Casement window seal for Lidl portable air conditioner

Can't help I'm afraid . . . what's the unit like? I bought a cheap but effective air conditioner a while back but found it too noisy. Couldn't be in the room while it was running.

For the hose I just dangled it out of a Velux, super lo-tech.

I just trimmed it with scissors.

I am working on a Mark 2 solution, which is wood or plastic attached with Velcro. It needs to be nore substantial because we have a curious cat with sharp claws.

Poking the hose out of the window doesn't really work, because warm air comes back in.

For my Honeywell a/c, I made my own out of a piece of 4mm twin-walled polycarbonate sheet, 1225 x 525 mm, with a hole near the bottom of one side* to take a 150mm vent. To take that a 150 mm spigot was used which was fixed to the sheet with four small nuts and bolts. It is a bit like this one, but has a cover:

It is held onto the window frame with around a dozen pieces of white Velcro.

Indeed, which is why I made a full size cover for the window.

The AC came with a spigot and hole suitable for an up-and-down window. That works nicely for most of the side of the casement. The top is a triangular gap, and that (plus the remaining part of the side) is a trimmed part of the usual thing you can buy. The bottom is a substantial piece of wood that seals the gap as well as holding the casement at the right angle (it's clamped to the window sill). I am just going to replace the fabric part, and again use white Velcro with either wood or polycarbonate.

Not an exact solution but could be adapted. We have a number of fly screens that we install during the summer they consist of aluminium frames with plastic corner joiners that have steel plates inside.Neodium magnets are screwed to the inside window frame coinciding with the corners. These hold the frames very firmly flat against the window frame. If instead of the fly mesh if plywood or better still plexiglass was attached to the frame I am sure the arrangement would work equally as well for a AC vent hose.

I made something similar (2mm acrylic sheet). Problem was that the window was high up so I had to extend the pipes. I found there was so much heat leaking back into the room via the hot exhaust pipe walls that the AC unit was unable to keep the room cool. And it made such a racket but had to run continuously because it couldn't keep the temperature down.

Theo

These things can't be that efficient. The hot air you expel from the room has to be replaced my air from somewhere else. Won't this still be hotter than the desired temperature? Or is this a dual-hose design which avoids this...

Dave

I had an old a/c unit which made a racket and just produced hot air. I eventually replaced it and couldn't believe how efficient and quiet the replacement was, particularly at low fan speed. It also expels any water condensed through the hot air vent and so doesn't need regular emptying like the old one. It's the one here:

The corrugated vent hose is of much better quality than the one used with the malfunctioning original and although it gets warm, it's nowhere near as hot as the original. I had to wrap that with bubble polythene to stop it leaking heat back into the room!

Yes, by pumping air out of the room it's replaced by air leaks. In theory you pump out 'hot' air and pull in 'warm' air so maybe you win (even after dumping the A/C power into the 'hot' output), but it's a constant battle. Having even more of your 'hot' leak through the duct walls into the room just makes the battle harder.

I did 3d print a dual hose adapter for my machine I found on t'internet, but it turned out it didn't fit. But with the hot hose problem I'm not sure it would have helped that much - and it was just way too loud to have running full stop.

Theo

I bought a lagging sleeve for the pipe, and that works pressty well.

It's an awkward setup because it's a tilt swivel window that can operate as a large casement (like about 1.5 metres square). By using it as a casement, I can get a decent gap at the bottom which the hose (with adaptor) will go through.

That enables me to put the unit very near it. I made a platform from Dexion and timber so the the hose is almost horizontal, and reasonably short. This all helps to minimise losses.

On a very hot day it takes about 90 minutes to reduce temperatire to a comfortable level.