Portable air conditioners any good?

[Kwasaki]

52 minutes ago, nchuckle said:

I think that may be more to do with the brand (not Mitsubishi?) and you guy is the equivalent of someone who won’t touch fuel injection because he only understands carburetors ? 

Well sorry to disappoint you it is a Mitsubishi. 

I do not understand your personal remark of me that fuel injector motors cars/motorbikes I won't touch that's because they dealt with by computers, carbs are old school and hands on,  what's wrong with that. 

[KarenBravo]

13 minutes ago, Kwasaki said:

Well sorry to disappoint you it is a Mitsubishi. 

I do not understand your personal remark of me that fuel injector motors cars/motorbikes I won't touch that's because they dealt with by computers, carbs are old school and hands on,  what's wrong with that. 

 

Maybe you should buy an abacus?

[Kwasaki]

21 minutes ago, KarenBravo said:

 

Maybe you should buy an abacus?

Well I was in construction for over 30 years and only used a calculator or my mental capabilities to calculate. ????

[Chongalulu]

32 minutes ago, Kwasaki said:

Well sorry to disappoint you it is a Mitsubishi. 

I do not understand your personal remark of me that fuel injector motors cars/motorbikes I won't touch that's because they dealt with by computers, carbs are old school and hands on,  what's wrong with that. 

I meant 'your' guy the one who services the unit. The point about carburetors is that no modern vehicles use them any more - they are inefficient. You will always get the occasional problem. We’ve had 4 Mitsubishi units only 1 of which required a 1000 baht repair in 9 years.

[gunderhill]

On 3/20/2021 at 9:01 AM, Steve&mem said:

OK Update on my TCL Air Con, The one I fitted last year was running about 16 hours a day last year in the hot season, I put a cheep one in because I was a bit short of cash. I was surprised how well it cooled the room, only thing I have had to do is clean the filter and give the outdoor unit a hose off. Now its back on and still running about 16 hours a day with no problems.

I must admit that I have now replaced my other very old air con's with TCL Inverters, my electric bill dropped from its usual by 6000 to 4000 Baht if this months bill is anything to go by

If you look at the TCL flagship Store on Lazada (they look about the cheapest) they sell them with fitting included for a few thousand Baht more, 

You think it  works  ok  now but it  will need the inside of the indoor  unit cleaning (  not the mesh filters) and more  importantly the drain waste water condensate  pipe  will need  blasting thru with water as over time in the drip tray inside the machine it  will gum up with a jelly  like substance, this  could  take   a  year or more to finally cause the aircon drip tray to overflow and start dripping onto your  floors.

Its a fairly  simple  job once youve  done it  once, You can also  now  buy off  Lazada  aircon  bags that encase the machine with a drain hose at the  bottom and with nothing more than a garden sprayer clean the interior units  fins, its doesnt  have to be a pressure  washer.

[Kwasaki]

1 minute ago, nchuckle said:

I meant 'your' guy the one who services the unit. The point about carburetors is that no modern vehicles use them any more - they are inefficient. You will always get the occasional problem. We’ve had 4 Mitsubishi units only 1 of which required a 1000 baht repair in 9 years.

19 years before any of our ordinary air-cons played up for us the inverter one is only 4years old the the 5 year guarantee sticker you might as well remove it. ????

I guess luck of of the draw. 

[nrasmussen]

3 hours ago, tifino said:

the 2 basic commion designs of portab;le 'aircon' each have their respective downfalls...

 

 1. the Swampy - loses efficiency more, the more humid the environment is i.e in the tropics it is a no go!

 2. the compressor based units:

 - If it is left to its own devides and Not connected to the outside; the heat reduction in the room is slightly negated by the hot air expelled by the unit itself back into the room

- if the units hotside air is expelled to the outside via its hot air expel tubes; there is the lateral thinking problem that the aircon unit is now slightly 'depressurising' the room itself... which means that hpot iar from outside theroom will be getting drawn back in (via gaps such as under doors etc) - therefore again reducing the overall cooling effort within the room 

 

Re. 2: If the hot air is not expelled to the outside there will not be any heat reduction of the room at all. Quite the opposite: the electricity used to power the thing is converted into heat and the room will actually get hotter.

[tifino]

5 minutes ago, nrasmussen said:

 

Re. 2: If the hot air is not expelled to the outside there will not be any heat reduction of the room at all. Quite the opposite: the electricity used to power the thing is converted into heat and the room will actually get hotter.

yes, and as the Portable unit is at floor level, it's trying to Cool the air that is the 'coolest' already in the room.  I've monitored this, and after about 4 hours all that really happened was that the air at floor level becomes as warm as what was at ceiling height...

[RocketDog]

17 minutes ago, Kwasaki said:

I disagree, if you're home is not properly insulated and in addition the room in question is not sheltered from all day Sun heat an inverter air-con will cost you more in electricity than a normal available cold cooling type. 

 

And I refer to my post stated before, out of the 5 air-con units we have the only one I've had trouble with is the inverter one, so sorry for me the proof of the pudding is in the eating so to speak. 

 

If it's the case in the future that all you can buy are inverter type I hope they improve in there reliability.

I stated in another post on this thread that insulation is the most cost-effective thing you can do to save on electricity and maintenance cost for cooling, or heating for that matter. I agree completely with you on that. I have two layers of R25 insulation with aluminized mylar jackets in my entire house.

 

On the other topic, I don't know what you mean by a "normal available, cold cooling type".  Regardless of how a compressor is driven it's going to require energy to move BTUs from one place (your room) to another (outside). I was not addressing that issue at all. There is absolutely no way that an inverter aircon is going to be less efficient than a direct drive unit though under any circumstances. I'm not going to get into that at all.

 

The inverter issue I was addressing is simply ONE way that power can be provided to the compressor, which compresses the refrigerant before sending it to the evaporator unit when it expands into a gas endothermically absorbing heat from the air blowing past it from the inside unit fan. It returns to the condenser unit where the heat is transferred to the ambient air by another fan where it feeds the compressor inlet to be compressed back into a liquid. That is the primary method of mechanical refrigeration commonly used in all air conditioners and refrigerators regardless of how the compressor is driven or even it's rotation speed.

 

The compressor motor and the condenser fan are typically just split-phase AC induction motors in non-inverter units. The inside fan is typically a multi-phase DC motor with a speed control. You can easily identify split-phase AC motor by the phase shift capacitor located very close to and electrically wired to the motor. The smaller ones you see in room fans are black rectangular prisms. Larger motors has large aluminum can type capacitors. You will not see such things with DC motors and compressors using inverter speed control drive.

 

All the inverter does is electronically control the energy reaching the compressor and (sometimes) fan motors so that the actual input power can drive DC motors using variable speed controls on the compressor. Normal compressors are either full-on or full-off as are the condenser fan motors. Note that refrigerators are increasingly using inverter technology. Speed control is the main advantage of inverter tech but it is also inherently more immune to the AC input voltage and frequency so brown-outs and voltage sags have minimal impact on inverter units compared to induction motors.

 

Here's a link that explains what I said without so much detail.

 

https://www.inventorairconditioner.com/blog/faq/what-is-the-inverter-technology-in-air-conditioners

 

 

Inverters are a mature technology that is used preferentially for all motors in all applications over 1/2hp. Even large multi-horsepower industrial motors that were formally just AC induction motors used VFD (variable frequency drive) as a means of speed control. These are being slowly converted to inverter driven BLDC brushless DC motors that have a permanent magnet rotor and a three-phase winding stator. They aren't used because it's a neat idea. They are used because they are a better idea that saves energy and maintenance. Note that speed controls for drills and lamp dimmers are an associated technology in that they modify the AC cycle to deliver more or less energy to a brushed DC motor.

 

This link has an explanation of BLDC motors and drives.

https://www.electronicshub.org/brushless-dc-motor-bldc-motor/

 

In many applications requiring motor speed control AC induction motors are simply an inferior technology. Everything changes.

 

I'm hardly trying to defend aircon manufacturers. I was defending inverter drive technology. Like everything else on the market, some are good, some are better, and some are junk.

 

Sorry you got a bum unit. Anything can fail at some point. Luckily consumers now have a choice, so it's up to you.

 

That's all I have to say on this matter.

 

 

[tifino]

1 minute ago, RocketDog said:

That's all I have to say on this matter.

can you talk of any portable aircon that actually operates with an Inverter? 

[Kwasaki]

8 minutes ago, RocketDog said:

I stated in another post on this thread that insulation is the most cost-effective thing you can do to save on electricity and maintenance cost for cooling, or heating for that matter. I agree completely with you on that. I have two layers of R25 insulation with aluminized mylar jackets in my entire house.

 

On the other topic, I don't know what you mean by a "normal available, cold cooling type".  Regardless of how a compressor is driven it's going to require energy to move BTUs from one place (your room) to another (outside). I was not addressing that issue at all. There is absolutely no way that an inverter aircon is going to be less efficient than a direct drive unit though under any circumstances. I'm not going to get into that at all.

 

The inverter issue I was addressing is simply ONE way that power can be provided to the compressor, which compresses the refrigerant before sending it to the evaporator unit when it expands into a gas endothermically absorbing heat from the air blowing past it from the inside unit fan. It returns to the condenser unit where the heat is transferred to the ambient air by another fan where it feeds the compressor inlet to be compressed back into a liquid. That is the primary method of mechanical refrigeration commonly used in all air conditioners and refrigerators regardless of how the compressor is driven or even it's rotation speed.

 

The compressor motor and the condenser fan are typically just split-phase AC induction motors in non-inverter units. The inside fan is typically a multi-phase DC motor with a speed control. You can easily identify split-phase AC motor by the phase shift capacitor located very close to and electrically wired to the motor. The smaller ones you see in room fans are black rectangular prisms. Larger motors has large aluminum can type capacitors. You will not see such things with DC motors and compressors using inverter speed control drive.

 

All the inverter does is electronically control the energy reaching the compressor and (sometimes) fan motors so that the actual input power can drive DC motors using variable speed controls on the compressor. Normal compressors are either full-on or full-off as are the condenser fan motors. Note that refrigerators are increasingly using inverter technology. Speed control is the main advantage of inverter tech but it is also inherently more immune to the AC input voltage and frequency so brown-outs and voltage sags have minimal impact on inverter units compared to induction motors.

 

Here's a link that explains what I said without so much detail.

 

https://www.inventorairconditioner.com/blog/faq/what-is-the-inverter-technology-in-air-conditioners

 

 

Inverters are a mature technology that is used preferentially for all motors in all applications over 1/2hp. Even large multi-horsepower industrial motors that were formally just AC induction motors used VFD (variable frequency drive) as a means of speed control. These are being slowly converted to inverter driven BLDC brushless DC motors that have a permanent magnet rotor and a three-phase winding stator. They aren't used because it's a neat idea. They are used because they are a better idea that saves energy and maintenance. Note that speed controls for drills and lamp dimmers are an associated technology in that they modify the AC cycle to deliver more or less energy to a brushed DC motor.

 

This link has an explanation of BLDC motors and drives.

https://www.electronicshub.org/brushless-dc-motor-bldc-motor/

 

In many applications requiring motor speed control AC induction motors are simply an inferior technology. Everything changes.

 

I'm hardly trying to defend aircon manufacturers. I was defending inverter drive technology. Like everything else on the market, some are good, some are better, and some are junk.

 

Sorry you got a bum unit. Anything can fail at some point. Luckily consumers now have a choice, so it's up to you.

 

That's all I have to say on this matter.

 

 

Thanks don't get me wrong thanks for your great detailed input. ????

[RocketDog]

4 minutes ago, tifino said:

can you talk of any portable aircon that actually operates with an Inverter? 

First, I am not an aircon expert, I only know the basics and typically perform most of my own air-con maintenance.

Second, AC induction motors are clearly less expensive than inverter BLDC designs and are often used specifically for constant speed devices like clocks. IF speed control is desirable for any reason, AND the motor is much over 1/4-1/2hp, BLDC motors using inverter designs are preferred.

 

The large majority of common appliances use small induction motors to beneficial effect.

Some devices such as power saws like sabre saws, reciprocating saws, electric drills, and kitchen blenders can benefit from speed control. In those cases however you will observe that they use a third type of motor called a universal motor because it will run from AC or DC and uses brushes and commutators to deliver power to multiple winding in the motor. You can see the sparks from the brushes. Beginning a decade ago the speed of these is controlled from the same very simple phase chopping used in a lamp dimmer. You can use a lamp dimmer to control the speed of any such motor, heater elements, and other simple devices. There is no need for the complex inverter tech with these. But I digress.

 

I have no direct knowledge of portable air-con units you mention. I assume they use standard mechanical refrigeration cooling though.

https://www.wise-geek.com/what-is-mechanical-refrigeration.htm

 

Whether any of them use inverter technology probably depends most on the unit size. Soda machines use air-con tech but the units are so small that on/off compressor operation is adequate and cost effective. This may be true of portable air-con units as well. What I am sure of is that if the unit uses inverter tech the specs and marketing materials will make that very clear as it's rightfully considered a sales point.

 

Sorry I couldn't help more but now you know more about inverters than the sales guys do though!!! Good luck shopping.

[Kwasaki]

On 3/19/2021 at 11:35 AM, cooked said:

The plan would be to use the portable in the guest room later on.

Thanks.

I missed this looks portable.

https://www.vankool.com/veac/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwl9GCBhDvARIsAFunhskIqnIlIhp9xrWzXyl48G9FurU8uqsE0bfvNP-9SimCOkBKOIhLSd4aAvQQEALw_wcB

[adexbu]

By the way, what will happen  when using a too small aircon for a room ?

it you use a 9000 btu in a room that is supposed to have a 18000 ?

The aircon compressor will keep running all the time ? But in a room where people are smart enough to know that going below 28 is utterly stupid, is it ok to have a smaller aircon unit ?

 

[Yellowtail]

5 minutes ago, adexbu said:

By the way, what will happen  when using a too small aircon for a room ?

it you use a 9000 btu in a room that is supposed to have a 18000 ?

The aircon compressor will keep running all the time ? But in a room where people are smart enough to know that going below 28 is utterly stupid, is it ok to have a smaller aircon unit ?

 

 

So smart people like their homes hot? 

 

If the unit is undersized it will likely work continuously, but it should easily keep it down to 28 assuming you keep the windows and doors closed. You could probably get it down to 28 leaving your refrigerator open and putting a fan inside, try that first...

[Dazinoz]

6 hours ago, adexbu said:

By the way, what will happen  when using a too small aircon for a room ?

it you use a 9000 btu in a room that is supposed to have a 18000 ?

The aircon compressor will keep running all the time ? But in a room where people are smart enough to know that going below 28 is utterly stupid, is it ok to have a smaller aircon unit ?

 

By your posts you really think everyone stupid. You the only smart person.

 

Edited March 22, 2021 by Dazinoz

[sometimewoodworker]

16 hours ago, adexbu said:

By the way, what will happen  when using a too small aircon for a room ?

it you use a 9000 btu in a room that is supposed to have a 18000 ?

The aircon compressor will keep running all the time ? But in a room where people are smart enough to know that going below 28 is utterly stupid, is it ok to have a smaller aircon unit ?

 

What is your definition of too small?

what will happen is you will get excellent dehumidification but be unable to get temperatures under 0C which seems to be the aim in Thailand. 

[bankruatsteve]

16 hours ago, adexbu said:

a 9000 btu in a room that is supposed to have a 18000 ?

There is no solid rule for size of aircon except that if 21C or less is required, a larger unit is probably needed.  Even the smallest unit can eventually cool a large area to 26-28C if reasonably insulated.  An "inverter' AC almost never operates at full power full time no matter what size.

[sometimewoodworker]

2 minutes ago, bankruatsteve said:

There is no solid rule for size of aircon except that if 21C or less is required, a larger unit is probably needed.  Even the smallest unit can eventually cool a large area to 26-28C if reasonably insulated.  An "inverter' AC almost never operates at full power full time no matter what size.

I agree the normal sizing is 800 ~ 900 BTU per sq metre I consider that to be way oversized. Around  550 BTU/SqM is perfectly OK under 400 BTU/ SqM would probably be too small without excellent insulation, but those are not inverter sizes as the can easily be larger without any difficulties.

[Dazinoz]

23 hours ago, Kwasaki said:

I missed this looks portable.

https://www.vankool.com/veac/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwl9GCBhDvARIsAFunhskIqnIlIhp9xrWzXyl48G9FurU8uqsE0bfvNP-9SimCOkBKOIhLSd4aAvQQEALw_wcB

When I first looked at this system I thought ok not a bad idea. Evaporative cooler does the first stage of cooling and the refrigeration cycle dehumidifies what comes from the evaporative section and the condensate produced then feeds the water tank for the evaporative section. But then I saw no ducting to remove heat to outside so really cant see how it can cool the room down. They give an example of a room at 35 degrees and an evaporative cooler gets air outlet down to around 28.5 degrees. But these units gets air down to 25 degrees. Not really worthwhile considering the cost of purchase and running costs. Seems more of a gimmick to me.

[Kwasaki]

58 minutes ago, Dazinoz said:

When I first looked at this system I thought ok not a bad idea. Evaporative cooler does the first stage of cooling and the refrigeration cycle dehumidifies what comes from the evaporative section and the condensate produced then feeds the water tank for the evaporative section. But then I saw no ducting to remove heat to outside so really cant see how it can cool the room down. They give an example of a room at 35 degrees and an evaporative cooler gets air outlet down to around 28.5 degrees. But these units gets air down to 25 degrees. Not really worthwhile considering the cost of purchase and running costs. Seems more of a gimmick to me.

Saw 2 sizes in Global not cheap either,  Its like say a small fridge blowing cold air like the ice ones do but maybe better cooling and more covienient to use. 

Our put ice one was nearly 2000 and bought for outside purposes and sometimes used in a small upstairs landing area where my Mrs has her Buddha shrine set up. 

So it has had it's uses better than a fan.