Portable Air Conditioner Buying Guide

Portable Air Conditioner Buying Guide

Portable air conditioners are a great answer to cooling our homes and offices in the UK. It isn’t warm enough throughout the year to need permanent air conditioner installation in most cases, so a portable unit is there as and when we need it.

Portable air conditioners can be moved between rooms and positioned where they’re needed and can cool a room without the stress of professional installation.

Just plug them in, and they’re good to go.

If you’re buying a portable air conditioner, you need to decide which is best for your home and your needs. They’re a big investment, and you want to get it right.

Or you can hire a portable air conditioner from Speedy. With a wide selection to choose from, our air conditioning units can be there when you need them, without the storage headaches through winter and the big upfront investment.

 

HIRE AIR CONDITIONERS FROM SPEEDY

 

Benefits of a portable air conditioner

1. They can be moved around your home, where you need them
2. They’re powerful enough to cool most internal rooms in a house
3. You don’t need to install them
4. They’re easy to set up
5. They’re better than fans at cooling a room
6. Most can also tackle humidity, and some can also act as heaters

 

What to consider before choosing an air conditioner

1. The size of your room

Larger rooms, unsurprisingly, will need more power from an air conditioner to cool the room. Open-plan rooms can be particularly difficult to cool.

This will determine the BTU (British Thermal Unit) requirement. BTU depends on the cubic volume of a room, which is the height, width, and length of the room, multiplied by four.

Essentially, larger rooms will need a larger BTU score from the chosen air conditioner.

 

2. How much cooling is needed?

Rooms with larger windows, or which get the full attention of the sun throughout the day, will need more powerful cooling than smaller rooms with little windows. This includes conservatories.

You should also consider what else can heat the room. If you’re in an office, or the living room, you may have electronics such as TVs and computers which give out heat. In open-plan living, you might need to consider heat from ovens and other cooking equipment too.

 

3. Extra settings

Will you be moving the portable air conditioner around? This is a selling point versus air conditioning installation, anyway.

If so, you might want wheels, or a carry handle if you’re taking it upstairs at night.

Some air conditioners can also dehumidify your room, so this is beneficial if your home is also suffering from high humidity.

A thermostat will allow you to set the ideal temperature of the room, so the air conditioner maintains this level and you never feel too hot or cold.

Some models also have a timer, which can allow you to turn the air conditioner on when it is needed, for example at midday when the room is hottest. You should never leave an appliance unattended, but you can use this feature if you want to get ahead of time and prepare for the hottest part of the day.

Sleep mode will allow you to keep the air conditioner running overnight, without the high noise level which keeps you awake, which is something to look for if you will be using it while sleeping.

You can control some air conditioners with a remote control if you want cooling at your fingertips, or others have digital control panels.

 

4. Positioning and venting

Air conditioners need to be vented to remove the warm, moist air from the room. On portable models, an exhaust hose can be used and placed outside of an open window or door, which leads outside.

So, you need to take this into account when choosing your air conditioner. Multiple lengths of exhaust hose are available, which can mean your air conditioner can adapt to the room, but it may restrict where the air conditioner is placed.

 

 

Read our blog on how to use a portable air conditioner correctly and safely before you hire.

 

 

OPEN A SPEEDY ACCOUNT TO START HIRING TODAY

To hire air conditioners or other cooling appliances, power tools, or gardening supplies, just create an account with Speedy.

You can open a Speedy account online or visit us in store for all your tool hire needs.

Speedy has more than 200 local service centres across the nation, hire counters in selected B&Qs and nationwide 4-hour delivery. It has never been easier to hire the tools and equipment you need.

 

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