Does anyone know of a portable domestic (from price POV) air conditioning unit which will start operating when the mains is applied/restored? Preferably with remembered rather then default temperature settings. I want one for my computers, but I haven't got a high current rating UPS and we tend to have little power interruptions several times a week. In present conditions this results in the air conditioner not coming on again and the ambient temp rising about 10 degrees in 3 minutes! Its got to be a portable one for practical as well as financial reasons.
Please don't tell me to get a heat pump for the whole house - I realise this is a theoretical solution, like winning the lottery.
A portable air conditioner has to dump the heat somewhere - what sort of physical configuration do you have at present?
You might be better off with ducted airflow across the offending stack of servers rather than trying to cool down the room after the hot air has escaped into it. 10 degrees in a few minutes seems alarming to me.
Are you mining bitcoin or something?
An extractor fan and some permanent ducting might be a better bet.
This week I went in to yet another shop with a self-contained large noisey fan portable AC machine, pushing cold air one way and hot air in another direction. Telling the owner he was just wasting electricity heating the shop even highrt than it was solarheated, and he looked at me as some sort of nutter. I wonder how often this is repeated around the globe.
It has momentary pushbuttons to turn it on and adjust the temperature. I know some of these things have IR remote controls, but I haven't noticed an IR receiver on this (second hand) one.
I might resort to the same trick as with eearly ATX consumer PCs with no BIOS setting to turn on when power returns and put a capacitor across the momentary on switch!
I worked for a couple of years in an office that was rented out by an aircon firm. I learned that 90% of aircon units are never setup or operated properly. Although to be fair the one in my office at the moment looks like the flight deck of Concorde.
They made nearly all their money setting them up properly and then resetting them after the boss had "set them up properly" again.
Or to put it another way, aircon repairmen don't carry many spares :)
Where is the air intake for the a/c unit going to come from?
Obviously each to their own, but I'd take a long hard look at the unit's power consumption, whether you need to burn the power for the workload you have, and whether something smaller or newer would be better. Not only are old servers more power hungry then newer ones (especially at idle), but with active cooling you're paying for the energy twice: once to supply it to the server, and once to remove it as heat.
Given a/c units aren't cheap, you might find it's economical to replace the server with a more efficient one which will save you running costs all year round.
What kind of temps are you seeing? It's generally fine to run servers moderately hot - they can cope. Possibly the other gear is less forgiving. And I suppose it doesn't make it pleasant for the human occupants of the room.
Have you thought about DIY watercooling some of the gear instead? A radiator on the outside of the air brick might dump much of the heat outside.
I think my approach would be to work out what you need to do to simulate the buttons - it could be as simple as momentarily grounding them.
If that were the case, then a arduino nano or similar with a very simple program (or "sketch"). Basically power up, wait for a bit, do whatever you need to do to look like a "power on" button push, and then do nothing else until next powered on.
So each time it powers up, it simulates the button pushes for you, but does not stop you using the buttons yourself at other times.
If you want to make it posher, then add a temp sensor, and only turn it on when necessary.
You can also get various kinds of window locks, to prevent entry from the outside of the house, while a Window AC is present.
The shelf should have two arms underneath it, because the Window AC may not be mass balanced from left to right, and more of the mass could be on one end.
Your little mounting project also needs to be suited to the worst case weather. Like if a microburst comes through the neighbourhood, or an EF2 hurricane or something. A microburst is "like throwing buckets of water against the window". Your mount should be water tight.
Some apartment management, will not allow clients to do the install, and charge a fixed price to install Window AC for a client. That's their answer to sub-standard or dangerous mounts.
How would that work with a typical UK window which is an outward-opening casement:
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Older properties may have vertical sashes that slide up and down, but let's say most built after WWI have outward hinged windows.
(a newer type of window is 'tilt and turn', where the hinge axis can change between vertical and horizontal thanks to a cunning mechanism. But most of those still open outwards, and it's hard to imagine how to fit a window a/c unit to one)
On a window a/c unit, does it just present a square box to protrude into the room and you close the (sliding?) window to seal against the protrusion?
I can tell you, the window AC would NOT work on my place.
My back door has a sash suited to a portable unit (hose to sash hole adapter) and that's how I run the portable unit when the central air fails (which has happened).
My exterior bedroom window would have to be removed. My bedroom window is not sash type, and it opens outwards. The shape of the opening, is not suited to any alternative purpose particularly. It was only designed for ventilation, and not for AC units.
I would have to build a framework, to provide the same function as the sash in this video. And having a stand under the unit, from a "gravity" perspective, just makes sense, so the unit does not go flying when bad weather hits and something breaks on your window scheme.
"Installing a window air conditioner -- yikes version"
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You can see the temptation in that video, to do naughty things.
Some people have fitted cable schemes, so that if the unit "plummets" out of window, it does not strike the ground. And like a belayed climber, their descent is stopped. You need the appropriately strong tabs on an AC unit, to fit a cable stop.
Having the stand on the outside, at least serves as an acknowledgement that you "believe in gravity".
Not every install is easy peasy, and some require homeowner ingenuity to get it done. And with some margin to the unexpected.
When there is a microburst, and buckets of water are being thrown against the bedroom window (which is how I detect a microburst is here), that's the time you want the unit to be water tight. This is not something you would normally plan for, but it's a reality now. We also have a tornado warning system now, whereas before we did not. It's for smartphone users (of course).
They are available in Spain. I see that, for example:-
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a sort of Spanish B&Q has a range. Search for
aire acondicionado portátil
I think we have small houses and small windows. I suppose it can also be a challenge to fit the compressor for split units on the outside of some UK houses, but
It sounds like those units would be difficult to fit in the UK, because most windows are folding not sliding, and the older wooden ones that are vertically sliding probably don't have enough structural integrity to hold a heavy unit like that. Generally those are in older properties where putting brackets on the wall outside (especially at the front) wouldn't be allowed without planning permission anyway.
Is there a common solution for window a/c units on folding windows in North America?
I think for most even the front is OK so long as its more than 1 metre from the boundary. It could be a problem for the front of a terraced property I suppose, or if you are in a conservation area.
You need a lot more air volume through the room then. And in the Winter, you want that hot air going into the house. Well I would with what it's cost to make it hot in the 1st place.
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