Should I Buy a Portable Air Conditioner/Heat Pump? Top Pro's & Con's & Dual vs Single Hose 

Why do people keep injecting that link everywhere?

@@RXSVN_2 to give us viruses.

this guy keep spamming his trash product under every air cooler video

That's definitely the right application for one of these!

Hopefully will be cranking videos out a bit faster going forward... HOPEFULLY... Ha

just remember the between uses, the little reservoir dries out and the dust/fluff in the evaporated water will harden like cement and little moving pieces like floats will get stuck. So you have to do some maintenance. This is what kills carpet shampooers between uses.

what was your temperature at the outlet of the air conditioner? I didn’t buy a new air conditioner and now, when it’s very hot, it cools very poorly. Yesterday we put it in the room to see if it would cool it and it did a very bad job of it, it only cooled down to 24 degrees overnight and in the morning it was already 27-28 degrees in the room. When we turned it on for the first time, it cooled the kitchen to 21.5-22 degrees and the rest of the rooms to 24.5-25 degrees

That is a great idea for both heating and also cooling! Yud need like 75 feet id imagine, snaking back and forth, or more. The only problem with pipes like this, is when the intention is for the fresh air to enter the house. The pipes attract vermin, disease, rat and mouse poop, mould, bacteria and dust. Think legionnaires disease in moist ventilation systems. Not so much a problem when the ground air is just being used in the unit internally and being exhausted, such as in a two pipe system.

@@mikemotorbike4283 Yeah, that follows with what I was thinking - Sort of a poor man's ground source heat pump, but wouldn't have to be super careful about earth tube air.

More info pleasd

@@conradpaul6100 you can youtube converting portable single hose ac in to dual hose but basically u want a hose covering the back where it pulls air in and run that hose outside the window so it sucks air from outside rather than sucking air from inside the room causing a vacuum suction in your room to pull hot air from under the doors or window creases causing the room to be filled with hot air. Instead your ac will just suck air from outside through the hose to be use to cool the condensor leaving the cool air in the room to cool the room

Awesome! Glad I was able to be of some assistance.

You could try to modify your unit and attach a second hose to the area where the unit pulls in air to cool the condense. I might make a video demonstrating this at some point. Glad that the video helped you get a better idea of what is happening!

or open a window a crack. People like fresh air too. Another problem with the one pipe system is that its taking the new expensively conditioned air hovering close by to evacuate the heat, before that new air gets a chance to get further into the house. Its basically sucking out what it just made. It'd be good if you cud vent that cooled air farther away from the unit, or through a wall, so it takes in only uncondtioned air. But this negates the purpose of these, to cool the room they are in. This inefficiency applies to the heat pump made hot air air too. RVs also have this problem. The air grill is so poorly designed that half the air is recirculated through the unit repeatedly before it gets a chance to get into the room, and on the roof the same problem, poor design means the heat circulates around and around inside the unit until a bit gets to leave. There are Styrofoam baffles you can buy(or make) to retrofit your RV aircon so you can achieve the rated cooling power. One thing about fans creating a vacuum in the house: there are several fans in your home that create a vacuum already: the bathroom fan, stove fan, dryer fan, wood stoves, and gas furnace fans all do this. Although, the gas/oil furnace by code has to have a hole by it to draw in air to balance the vacuum effect. A potentially dangerous situation exists when the other fans are on is that they will draw the combustion gasses back down the furnace flue back and into the living area, killing people with carbon monoxide. An especially bad danger with powerful dryers while the other fans are also on simultaneously, its too much for the cracks in the building envelope to supply, as some of your viewers mentioned. The apartment/condo dweller smelling hall odours shouldn't be. Code requires the hall to be positively ventilated(a highly pressurized hallway pushes air into the apartments under their doors). Perhaps there is someone smoking in the hallway, but most probably the building superintendent, under management orders to increase efficiency, has been encouraged to find ways to save money. So the super, "under pressure" has turned off the fresh air fan which pressurizes outside air into the hallway. This should be addressed with the manager. This is a fire safety issue- a legal and insurance liability, to keep hallways clear of smoke in the event of a fire. If there's a fire, firemen could die, and you don't get insurance.

That would be super fun.

That's hocus pocus. My 14 year old portable with condensate slinger has a condenser wich looks like new, even though you can hear the water splashing when it operates on humid days. Ordinary water dont destroy condensers...😂

@@danielsoderstedt1941 Ok boomer

Corrosive attack? It's just humidity from the air that the top cooling coil removed and sent down to the bottom. Why would it now be corrosive and rot the coil as it drained through into the bottom. Sorry but this is BS.

@@richardc1983 you’ve clearly never taken a failed one apart, when you have you’ll understand WHY it failed

@@nickolaswilliams935 No I've just worked in A/C for 20+ years, I know nothing... Do explain though which you still haven't explained.

Same issue here! Single hose unit, filling up about 1-2 buckets a day. Thank you for this little write up. So I basically have to deassemble, and clean out the evaporator coil at the bottom. Is that all? Would you know if lightly spraying the coil with water in the shower or using a water spray bottle is okay?

Loads of these on RU-vid just search for convert single hose to dual hose portable air conditioner

Now that would get old FAST!

@@BenjaminSahlstrom it did we’d have to go back twice a day to empty them till the parts came in for the chiller

This is so interesting! Indeed, running my portable unit in heat mode causes the water tray to fill up fast! But i have a problem.... The drain hose outlet (middle of the back of the unit) doesn't seem to work - the lower tray keeps filling up! The manual says to use the drain when in heat mode. Is my unit faulty, or, is it as you say, the water will always fall to the bottom in heat mode (thus the manual is wrong) NB today I've created a workaround where I've managed to attach a house to the water tray outlet (located at the very bottom). Let's see if this solves my problem!

@@JT-bb9di yes the heat mode drain port is the one at the bottom. But unless _the entire hose is below the drain_ the water can't flow out. Ug! I added an aquarium pump to mine but I have to manually turn it on when the pan is full. Better than nothing!

Seems like that would be a cleaner looking setup.

@@BenjaminSahlstrom - But then you need bigger holes in the wall and you have to separate the heat-flow outside.

I have an ancient Amana - 1967. It hasn't corroded. Never had to 'dump' the water, it drains out of the rear. Of course, that's a window unit. These portable ac/heat pumps either evaporate it or pump it out of one of the hoses.

With a heat pump, the energy comes out of the air. In A/C mode, shoot cooled air into the room and hot air out the exhaust. In heating mode, shoot the cooled air out the exhaust and heated air into the room. They take air and split it into hot and cold portions, using energy to do that, and give you the hot or cold air you want, exhaust the other.

Correct. In dehumidification mode you need to connect a drain hose to the upper drain pan location.

@@BenjaminSahlstrom but the condensate drain hose can be routed into a condensate pump whose output can be sent to a floor drain, slop sink, or any other connection that would take the water either out in the sewer or to a drain that exits the house. These devices are available at Walmart, Amazon, and any number of other commercial sources.

it would be very interesting to see your numbers, because heat pumps are are 2-3x more efficient. Are you more comfortable in your living area now? And your bill didn't go up? Then its working well for you, comfort and cost savings. You can buy a cheap drain condensate pump from amazon. The heat output is the same as a 1500w electric heater plug in. Would it heat your house? No. Maybe 4-7 of them would. So one of these will save 30-50% off using using one those space heaters. You definitely did the right thing. Get 7 portables, and you're off to the races. But wait, at that point, people just get an outside heat pump. The thing is, people use them differently. You just wanted more comfort in your living area. Others want to save money so they are vigilant about turning down the thermostat and stop heating bathrooms, basements, spare bedrooms, and go to sleep in a nice cool bedroom. If you turned down your thermostat, your portable will work longer, and the furnace fan will kick in occasionally to draw that efficiently produced heat around the house so the electric furnace will not have to work as hard. Maybe consider buying a 24,000/36,000BTUmini split running 4 room fans off it, or several individual mini splits for different areas around the house. Use your electric furnace as a low temperature backup.

@@mikemotorbike4283 I'm not sure it made a huge difference but it was fine in the living area and the computer room tends to be warm so I can open it up to help warm up that end of the house. We have equal pay here and between air in the summer and a colder winter, plus rate raises, its been higher this year. I try to read the graphs and sometimes it looks like we used slightly less power than just using the heat that is a forced air electric furnace.

@@mikemotorbike4283 I'm seriously considering a mini split set up with maybe 3 head units as that should give us everything we need to heat or cool our 1400sf 4 br 2 bath house and save a bunch on the electric bill. Friend does HVAC for a living and could probably help with it and the wiring which would be the big thing. Prices are pretty good now...

As long as you are paying the hydro bill. Here is a video of what is wrong with a single hose portable A/C unit 5:55 mark on the video. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-c7p7CPABZ3I.html

@@FRUGALWITHJOHN That's only your opinion on the single versus double hose debate. What I posted was how to determine the better unit using the Department of Energy's new SACC rating. It's easy to fact check. Your video is akin to chocolate versus vanilla or Ford versus Chevy.

@@red94mr28 Not just my opinion, It's real life experience. If I run the single hose heat pump when it is cold outside, my garage will lost heat faster when I turn off the 75,000 BTU heater. My A/C/Heat pump been in the garage over 10 years now and it is an excellent air exchanger.

@@FRUGALWITHJOHN Well, sucks to be you but those are unconfirmed results by a random RU-vid guy at a specific location in a specific structure with an uncontrolled outside environment. SACC is based on science. It doesn't say whether a single hose or double hose system is better for a random RU-vidr's needs, only which machine is more efficient as determined by the SACC value.

@@red94mr28 The change in testing, the new SACC ratings therefore may appear lower than previous ratings on unit packaging, even though the model has not changed. (So a 5000 BTU unit will use less power than a 5000 SACC) So the double hose unit will reach 5000 SACC with less power. Just do some more research, it will give you a better understanding.

You still gonna have algaie and bacteria in the drain pipe and or hose plus some nasty gell lol