Portable AC Units
Just purchased a portable air conditioner at Home Depot. 9000 BTU that is supposed to cool up to a 400 sq ft room. The room this is being ran in is a 11 X 15 room. The room has 3 high speed, hot running computer. Problem is it is not cooling the room. The compressor never shuts down, the temperature never drops. Do I need a more powerful unit? Any other suggestions?
Answer:
I have the older 8000 btu/hr Maytag portable from early last summer which works fine for cooling my entire upstairs in northern Illinois. But I adjust my blinds to block direct sun and my neighbor's tree shades my home in late afternoon. I wrapped the vent hose in white towels held on with zip ties to help insulate that, attached foam plastic to the window vent assembly to keep the heat out (facing sunny south), and blocked the gap between upper and lower window sections for the partially open window with the vent mount. Does the air coming out of the unit feel cool? I assume you are venting the heat outside through the window holder without letting too much back in, but some (possibly warm) air ends up entering from somewhere to replace what was vented. Poor insulation, solar gain, incadescent lights, your PC's, and body heat can all contribute to heat gain and need to be properly factored in for sizing. A kilowatt-hour of power use could give off 3413 btu/hr (and may drop voltage and output of the A/C unit if on the same circuit). Air coming out should feel "cold". The actual cooling coils inside the front cover should almost or might have frost on them or at least lots of cold water covering them. It sounds like you have a bad unit. I would do a little googling to see what size ac is needed, too. Volume is more important than square footage; and you didn't mention ceiling height. Lots of ac web sites have size calculators, Sinde you don't say whre you are located, you may or may not have enough cooling power there, but it WILL make a noticeable difference. Maybe not enough of a diff, but a noticeable diff.