Be Excellent To Each Other

We live in a Bungalow with some dorma rooms upstairs. Add to that we have a balcony upstairs with patio doors that the Sun lines up with around 6pm its very hot up there this week.

Last night it was 29.4 in my sons room at 10pm this was after I sneaked in after he fell asleep and opened the windows around 8.30

Although he slept OK he woke up at 5.20am in a really foul mood, so now my wife is in one and has told me to get an AC Unit

This looks to be sold at a few places, bloody expensive, but thinking I could run it in his room for 2-3 hours before bedtime and that would hopefully cool the room down for the night

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/p ... 816822.htm

Are these any good? Don't mind spending the money, but well aware good AC costs a lot more than £300 generaly

Use a fan.

Dont know, but it's probably shit - from the descriprition, its a single internal unit, but the refrigerant typically wants to go outside otherwise it's not removing heat from the house overly effectively.

When I were a lad, I worked at B&Q. For 11 months of the year we stocked fans and AC units that seemed to be fine. Then just before THE HOTTEST WEEK OF TEH YEER!!!11! each summer they'd sell out, and we'd replace the empty space with a pallet of utter shit fans and AC units, always the same ones year on year, and then dread running the customer service desk for the next three weeks as virtually every one of them came back broken, blown or (in the case of the Mini ACs - splurting water everywhere, including over the electrics).

I'm sure times have changed in the past 20 years, but I'd suggest that everything left on the shelves by now is still utter shit, although not necessarily actually dangerous.

Went to buy one and made them take it out of the box so I could look at it.

You needed to poke a flexible pipe out of a windows which sucked in air, cooled it then pushed the cool air into the room.

The unit came with 1.5 metres and the connector was in the middle of the unit, so not way there was enough reach a dorma window.

Homebase were as shit as ever and didn't sell any of the pipe, so I called my wife and said we could balance it on chair, she then started getting 2nd thoughts on the cost and told me to buy a fan instead.

The AC in work is fucked today so I've set it up in my office, its ok and I'm cooler that I was 30 mins ago, cost me £60

The issue with UK AC units is they are not window units, hence they create a lot of heat that comes out the back. I don't understand why window AC units are so reasonably priced in the USA, yet here we get buggered.

Those stand up ones are not worth it no, stick with a couple of large fans. I've thought about getting one every time we have a decent summer, then I remember it doesn't last very long.

The pipe should be blowing out warm air not sucking more in from outside. You could probably get away with using the pipe for a tumble dryer if you needed to extend it.

The stand up ones work perfectly fine as long as the room you are trying to cool isn't too large. There's one here in the office right now.

I had an AC unit in my house a few years ago. Sounds like a similar design with exhaust pipe that doesn't reach a window. My solution was to knock a bloody big hole in the wall at the unit level and pipe it out that way.

It did reduce the temperature, a bit, but the unit was fucking noisy. Given it was bought to allow for decent sleep on hot nights you then had to cope with the sound of an airplane trying to take off.

Basically the domestic appliances you can buy in the UK are shit, and if I was going to bother again I'd spend proper money for a professional installation of something not shit.

I'm looking at having it done in some of the bedrooms when we extend, not often its hot enough in the UK, but if its not mental money might be worth it for the days we do get heat.

I have two window units in my flat and i couldn't live without them. In the summer it's not unusual to get 30ºC inside.

That AC unit is a portable one, and those loose a lot of efficiency, and while initially cheaper, can be take a bigger toll on the electricity bill.

Not sure if it's like car ac but unless you use that regularly even through winter then leaks can develop.

Yeah they're hella-noisy but you get used to it. In the states where it used to sit at 107f for two months solid you had no choice really.

They are shit here. Really, stupidly shit. Out in the states for about $170 you can get a proper GE (General Electric) window unit with all of the fittings. And they piss on the crap here.

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The portable units are a bit annoying, they are loud, tend to need a pipe out of a window, and most of all are a pain to store for the remaining 97% of the time when they aren't needed.

We don't have any AC in our house out here. 4 years and we've survived some stinking hot ones. Ceiling fans, and learning how to keep the house cool in the day (blinds, strategically opening/closing windows as the sun moves round) do us fine most of the time.
If you want to do it, do it properly - but obviously you have to justify the expense of a window or split system.

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I know someone with one.

They are rather effective.

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