Home Guides Home Home Improvement Troubleshoot, Fix and Repair Can You Hook Up an AC Unit Without a Window? Email Reddit All air conditioners need outdoor ventilation, but not all require a window. When you lack central air conditioning or would prefer not to utilize it, window AC units are a great way to survive a heatwave. Unfortunately, window units are specifically designed to operate mounted in a window. They expel warm air and water as byproducts of the cooling process, and there is no way to redirect these things if you attempt to run the unit anywhere other than a window. While you can’t run a window unit without a window, you can run a portable air conditioner sans window as long as you have another way of accessing the outside. Portable Units Portable air conditioners are set on wheels for easy relocation from one room to another. Because they do not need to be hoisted into a window, portable units eliminate the danger of giving yourself a hernia and the risk of accidentally dropping the air conditioner out the window.

But like window units, portable air conditioners need to vent warm air and water to the outside. They do this via one or two hoses, depending on the unit. These hoses must be run to a door or vented through an outside wall for ventilation. Portable air conditioners also work well when you have a window large enough for the drainage hose of a portable unit but too small to house a large window unit. /Getty Images Suggest a Correction How to Cut Baseboards to Install Wood ... Cutting baseboards to install wood flooring is a ... How to Install Glueless, Interlocking, ... Installing glueless, interlocking, floating vinyl ... How to Install Tack Strip for Carpeting When installing tack strip for carpeting, one thing ... Decorating Ideas for Blinds for Large Windows Blinds are a great way to give yourself more privacy, ... So, here's the dilemma. I want to install a window unit in my garage. I know how to do this, but my wife isn't supportive of the idea because we are trying to sell the house currently.

Anyways, rather than fighting this never-ending battle with her, I'm trying to see if I can somehow still use my window unit without actually cutting a hole in the wall, etc. An idea that I had was to figure out somehow how to route the exhaust to outside. york ac units pricesThis is obviously an issue because I would need an opening somewhere in my garage.home air conditioning repair service Is it possible to use my window A/C unit in my garage without actually installing it in the wall?prices for air conditioning units for central air You may be able to rig up something whether the compressor-side air intake and exhaust are piped outside, but the efficiency will be low and you may risk burning out the compressor by working it too hard.

If you want something you can install in a small opening, you might consider wheeled portable AC units which come with a flexible duct. If you're still determined to try it, note that window AC units have two sets of air intake & exhaust: the "inside" side that takes air from inside (usually through a large filter on the front), cools it, and blows it back inside the "outside" side that takes air from outside, heats it (with the heat removed from the cool side) and blows it out the back. On a typical window AC unit the "outside" air comes in through vents on the side and top of the unit and is blown out the coils at the back. So you will need to make sure both of those parts are getting the airflow they need. And they can't be the same duct, or else you will just get super hot air recirculating through the unit. You can place the whole unit outside make it water prof. Duct the (inside) which is the inflow side and the cool air to the inside of your garage.

If you have an attic access in your garage you should be able to vent it to the attic. If the AC unit is expendable, try running it face down. If it tolerates that, you could set it in the attic, on boards facing down that hatch (until it falls on a buyer/inspector and gets you sued). If you could rig two ducts through your attic access, but that's going to look much worse.Browse other questions tagged hvac air-conditioning garage or ask your own question. I recently bought a portable air conditioner and was wondering if it is absolutely necessary to vent it to the outside. I plan on using it in a room that doesn't have a window as was wondering if I could vent it to another room in the house without doing any damage (eg mold growing in the house). I understand the air coming out of the AC will be warm and would warm up the room it was venting into. It's possible but it will be creating a situation where your a/c is fighting against itself, because you'll simply be redistributing the heat inside your house, instead of putting it on the outside.

Because the warm air will creep back into the room you were cooling, so the a/c will be acting like a big do-nothing machine - to a degree anyway. Mold isn't going to be too concerning, however, because you won't be taking moisture out of the one room and putting it into the other - the moisture in the air in the warm room may increase a little (because warm air can hold more water vapor than cold air, so if moisture is there, it'll get picked up) but not to the degree it would if you were, say, venting a dryer into that room, where you'd be introducing lots of NEW moisture. All that said - I do not recommend this idea. Better to create a vent/opening (properly, of course, but that's a different question) in the outside wall to allow the warm air to go where it is supposed to. Moisture is a problem. Air conditioners actively remove moisture from the cooled space and deliver it into the warmed space. One of the main features of air conditioning is dehumidification. The warmer air in the discharge room may already be heavily saturated with moisture, and the even hotter air coming from the discharge chute will add to that moisture.

Prolonged use could lead to mold problems. Further, interior walls of houses are rarely insulated, so the walls between the cooled room and now super-heated room will transmit the heat back to the cooled room. Also, air leaks will filter some warm air back. This will not totally overcome the cooling effect (we often air-condition one room and not another) but it will diminish the value and efficientcy, since the now heated room is much warmer than it normally would be. Overall it is a bad idea. It is possible to create a small panel captive in a window that can hold the discharge chute of the air conditioner to vent outside. Yes, it will work in terms of cooling the room, but it won't be as efficient as an external vent. If you have the door to the cooled room closed and as air tight as possible, the adjacent room being warm is like the outside of the house being warm. Yes, there will be some unwanted heat transfer but there will still be a temperature differential.

The best thing is to try it and see if it is cool enough for you and if the cost in power is worth it. As for your question about moisture, the answer is "it depends". A typical full house AC has no moisture connection between the cool side and the warm side. All water taken out of the cooled air goes into a drip tray and then a drain. The more modern window AC are designed so that the water from the drip tray can hit the condenser coils to help cool them off, improving their SEER. This is a moisture path to the exhaust. Some portable AC have a drain hose and that means no added moisture in the exhaust. DeLonghi portable air conditioners exhaust warm moisture-filled air out their exhaust hoses, so there is less condensate to empty manually. But this means the exhaust has the extra moisture removed from the cooled air. However, if the cooled room does not have a constant source of additional moisture, this may not be a problem for the room receiving the exhaust.

It would be best if that room had an open window or two. No, then it will not be operating as an AC. Why would you want to? Trying to cool a large space beyond the ACs listed capacity? Or simply lacking a duct extension that will reach an external opening? How about keeping the portable air conditioner outside the window and vent in only the cool air in. Just the reverse of conventional portable ducting. This will keep all the noise and heat outside the window and only cool air is allowed to enter through duct. I have the same situation, only a sliding glass door. Next to it is a floor vent where the heat comes out during the winter. To fix the problem I removed the vent cap, and connected the hot air flow vent to the floor to blow into my duct work. The air actually cools off before it gets to any other room. I set the AC on a boot pan, and ran a round drainage hose out the sliding glass door. The door remains open about an inch, and I put a strip of foam down the door.