Perfect for a variety of cooling situations, portable air conditioners are great alternatives to traditional air conditioning systems because they're compact, mobile, and require no permanent installation.  Moreover, because they're usually used to cool only certain parts of a home or as a supplement to central air conditioners, they can be much more cost-effective to run.When deciding on a portable air conditioner, there are many important factors to consider. Some consumers may mistakenly purchase a portable AC that is inadequate for their cooling needs. Here are a few common mistakes to avoid when shopping for a portable air conditioner:Don't be confused by terms such as "portable air conditioner" and "air cooler," because these two appliances are quite different. While they both cool, they use completely different cooling methods to achieve lower ambient temperatures. Furthermore, portable air conditioners and air coolers (also known as "evaporative coolers" or "swamp coolers") have certain climate requirements.

Portable air conditioners use refrigerants to reduce the temperature. During the cooling process, moisture is condensed out of the air and collected in a drain bucket or exhausted out through a drain hose or evaporated out the exhaust. Evaporative coolers use the simple process of evaporation to provide cooler air. A frame with a large fan is walled in by water-soaked pads, and this fan blows the warm outside air through the continually soaked pads to produce a cooling effect. douglas ac unitAs a result, the air can be cooled by as much as 20 degrees.window ac unit filling with waterClimate Restrictions: These two types of portable coolers have climate restrictions. 5 ton ac electrical requirementsBecause portable air conditioners act as dehumidifiers, they're best suited for areas with moderate humidity levels.

On the other hand, swamp coolers add moisture to the air, so they are most effective in arid climates. Consequently, if the humidity level in your environment is above 20%, a swamp cooler will not work and a portable air conditioner will be more suitable. The correct way to determine a portable AC's cooling efficiency is to calculate the unit's BTUs and hope the air conditioner will provide cooling comfort in a variety of conditions. But this method can sometimes be inaccurate.  A portable air conditioner's BTUs is a good predictor of its cooling ability, but some other factors should be considered, such as the dimensions of the room and where the AC will be placed.BTU is an acronym for British Thermal Units and describes an air conditioner's cooling capacity.  The higher the BTU, the stronger the air conditioner. However, the size of the room you're cooling is also important, and if you choose a portable AC with an incorrect number of BTUs, cooling efficiency will be compromised. A higher BTU rating than its corresponding room size will result in quick cycling and the inability to dehumidify the air.

Also, if a portable AC has a lower BTU rating than is required for a particular room, there will not be adequate cooling. When choosing a portable AC and its BTU requirements, consider your room's dimensions and where it will be located. Shaded areas require a BTU reduction of 10%; sunny areas will require an increase in BTUs by 10%; and kitchens will need an addition 4,000 BTUs overall. EER stands for "Energy Efficiency Ratio" and measures how efficient a cooling system will operate when the outdoor temperature is at a certain level (usually at 95° F). This measurement is calculated as a ratio of BTUs to the amount of power the portable air conditioner consumes in watts. The following is an example of how EER is calculated for an air conditioner with 12,000 BTUs and consuming 1500 watts: Here is an example of another portable AC with the same BTU rating but using 1200 watts of power.  This results in a higher EER:12,000 / 1200 = 10EER = 10The above calculations show that the second portable AC produces the same amount of cooling as the first but is more energy efficient.

With that said, if you want to save money on your energy costs, choose an appropriately sized portable air conditioner with a high EER.Despite the fact that portable air conditioners require no permanent installation, they will need to be vented either through a window, drop ceiling, or wall due to the fact that they exhaust hot air from indoors and work as humidifiers. Therefore, this moisture must be vented out with the use of a venting kit that is provided with your air conditioning unit. When purchasing a portable air conditioner, keep your venting requirements in mind, and if venting through a window, be sure the window you intend to install the vent on matches the type of window covered by the kit (i.e., sliding or casement-type windows). Keep power considerations in mind when choosing a portable AC because insufficient power can cause a fuse to be broken. Pay attention to the plug type in your wall outlet and be aware that smaller portable ACs require 115-volt outlets but larger portable ACs may even require a 230/280-volt circuit.

Portable Cooling Guide Main Page I live in a flat in an older house and I have the disadvantage of living next to an outer wall. In autums/springs there is a period when the central heating isn't turned on yet, but it's already getting cold outside. During this time the wall (and generally air inside) gets quite moist and mold starts forming. Also the moist air makes it feel much colder than it really is (the thermometer shows 20C, but it feels like 15C). Thus I'm looking at dehumidifiers and air conditioners. The first are cheaper by half, the latter are more powerful (according to spec) and can also be used for cooling the air in the summer. But I really wonder how much I can trust the spec and how much it would really help. Does anyone have any experience with this? I would consider a dehumidifier which will pull moisture out of the air. I'd also check into why the wall is getting moist. Are you sure there is enough insulation in the wall, because you definitely should not have moisture condensing on or in the walls.

An air conditioner will make the room colder which you probably don't want if the weather is already turning cold. The dehumidifier will pull the moisture out of the air without cooling the air the way an air conditioner would. For the time being the dehumidifier should pull moisture out of the room for you. The specs for the appliances (dehumidifier or air conditioner) are usually fairly accurate, most notably on larger name brands. I've found knock-off and smaller brands to be a bit sketchy when it comes to performance, so I've learned my lesson and usually go for the larger more established brand names when it comes to things like this. Every air conditioner I've ever seen works not only to cool the air but also to pull moisture out of it. That's often why you get dripped on when you walk underneath a window unit. There might be condensation on the cooling coils, but more often than not the "conditioning" of the air includes bringing it down to a comfortable humidity: literally pulling moisture out of the air and draining through a pipe -- often that part of the a/c's job is more important than altering the temperature in terms of comfort.

So yes, an a/c will be more expensive than a dehumidifier, but that's because it does both jobs: cooling and reducing moisture in the air. I'd go the double-duty air conditioner route, but then again, I live in Florida and we really can't get enough a/c down here! Also, I've seen dehumidifiers in action and I wasn't impressed. You usually have to manually empty the water collection area, and even then it really doesn't do all that great of a job lowering the humidity. I use my Sharp portable AC to dehumidify my man-cave/office fairly often, it works really well - and doesn't require any condensate drains or tank emptying nonsense. Really all the machine is doing is running the AC at a minimum setting to remove the moisture from the air, but this is the most effective method of dehumidifying a room - short of purchasing a dedicated dehumidifier which realigns the airflow path across the condenser and evaporator to give you warm/dry air. Or as a second alternative - buy a pallet of desiccant packs and spread it around the room :)

In all seriousness - I actually do something like that in my motorhome (I bought a big desiccant holding "bucket" from West Marine and it does a decent job keeping the dampness out, but you have to replace the pellets and drain the water periodically, so it's kind of messy). Just for a more concrete example, we have a portable air conditioner in a 15'x15' finished room (in a fairly new house) that's currently filling a 5-gallon bucket every 12 hours (currently investigating draining it to the outside), so using them as a dehumidifier will certainly work. Ours also has a mode to dehumidify without cooling which seems like what you were interested in. Dehumidifiers tend to produce a fair amount of heat, which is fine if you're only worried about cool weather. If you think you might also use it in the summer then you might want to go for the A/C unit. Even if you weren't going to use the cooling feature, at least you can exhaust the heat it creates to the outside. (I haven't seen any non-A/C dehumidifiers that have exhaust connections.)