Portable air conditioners are great cooling options for rooms and apartments without access to central AC. They're easy to install, add instant cooling, and come with tons of features for simple operation. But you should consider these 5 things before purchasing a portable AC for your home or office. Portable air conditioners are rated in British Thermal Units (BTUs) per hour. Models with higher BTU ratings offer more cooling power and can cover larger rooms. It's important to buy a portable AC that's appropriate for your space to make sure you don't waste energy or waste your money on one that can't adequately cool your room. In a standard room with 8-foot ceilings, use these estimations: Note: The guidelines above are not exact. Environmental factors may increase or decrease the number of BTUs required. For example, rooms with poor insulation or heat-producing appliances will require models with slightly more BTUs. If you have any questions about what size you should buy, feel free to call us at 1-800-934-9194.

During the cooling process, portable ACs produce hot air that must be exhausted out of their hose (or hoses). All the models we sell come with an included window kit to expel the warm air outside. This means most portable ACs need to plugged in within a few feet of a window. Placing them next to a window in the easiest and quickest way to install them, but you do have other options. For more information, check out our How to Vent Your Portable AC article. Additionally, some commercial ACs, like Movincool portable air conditioners, are available with installation kits that allow the hot air to vent out through a drop ceiling or an adjacent wall. The only maintenance you really have to worry about is draining collected moisture. All portable ACs pull moisture out of the air as the cool; it's just part of the process. There are multiple ways to get rid of this moisture: Manually remove the pan and empty it as needed, attach a hose for gravity draining to a different location, or use a pump to push water up and out of the AC and into another location.

The most hassle-free portable ACs, however, feature fully self-evaporative designs. These models, such as the unique line of DeLonghi air conditioners and the efficient Whynter portable ACs, evaporate all or most of the water they collect. Since the moisture is automatically removed, you won't have to worry about draining them, and if you do, it's only occasionally.ac and heater will not come on Check out our article discussing fully self-evaporative portable AC brands for more information.do you need to cover your ac unit You'll also need to clean filters as directed and defrost the unit fully if ice builds up on the coils. mobile ac unit reviewsOther than that, most PACs offer a "set it and forget it" approach to maintenance.

Portable ACs do create noise in your space. They're working to cool your space, and unlike window ACs, their entire bodies are housed inside your room. Any machine that generates airflow is going to produce some level of noise. If you're concerned about the noise level, be sure to compare the decibel (dB) levels produced by different units. Soleus Air portable air conditioners, for instance, are among the quieter models on the market, reaching 45 dBs on their highest settings. If you're concerned about the noise level in your home, call us at 1-800-934-9194. We can point you in the right direction. If you're concerned about energy efficiency (for the sake of the environment and/or your monthly energy bills), then you should look at a PAC’ s Energy Efficiency Ratio (EER). The EER tells you how many BTUs are used for each watt of power. In other words, units with higher EERs are more energy efficient.Toyotomi models are known for their energy efficiency. For more information on any specific air treatment solutions, browse our products and visit our Knowledge Center.

Contact one of our air treatment specialists at 1-800-934-9194. AS if taken utterly by surprise, residents flocked to home improvement centers and appliance stores last weekend in a frenzied effort to ride out summer's first wave of heat and humidity in the cool breeze of a brand new air-conditioner. In one large store in Secaucus, N.J., for example, sweaty Sunday shoppers picked over the remains of what was left on the shelves while a store employee proudly observed that on the preceding day more than $68,000 in air-conditioners went out the door.Experts in home cooling say they are hardly surprised by the mad dash to the appliance stores. What does surprise them is that so many people who buy air-conditioners end up with the wrong size and those who already have them fail to use them efficiently.''One of the biggest mistakes people make is not buying the right-sized unit,'' said Marc Rosenbaum, a professional engineer and a principal of Energysmith, an engineering company based in Meridan, N.H. Mr. Rosenbaum says the most significant factor used to determine the appropriate size for an air-conditioner -- whether a room air-conditioner or a central air-conditioning system -- is solar heat gain through windows.

And that, he said, is rarely taken into account during the purchase.''Air-conditioners for houses can't be sized by rules of thumb,'' he said, adding that with two rooms of equal size, one room could be three or four times more difficult to cool than the other if the first room has significant solar heat.Still, Mr. Rosenbaum said, most people shopping for air-conditioners determine the size of the unit they need by checking charts in stores or by consulting with retail sales representatives. Neither strategy, however, offers any guarantee of success.For example, the Carrier Corporation, an air-conditioner manufacturer based in Syracuse, recommends an 8,500 B.T.U. air-conditioner for a 400-square-foot room. The company suggests increasing the capacity by 10 percent for sunny rooms and decreasing it by the same amount for heavily shaded rooms.In addition, the company suggests adding 600 B.T.U.'s for each additional person if an area is routinely occupied by more than two people and by 4,000 B.T.U.'s if the room to be cooled is a kitchen.

Isaac Ettedgui, vice president of the Five Boro Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Corporation in Manhattan, had an easier way of figuring the appropriate size for a room air-conditioner.''You multiply the length of the room by the width to get the area and you multiply that by 40,'' Mr. Ettedgui said. So, for example, a room that is 20 by 20 feet would be 400 square feet multiplied by 40. The resulting number -- 16,000 -- is the B.T.U. capacity necessary for that size room.''If the room is a kitchen or has a ceiling more than eight feet high, you multiply by 45,'' he said.Without accounting for kitchens or high ceilings -- or sunny or shady windows -- Mr. Ettedgui's calculation results in almost twice as much air-conditioner as Carrier would recommend for the same sized room.It's better to be safe than sorry,'' Mr. Ettedgui said. ''You're always better off getting something bigger than you need.''Though many may share that philosophy, it may not always work.''When it comes to cooling, bigger isn't always better,'' said John Proctor, managing partner of the Proctor Engineering Group, a San Rafael, Calif., engineering company that specializes in climate control.

''But most salespeople err on the side of caution.'' Mr. Proctor said that people who bought air-conditioners larger than necessary would end up paying more for their comfort -- and feel less comfortable -- in the long run.''When an air-conditioner first starts up it's very inefficient and removes very little moisture,'' Mr. Proctor explained. ''So when it's hot and humid and really icky, a big air-conditioner in a small room cools the room quickly but removes very little humidity.'' Cooling the room too quickly, Mr. Proctor said, causes the air-conditioner to cycle on and off more frequently than it is supposed to while removing less humidity than it should. As a result, he said, people in the room end up feeling ''clammy and icky'' rather than cool and dry. Then, to make matters worse, people lower the thermostat to a cooler setting in an effort to make the room more comfortable.''But the thermostat is only measuring temperature, not humidity,'' Mr. Proctor pointed out, adding that the smartest thing to do with a thermostat is to set it where it provides the most consistent comfort and leave it there.

Setting an oversized machine to a cooler setting only increases the frequency of the on-off cycling of the compressor while doing little to make the occupants of the room feel more comfortable.And that wastes both energy and money.Nadav Malin, editor of the Environmental Building News, an environmental newsletter published in Brattleboro, Vt., explained that the energy efficiency ratings for air-conditioners -- the numbers on the yellow tags that rate the relative costs of operating different units -- were based upon an optimally sized unit running constantly in an optimally sized room.''But when an air-conditioner is cycling on and off, or running at partial loads, its efficiency goes through the floor and you can forget about the energy efficiency rating,'' Mr. Malin said.In fact, the efficiency loss of an oversized air-conditioner is so significant that some experts say erring on the side of caution means buying a unit smaller than needed.''I usually recommend buying a slightly undersized air-conditioner,'' said Sol Schwartz, an engineer and principal in the firm of T/S Associates in Manhattan.

Since a smaller unit will require longer run-cycles, Mr. Schwartz said, the effective removal of humidity is assured.Mr. Proctor of Proctor Engineering, agreed. In fact, he said, the significance of avoiding an oversized system increases with the size of the area to be cooled. ''Central air systems are notoriously oversized,'' Mr. Proctor said. ''And that can make them notoriously inefficient.''If store charts, formulas and rules of thumb are inadequate for accurately determining air-conditioning requirements, what is a consumer to do?''Manufacturers' recommendations are usually more accurate than store charts or formulas,'' Mr. Proctor said, adding that optimally sizing central air-conditioning systems usually takes a lot more effort.''There's a standard methodology for figuring out the appropriate size of a central air-conditioning system,'' Mr. Proctor said, explaining that engineering protocols take into consideration solar heat gain, insulation, window size and exposure and occupancy levels along with square footage.