Do portable air conditioners work well?

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

And are they outrageously expensive to run? 

 

My youngest is a furnace. She always has been, even as an infant. Now that she's older, she spends all winter sleeping with her window open (nighttime temps are teens and 20s here!). We're currently keeping the AC at 75ish, which is fine for all the rest of us, but she's tossing and turning and having trouble sleeping. At the moment, she's fixated on being allowed to sleep downstairs in our rec/schoolroom, but I don't want that for a number of reasons--it's a small room; I'm usually up late at night or early in the morning doing laundry etc.; she's messy, and I'd rather she keep her mess contained to her own room, and so on.

 

So I'm wondering if a portable AC unit is the answer. Does anyone have experience with this? 

 

Thanks!

[happypamama]

Portable like a window unit? IME, those work very well. We don't have central air, so it's all window units. You just need one rated for the size of the room.

 

The freestanding ones? No idea!

 

ETA: Ours are expensive to run but not horrible. We have electric heat for half of our house, and that drives up our electric bill more in the winter than six AC units (that aren't all running at once) do in the summer.

Edited June 26, 2017 by happypamama

[Jean in Newcastle]

I have a portable one that is freestanding and has hoses that vent out the window. I love it! It works well for cooling one room. I'm not totally sure on the cost. It uses electricity but I haven't seen a huge increase in our bill. For me, I consider it a medical expense because heat causes me all sorts of medical problems.

 

 

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[Tess in the Burbs]

We bought one 2 years ago.  The summer in Seattle seems to have more and more hot days and we don't have A/C.  I bought one off Amazon for $499 after reading tons of reviews and comparing prices everywhere.  Ours is for a 200 sq ft room.  However, I don't use it in a small room.  Our house faces south.  We have a large outdoor fabric we hang over the windows when we hit a hot streak to make the room dark.  This room is probably 200 sq ft, but it is open to the kitchen, hallway, entrance/stairs.  It's just a hot room.  We run the portable a/c only when it's going to be over 85 outside.  At that point I can't keep the house cool enough to sleep.  It was 95+ yesterday.  The hallway was 85, but the room with the unit in it was 77 at the highest point.  Not perfect, but better than the rest of the house, including the basement.  

 

Last night we moved it to our bedroom.  We all slept in my bedroom lol.  however, the machine is loud.  We can set ours to a temperature and when it cuts on it's LOUD.  It rattles from time to time as well.  But my room was 68 in no time and I wasn't a sweaty mess by morning.  

 

I do recommend these units.  For us, it takes the edge off of no A/C in summer.  We normally only use it in the big room but when super hot we will use it in one room and we all pile in there.  I think our record days over 90 is 13.  So it's summer and I can deal with that many days all in one bedroom.   Before we got it,  on hot days we would all sleep in the basement.  

 

[Tess in the Burbs]

cost...I won't lie...it uses a lot of electricity.  My  bill without it in summer was 50-80, but when I ran it last summer I had a bill of 130-150.   but not lying in sweat all summer is worth the extra cost.  

[matrips]

They work great! Dh bought a cheapie when our central ac was broken (on moving day in FL in August), and wow, I loved that one room! :). Not sure of the cost of running it.

[Ethel Mertz]

Don't know about the cost of running the mobile units, but we have 4 of them. They work well, are efficient, and are much easier than putting the traditional window units in the window.

[PeterPan]

We just ran a portable unit that is a combo a/c and dehumidifier because our AC went out during a week when it was 90+ the whole week. Like Jean's unit, the unit we used created massive amounts of heat and needed to vent. It's quite noisy, and basically it just kept a modest sized bedroom tolerable. I would never plan on using it all the time, not the unit we have. 

 

Is this person on the spectrum or do they have sensory issues? 75 is quite high, honestly. I wouldn't want to sleep in that all the time, ugh. I got wild, when we got our AC fixed, and decided to live on the edge and bump it up to 72. That's like AS WARM as I would possibly want it to be. It might be that a small adjustment to the thermostat would be enough for her. 

 

I ask about the sensory and spectrum stuff, because there's actually stuff you can do about that. We've been having a thread on LC about heat shock proteins and readjusting the body to tolerate heat. There's a physical/chemical process the body goes through. I've used the steam room extensively, and it has helped me to tolerate heat dramatically better. 

 

So me, I would move her to the basement like she asked and then work on her sensory, if sensory is the issue. Or are you saying she's hyperthyroid and literally running hot or something?

[Shelly in IL]

Would it be cheaper to just bump down the a/c in the house a couple more degrees and throw a blanket on the cold ones?

[ktgrok]

What about a good fan? Maybe one of those pillows that cool you off?

[ktgrok]

Oh, or a cooling mattress pad? http://www.sleepridiculouslywell.com/best-cooling-mattress-topper/

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

She does have a good fan, but it's not quite enough for her. She really wants the air itself to be colder. I'm not kidding when I say she sleeps with the window open all winter, and that usually includes a double window fan blowing almost directly on her. If we're in the car and the AC is blowing too hard in the back, she'll actually fall asleep the way some people will if it's too warm. Isn't that wacky?

 

I don't know if it would be cheaper just to drop the temp a few degrees at night. I mean, her room is the smallest (maybe 120 sq. feet?), so it does seem silly to cool the whole house for one small room, but maybe with the cost of buying a portable AC and then running it as well... I don't know, I'll ask DH what he thinks. 

 

It's definitely a sensory thing for her, but really only for sleep. She actually does WAY better in the heat than oldest DD and I do, and she's always the one who'is game for picnics and amusement parks on hot days with her father (who has tropical blood and prefers heat to cold any day). It's not generally an issue the rest of the summer, just for falling and staying asleep. She has other sleep-related issues, though, and takes melatonin every night--but that's a whole other post!

 

Thanks for all the input, everyone. Our utility bill is due any day now, so I'll see what the damage was during this first full month with AC running more, and then we'll decide. 

 

 

[Hilltopmom]

Id do the kind that goes in the window, not the portable kind with the hose to vent.windowunits workmuchbetter