I like to call portable air conditioners the ‘Wonder Appliance” because I always ‘wonder’ why more people don’t have one. I personally have two, one that I use in my home and the other that I use on the job. Being an air conditioning professional, I am constantly working in hot environments because the customer’s air conditioner is not working. If I am going to install a new system, or if I know that I’m going to be in a hot attic for a while repairing an old system, the first thing that I do is setup some portable air conditioning so that I don’t cook to death.
I know that most people don’t work in such extreme conditions, but let me tell you about some of the ways that I use my home unit and you’ll begin to see why I believe that every household should own one. My wife and I are ‘empty nesters’ so there are plenty of areas of our home that are unoccupied for the most part. We have cut our electricity bill by 20% setting the thermostat on our central air conditioner to 83 degrees for the entire house and then using the portable air conditioner in the rooms we occupy. It is also nice to have a backup for your primary air conditioner for when there are power outages for whatever reason they occur. I just pull out the generator and hook up the essentials…Refrigerator, lamp, TV, DVR, and portable air conditioner and we are ‘good-to-go’. We’ll always have some neighbors come by when that happens and tell us how ‘smart’ we are for being prepared.
We also take it with us if we hit the road in the summer with our travel trailer. It’s hard enough getting a good night sleep when you’re not in your own bed, but it is ten times worse if I’m hot and sweaty. Maybe it’s just me, but I doubt it. There are so many more ways to use one of these things that I could write a book, but for now I just have to keep wondering why for such a reasonable price more people don’t own one.