Brendan Hughes

Well, we've discussed cordless drills and vacuum cleaners. So does anyone know about portable (standalone, not massive boxes hanging off the windowsill) air conditioners? We need to buy one for the flat for about 400 quid, I'm just wondering if anyone can tell which brands are better. Portable as we're renting the apartment, and hoping to move house in six months, and I don't want all the drilling that goes with a big unit.

Honeywell I've heard of, Samsung also (who hasn't), but I'd never heard of Carrier or Daikin, yet here they seem to be respected names.

Other thing is, some have heaters built in so they can be used in the hot summer and cold winter. Anyone know if this is a good thing or is it a dodgy compromise for some reason?

Thanks

Brendan

philc

Major brands over here are Mitsubishi, Carrier, Fujitsu and Daikin - all good functional units; sold for the domestic market more as 'heat pump exchangers' rather than air con units.

We installed three to heat a 140 sq meter house and get real benefit from decent heat at the flick of a switch (and reasonably low cost).

They all come with the ability to heat and the ability to cool - so there's no compromise, but as we live on the coast with sea breezes in the summer, there's not much call for the cooling function.

regards

Boost II

iTrader: (1)

Where does the heat go from a portable unit - a wall mounted unit puts it outside the room presumably. As far as I understand, its just a heat exchanger so the condenser bit must get hot like the back of a fridge/freezer

Brendan Hughes

Boost, the ones I have seen have big (4-6in dia) tubing which must be pointing out of the room, ie to open air. Not sure what it does, one guy told me it vents carbon monoxide, another said it just vents the hot air. But I can handle that as I have windows squared up into 1ft panes, so I will just replace one entire pane with transparent acrylic with a hole in it. As I'm on the fifth floor with no balconies, I don't want a massive block mounted on the outside of the building!