Air Conditioners - Central, Portable And Window

NewAir AC-12000E 12,000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner

More and more people are turning to air conditioning for their homes and at the current time around two thirds of American households have air conditioners of one sort or another. There are a number of different options available from a fully integrated house-wide system to a small portable unit. It is now possible to make your home cool and comfortable whatever your budget.

We all love the summer and we look forward to it during the colder months. The problem is that once summer finally arrives we seem to spend a good deal of it complaining about how uncomfortable we are and hot it is! We try everything to try to stay cool.

While we are outside sunbathing or in the pool being hot may be ok but once we move indoors we like to cool down. Most modern homes are not designed to keep heat out - in fact quite the opposite, so they can get uncomfortably hot in the summer. Cooking in an overheated kitchen leads to very frayed nerves and trying to sleep in a overly warm bedroom is a recipe for sleepless nights followed by days of tiredness and irritability. No wonder so many people install air conditioning.

There are three main basic options available when it comes to domestic air conditioning - central air conditioning, portable air conditioners and window air conditioners.

Central Air Conditioning

This type of system circulates cool air around your home via a system of supply and return ducts. You can have either a split system or a packaged system.

With a split system there is metal cabinet located exterior to your home. This houses the compressor and condenser. There is also an indoor cabinet which contains the evaporator.

In a packaged system all three components are housed in a single cabinet which is usually located either on a concrete slab in the backyard or in some cases on the roof.

The advantages of a central air conditioning system are mainly that they cool the entire house, create less noise inside the house and are overall more efficient than portable air conditioners. They possibly also add value to your home and increase its attractiveness to potential buyers.

Portable Air Conditioners

This is a very popular option for a number of reasons. First and foremost having portable air conditioners does not require any installation, ducting or electrical or building work. There is no disruption, mess or expense as far as installing them is concerned. You simply plug them in, lead the hose out of a nearby window and switch them on.

Also although they may be less efficient overall than a central air conditioning system then do cost less overall to run as you are only cooling some areas of the house. Maintenance is minimal.

As its name suggests portable air conditioners can be moved around to wherever you want them at the time. So you may wish to use the unit in the kitchen while you are preparing a meal and move it to the dining room whilst you eat. However it must be taken into account that these portable air conditioners are very heavy and this makes it quite difficult to move them up and down stairs. Moving room to room is easy as they do have castors.

 Window Air Conditioners

Frigidaire Window Air Conditioner

This is another popular and straightforward option. These units simply sit in your window and can be removed easily when not needed. Window air conditioners come in a number of sizes.