Portlable Air Conditioning Units

Any thoughts on these? Worth it or not?

Whole house a/c is not an option. I've been looking at portable a/c units on the Costco website for around $350 and think that might be worth a try. A window evaporative/swamp cooler won't fit in the window as well as these a/c units.

Worth the money or just a tease of cooler air?

Or I can dig a basement out of our crawlspace...

I had 3 in our old house before we installed central a/c. It does / can produce coolness, but has to be in a place that allows it to fill a room. I think you mentioned it will only fit in your bathroom window ... which I'm not sure would be a huge help. If you put a fan in front of it to push the cool air out of the bathroom it might be better.

That is the only window that slides up and down rather than cranks out. Even though it sounds small and out of the way, it is the half bathroom on our bedroom and the window is about a foot from the doorway, so I think we could have the tubing go to the window but have the unit in the bedroom. It might be a mess of cords/tubes. If it could fill the room, then our room would be cool at least?

ahhh ... I've never thought to not have them in the actual window. the ones we had got condensation on them - but didn't have tubing. Fancy new fangled things!

If you're looking to run tubing out of the window, could you run it out of one of the crank-open windows in a more central area of the house?

Hmmm...the tube doesn't look all that long. The crank out windows are all around 2 ft wide by 4 ft. tall so that would be a lot of extra space to board up or block out.

I might just try it with the bathroom since Costco is so good about taking returns.

I think it would be totally worth it.

[alison]

We have that one from Costco. It's ok, just ok. The tube is rather short, but that's not a big deal, you can still fiddle with it so that it extends properly enough but can still be close to the wall/window. It takes the edge off the heat and humidity, but I don't think it's worth the $400 we spent. It's heavier and bigger and louder than it looks.

[Flynn]

Our son sleeps in a finished loft that gets VERY hot in the summer. We bought a big one with a tube and it's been worth every penny for naptime and bedtime.

We keep it on during naptime and at bedtime we cool the room down about an hour before bed and then turn it off. Works like a champ and I sleep better knowing he isn't sweating and tossing and turning!