Portable Air Conditioners

Yes, but that's the only one that is why car aircon needs regassing and fridges don't

But none of that causes the aircon to need regassing, it's leaks that do

Again, that isn't what produces the need for regassing

Sure, but that's a separate issue to why they need regassing

No, they're pretty useless. All they do is force down all the very hot air which has risen to ceiling level! And a lot of them are not as quiet as you think unless they are carefully balanced after installation. Also, cheap AC fans sometimes have motors with an annoying hum if they are even slightly loose in construction. DC fans are considerably better, but much more expensive.

I installed this one yesterday:

It is quieter than stand fans for comparable airflow, and it can push a lot more on higher settings. The body is on a gimbal, and I could move it so that all the blades were the same distance from the ceiling which removed some minor wobble. It's a DC fan with 6 speeds. There's also an LED lamp which is bright enough as a central room light at adjustable brightness and colour temperature.

It's a bit of a PITA to install: the hieroglyphics fail to mention that it comes part assembled and you need to *disassemble* some of those parts in order to run cables through it. I also had to cut away some of the plasterboard to run the former ceiling rose cables behind the control box which is pushed up against the ceiling with little space to spare. I used the supplied screws thinking for something this important they wouldn't be made of Chinese cheese, but they still were (all heads stripped and one snapped).

There's a bit of blade tip whine when you are standing near the tips, but you don't hear it when sitting down. That's probably because noise is reflecting off the 8' ceiling: the fan is designed for that, but we don't have the luxury of high ceilings like hot countries do (where everyone has ceiling fans).

When buying, look for ceiling fans with a cfm or m3/hr figure. Anything that doesn't give it (hello Argos) is just a fancy lampshade.

Theo

You can get cylinders of the appropriate refrigerant and a gauge with a fitting to DIY it. The purists / professionals utter dire warnings about using them saying existing refrigeration should be removed and then a measured amount put back with the right lubricants etc. They are probably right for a newish vehicle but on an older one it could be worth the gamble. Cost of Gas and gauge will be more than a top up at say Kwic fit but there is usually enough in the cylinder to do it 3 or 4 times .My 13 year old car needs topping up about every 9 to 10 months. Seemed to be struggling yesterday so spent 10 minutes this morning topping up, now so cool the missis wanted to go for a drive somewhere. I anticipate the next top. up will be around February 2027 but if its a little earlier say December for efficient winter demisting I won’t mind . Now if I had to do it every couple of months it would need a garage investigating. Still on my first cylinder of gas and when it finally empties you get a something back for the empty cylinder if you by another and kept it in good condition.

GH

It's now £80 for a cylinder of R134a from Halfords:

It would have been cheaper to get a place to do it, but nobody nearby had a machine for hybrids (the regular oil kills them so must avoid cross contamination).

Beware cheap cans of R134a 'replacement': they're propane, which is cheap but very flammable...

Theo

car compressors have a seal on the shaft from the driving pulley which can leak.

Fridge compressors have a motor sealed within teh refrigerant so the main source of leaks is contained.

Looks good, and the price has come down a lot for DC fans. I got one of these in 2014 for the new conservatory:

Unfortunately, nine years later it started playing up. I bought a new remote control receiver (fairly easy to fit), but it made no difference. It was not possible to get a new motor, so I gave up. I removed the blades as the light still works. As I was using horizontal blinds high up to provide shade in summer (but below the fan), it really served little purpose anyway.

Last year I bought a 15" fan on a 100 cm stand for £10 at Lidl and use that instead!

Why would worry about an inflammable gas in a petrol car?! Anyway, propane (as R290) is used in many home air conditioners these days (it's used in my Honeywell). Also, if his car is 13 years old, it is likely to use R-1234yf rather than R134A.

Gone up about £15 since I bought mine then, still with £10 back thats £70 for another 3 or 4 fills compared to about £75 each time. Worth looking at KF around Black Friday week as they often have a £25 deal though that may be nearer £30.00 next time. If does come around again I’ll get them to do the Winter top up and save the cylinder contents .

Of course there is the fudge factor of finding the LP port , mine is visible and easily accessed from the top but I suspect not all cars are like that .

GH

Fark, my 20 year old Hyundia Getz has never needed topping up and the aircon is just as good as it always was and I use it every day in the summer here

No, it is R134A and I can’t count. Delivered December 2011 so 14 and a bit now. I think they changed to the later and more expensive gas for the model update shortly after, I missed compulsory running lights by a whisker as the updated version had them. Bought it new from funds in the bank despite all the views about how much in depreciation you lose. That doesn’t matter as I never intend to sell it until it it finally falls apart ,and it shows no sign of of being at that stage yet so the older it gets the better the investment. turns out.

GH

Because propane is a gas at ambient pressure. If you have a gas leak, which you presumably do somewhere otherwise you wouldn't be regassing, that's propane leaking next to a hot engine - or a flamethrower, if something goes wrong such as having an accident.

Your home fridge or aircon tries rather hard not to have leaks, and harder not to have a source of ignition nearby. They tend not to get into crashes.

R1234yf is more expensive than R134a - £100 at Halfords (minus £10 deposit for the cylinder).

It's telling that no cars are fitted with propane (R290) as refrigerant - bet the manufacturers could save a bob or two that way.

Theo

Perhaps, but it's low 100s of ml (of liquid propane) in an average car a/c system. I'd be much more worried about a leak in the fuel pipe from the petrol tank. In any case, you're hardly going to get a flame from the sort of slow "pinhole" leak in an a/c pipe or joint that usually leads to regassing being required. Even if it leaked with a car stationary it would settle at ground level as it's heavier than air. If it ruptured in a crash, you'd have other things to worry about - such as the fuel pipe.

Maybe propane in a car's a/c system is the least of your worries:

I wouldn't be surprised to see a re-evaluation of propane for a car's a/c considering the move to EVs.

Then you have a leak.

A fully sealed A/C system will go on indefinietly

You may be right to criticise Argos now, but they had a product which I bought from them a long time ago (late 1980s or early 1990s?) which I am still happy with.

It came as an assemble it yourself set of parts which when assembled provided a 4-blade fan above three light fittings with glass shades. It was in the days of incandescent bulbs and the instructions said to use only 60W or lower bulbs. As a fan, it has a reversing switch, so it can blow air from the ceiling level downwards, or blow air from the room towards the ceiling where it spread out and descended again near the walls. The fan has a small chain (too long as supplied but easily shortened) that operates a 4-position switch (Off, Fast, Medium, Slow, before returning to Off) which functions in either direction as determined by the reversing switch. Out of the box it was wired so that the fan was only powered when the lights were on, but I rewired it so that the wall switch just worked the lights and the fan was solely controlled by the 4-position switch. That way, the lights and fan are independent of each other.

Blowing downwards works well in hot weather. It is true that when first switched on it draws the hottest air from the ceiling, but after a couple of minutes that heat has been blown downwards and it does feel surprisingly cool to sit under after that. Blowing upwards is designed for winter use. The hottest air is near the ceiling and by blowing the cooler air from the room in that direction it brings the heat that would be wasted up there into the level where it can be felt by the room occupants, and completely draught free if the fan runs at its lowest speed.

With incandescent bulbs, it was very useful having more than one bulb, because if one bulb failed there was still light from the working ones rather than a dark room. Gradually as bulbs failed they were replaced by newer products, so I have gradually gone from incandescents to CFLs to LEDs. I replaced the last of the CFLs last year.

I have looked at the light and fan ranges offered now by B&Q and Amazon, and there is nothing remotely similar to what I bought from Argos. Why do the really useful products go obsolete?

This is a scam product - have a look at the Truspilot reviews which show that unless the heat extracted from a room is vented elsewhere it is just returned to the room it was extracted from. In other words, it is just a fan, not a cooling device. DONT BUY IT. IT IS A SCAM. And if you do buy it, there is no way of getting your money back from the seller.

Hence the elephants trunk, they're all like that, where you you expect the heat to go?

The Natural Philosopher snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid wrote:

Highly likely , its done about 180,000 miles so the shaft seal has seen a lot of rotations.The car has done more but one of its few faults was aircon failure due to a badly designed or positioned metal pipe that got worn through. Redesigned pipe fitted under warranty. The very slow leak seemed to appear after the engine was removed at 130,000 to have a its timing chain and clutch done but didn’t show up for around 18 months so would be difficult to say it was them definitely .What I can’t do I usually get the local garage down the road do but they don’t do AC or have the equipment and have no desire to do so. , booked up usually for 4 weeks on ordinary work. That would mean finding somewhere else and I expect labour costs are at least around £60-£70 an hour now . If it needed doing every few weeks I would pay out but for around £20.00 a shot every 10 months from a cylinder kept in the shed taking about 10 mins I’ll opt for the easy option. Cost me more than that to get home or occupy myself for the day if the car was in a suitable garage as the nearest will be at least 10miles away. The one nearer I won’t deal with as they failed to fix a fairly simple electrical fault, took it back and they still didn’t fix it and then tried to charge me for the time looking. Turns out they didn’t have suitable Diagnostic equipment for the model despite taking the job on , how do I know ? The dash cam recorded them saying so. When I brought it up when declining to pay the reply was “ Oh f*ck off to a main dealer then, were not auto electricians”.

GH

One of the most staggering things about my first experience of the Mojave Desert in August, was watching the heat haze off the refrigerators sized aircon units strapped to every timber frame suburban bungalow.

Whose needs insulation or clever design when you have unlimited cheap electricity?