade is quite smooth on both sides -- any extra material rubs off -- and the plunge cut went fine. I had tried before to make one, but hadn't tried as hard and just gave up and drilled a hole.
The hole, a rectangle with semi-circular ends, is almost perfect as a hole. It would have been better if I hadn't drawn it in 3 slightly different locations. ;-) I lost track of which line was which, and sometimes the sun was so dim I couldn't see the lines at all. So it wasnt quite big enough, and I didnt know where to make it bigger. I should have measured the width and made sure I didnt make it wider than that. So the hole is a little too big, but still don't come close to letting light in, for example. But the 4 little tabs that hold it in place don't have much overlap on the fiberboard. They seem to be holding and I put a pillow under the adapter to take the weight off if it. If worst comes to worst, I'll patch the hole and make a better one at the other end.
In threads months ago, I asked about portable ACs, and at the same time I happened to mention them to a friend who said, "I have one you can borrow." and he brought it over a week later. The model is MPK10-CR, and on the webpages for this model, there was a brand name, but on the manual, there is no brand name!! Okay, googling the model number gives the brand, Everstar
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There is even a webpage that says it has some replacement parts, like the remote for $30 (another place wants $73.50!)
The mixed reviews I got here plus the difficulty in deciding which one to buy means I probably would not have bought one, so I'm very lucky. So far, just 3 nights, it's very nice. It doesn't make much noise, my biggest worry. It rolls verrrry well.
I can feel the white flexible 4" hose and it gets warm, so all the heat that gets radiated back into the room is waste, but everything has some waste. It's a one hose device.
I wanted to make sure it worked before I drilled a hole in the floor and it does. It has 3 settings fan, dehumidiy**, and AC, and 3 fan speeds. Dehumify only works with the highest fan speed.
The temp is adjustable 2 degrees F or one degree C at a time.
It has a delayed on setting, by the half hour for the first 10 and by the hour up to 24. I don't envision ever using that. It has a delayed but automatic off setting, and because I'm afraid the bucket will overflow, I use that all the time. Even when I sleep, I haven't had nerve enough to let it run for more than 5 hours. So far, 4 hours has put about 6 inches in a 5 gallon bucket on 3 occasions, and put in less than an inch on two others, each of them following 6 inch periods. I guess after it takes the humidity out, there is little left, but somehow the humidity came back 16 hours later. I still feel the water outut is unpredictalbe, so I'm not setting the timer for more than 6 hours until I have the outside-the-house drain installed.
It even has the ability to start delayed and then run until a delay time is over, but I can't tell if the hours overlap or are cumulative. I suspect no one uses that and that's why no one ever noticed that the manual doesn't say which it is.
It has a complicated arrangement for collecting the water. It has a built in water tank that is persnickity and if it's not in just right, only the fan works. It's settled down now, but at first, it would look like it was in perfectly but I"d still have to take it out and put it back in again, and then it would be okay. Same issue if it's full of water, and of course that's a good thing.
The tank fills automatically in the AC setting, but since it holds less than a gallon, I don't see how anyone can use it for anything.
I'm using a separate 5-gallon bucket.
And for some reason, the instructions say to do things differently in the dehumitify setting. In that case, one is supposed to uncork the rubber drain plug half-way up the back of the device, and take out the plastic plug in the water tank, and run an external hose from the drain to the water tank. There must be something quite different between AC and dehumify and it seems to me they noticed this after the whole thing was designed. But since I'll never use dehumidify, it doesn't matter. (I'll never use fan either, because I have better fans that don't weigh
85 pounds, that I can put where I want, and that blow where I want them to.)
It also has some sort of drain outlet at the very bottom and I thought I read something about that but can't find it now. I don't know what the difference is, There are a couple references to floor drains in the basement, but I'm surprised they put a separate outlet in for that.
It also came with a remote, which he hasn't found, but even though it has remote controls for lots of functions, I can only imagine using on or off and even they don't seem important.
My only real complaint is that the buit-in thermometer only displays in fan and dehumid, so if the AC is on, I'd have to turn the AC off to see it. What's good is that the AC won't start again until it's waited some length of time, but since the AC light goes on, and because of something else the manual says, I know that it's automatic.
**I tested dehumidify when it was still in the hall. Since that put out some water, it was almost certain that the AC setting would work too
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