Due to the fact that the bulk of the unit hangs out of your window and is exposed to the elements year round, window air conditioners have a greater tendency of breaking down when you need them cooling the most.  Now, being the air conditioner guy that I am, you would expect me to tell you to call out your local AC repairman because it is usually an easy fix.  However, with labor prices going up and up, and the price of window air conditioners coming down (about $300-$400 for a descent air conditioning unit) the right move may be to scrap the old junker and order up a new one, especially if your existing unit is outside of any manufacturer warranty period.

If you run the numbers and decide that buying a new unit is the thing to do, then here is a way to cut your costs even further.  DO NOT THROW YOUR OLD UNIT IN THE TRASH.  You need to take it down to your local scrap metal place and cash it in for around $50 worth of Copper Tubing that is inside of the unit.  You will get the most money form the scrap yard if you remove the copper from the unit yourself, otherwise they will factor their labor into the the overall value and reduce your take considerably. Another thing that I would advise is to call around to find out what they are paying for copper before hauling it down there and compare that to the price of copper on the open market.

Most scrap metal places will pay you cash on the spot.  Now you just cut $50 off he cost of your new unit.  Either that or you can just pocket the found money and not tell your spouse that I told you about it (-;

I have not owned or worked on any Haier products before, so I did some quick research on them and found that they are an appliance manufacturer, not a manufacturer that specializes in air conditioning.  Needless to say, I don’t expect this thing to last for 20 years under heavy usage, but if I can get 10 years out of it and it works as it is supposed to, then I’ll consider it well worth the cost.

The reason that I even considered purchasing a portable air conditioner to begin with is the fact that we are empty nesters and there is just no reason to run the big central unit to cool off the entire house as much as we used to when the kids where here all of the time.  We still have it turned on so that the heat and humidity don’t ruin our stuff, be we can set it to something higher than a comfortable living temperature for the whole house, and now we can use the portable air conditioning for the bedroom so we can sleep comfortably.  If this works out, then we’ll be looking at a couple more units for the den and kitchen.

This particular model comes with separate air intake and air exhast duct ports, and a window adapter.  It can run in 3 modes: cooling, heating, and dehumidifying.  There is an LCD indicator that let you know when the condensation tank becomes full.  There are 3 an speed: low, medium and high.  There is a timer function that goes up to 24 hours that will turn the unit off automatically.  I’m not sure if and when I would ever use that, but it’s one of those “nice to know it’s there” features.  Heat pump included.  Temperature control.  Remote control included, for all of us lazy bastards that can’t get up out of the lazy boy unless it’s to get a frozen pizza or something like that.  It uses R-22 coolant which is not a good thing, but I haven’t seen an portable units that are cost effective that are using Puron yet.  The air filter easily snaps out from in front of the evaporator air intake in the rear.

That’s it.  As I get to know this guy a little better I’ll keep y’all posted.  Wish me luck!

3:00pm – We just barely made it!  Any longer without the air running and we would have started cooking up here.  The water and Gatorade supplies are about gone.  Now we’re all looking forward to some cold beer after the job is done.  What’s left is conecting all of the ductwork and this can be done while the air is blowing cold into the attic.  The first part of this stage is fitting the junction box.  This is a pre-fabricated cube constructed of insulation with one face connected to the output of the air conditioner, and up to five branches coming off of it (in our case we only have three.  The first thing we’re going to do it measure and cut holes for the three duct branches.  We do this first beause it’s easier to do before the junction box is mounted to the air conditioner, and it will allow the air to flow freely after it is mounted.  Now we measure and cut a square out of the face of the junction box that will fit to the air conditioner.  We fit it in place and use a liberal amount of silver tape (the installers best friend).  Now we connect the duct branches to the holes we cut in the other three sides in pretty much the same fashion.

5:00pm – The cold air is now running throughout the house and the thermostat is slowly starting to inch downward.  We still have a few things left to do, like connecting the exhaust pipes for the heater and clean up inside and out, but overall we’re saying ‘mission accomplished’ and we’re sitting down for a few well deserved cold beers…ringht under the air conditioning vent (-;

Previous Page