Yep, it's HOT.
So hot, the world will likely end by August 15th, 2023.
(Or maybe the 16th at the latest.)
But we want to be comfortable until we die and slowly mummify.
Until a couple years ago Big Bubba lived in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. Regular readers may remember we once spent a while there and saw 123 degrees F. reported as the high temperature.
Yeah, it's a dry heat.
So is your oven.
His home A/C system couldn't handle that kinda heat. It ran ALL DAY LONG and would not cool his upstairs bedroom to the point he could sleep well. Together we went to Lowe's Home Improvement and I purchased, and together we installed a small window unit to cool his bedroom.
For about a year this worked satisfactorily.
And then KAREN from the Homeowner's Association noticed the unit hanging out his bedroom window... (which took some doing because it was on the side of the home), and wrote to tell him that was against the rules and would have to be removed.
So what now?
How to cool his bedroom to comfortable sleeping temperature without the assistance of a unit that pisses Karen off hanging out his bedroom window?
The answer to that question is shown in the photo above.
That's 10,000 British Thermal Units of cooling power shown there brothers and sisters!
(Make manly grunting noises here.)
It resides in the center of the room being cooled with a hose that exhausts the hot air to the outside of the home mostly without having anything visible for Karen to complain about. If she notices the plate that holds the (nearly invisible) hose in the window, that plate can be easily removed and the window closed while the unit is not in use, then repositioned at night when Karen is home drinking her Cabernet, not irritating her neighbors.
It worked GREAT. The unit was surprisingly affordable; worked FAR better than the window unit; and served the additional purpose of providing White Noise for my son which he needed anyway.
It was so efficient we noticed, since cold air is more dense than warm, that conditioned air from his bedroom actually did a decent job of cooling the downstairs of his home.
Win/win!
So now we are enjoying pretty high temperatures here in the Midwest. Our Air Conditioner here at home now runs virtually all day trying to keep our home comfortable.
So yes I'm old. But this old dog still learns lessons.
We just bought a unit like Big Bubba's for $400. Our plan is to set the whole-house thermostat at about 75-80 degrees and use the unit to cool our upstairs bedroom with hopes we'll see the same results we saw in Arizona to our living area downstairs.
Amazon will deliver the unit in a week.
Stay tuned. I'll letcha know how it works.
4 comments:
I saw one of those in a shop in the Texas Hull Country two weeks ago. The shop was probably around 300 sf, and it was cool during the heat of the day. I asked the owner what happened to the condensation from the evaporator coils. He replied he didn't know, but this was his second year with the unit and never had to drain anything, or clean a drip on the floor.
From my perspective, it's the best window unit around, and the tiny 3 inch by window width air outlet makes sealing from the outside air an easy task.
Jess, there IS a drip pan beneath the thing. In the dry AZ air our son never had to tend to it.
Here at home with our common 80-or-so % humidity, I suspect we'll be emptying it daily.
That makes sense. I'm guessing the area is usually low humidity, the shop is not in use 24 hours each day, and the water evaporates.
Good luck and waiting for the AAR.
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