Air Pump

I did alot of research on these portable air units before purchasing. I was torn between a window unit, and a portable unit. I know window units are effective, but I really liked the idea of moving the unit fairly easily throughout the house as needed. After reading review after review, I Decided to go with a dual hose unit. They seem to get far better product reviews than the single hose units (that seem to be totally ineffectual). One piece of information that I wish I could find is wether or not these units are energy star qualified. I really do not know.

I want to note that I have changed this review from the time that I ordered the product (about three months ago). At the time, it qualified for prime shipping. I was extremely unsatisfied with that experience as the item did not quailify for next day delivery, and I wanted to get this unit as soon as possible after spending a night in my house at 83 degrees, and waiting for parts to arrive for my central air unit in my home (that still have not arrived as of 07/31/10). Since that time, it appears that this unit no longer qualifies.

I had it narrowed down to two different units, one at 12,000 BTU, with a heater option, and this one at 13,500 minus the option of a heater. I live in Texas, and have precious little need of a heater, and with my a/c just barely making it, the extra 1,500 BTU swayed my decission to this unit.

When the unit finally arrived (an eternity if your air conditioner is not working!), I removed it from the box. I did not follow the instructions printed on it. I am a girl, and this box is very big, and VERY heavy! I am 5’4″, and the box nearly comes to my chest. The box asks you to turn the whole thing upside down, and remove all of the accessories in that end of the box before removing the airconditioner. I cut the straps, and lifted the outer cardboard off. The unit sits upright in the box, and it comes out easily. The instructions state to let it sit upright for two hours before running it, so you then have to turn the thing back over, and let it sit for two hours before you can do anything else with it.

The first thing I noticed was that the plastic control panel was already peeling away from the buttons. It still sticks up, though I have tried to push it down. It appears that the two vents are supposed to rotate up and down. However, one of the vents on mine was coming out. We had to wrestle with that for a bit to get it to go where it is supposed to. The vents won’t rotate on mine, though it does have a “swing” button. The quality seems somewhat dubious. At least, the attention to detail could use some…attention.

After that minor disappointment came the fun part…making all the parts fit where they are supposed to go. The hoses need some assembly. There are end caps for each hose. They are very hard to fit. It took us about half an hour of wrestling with them to get them to fit properly. The instructions are absolutely devoid of any helpful information for most of this. Once the end caps are on, the hoses must be attached to the air conditioner, and to the pannel that fits into the window. You are given a bag of eight short screws, and eight longer ones. The instructions are helpful enough to tell you that they are for attaching the anchor caps to the window pannel, and for setting the ajustable size of the pannel. Unfortunately, they do not tell you which length to use in which hole. I chose the longer screws to attach the anchors to the pannel. The holes in the plastic have a much smaller circumferance than the screws! I had a hand held screw driver, and getting these screws to fit was a tough job! The plastic is somewhat soft, so with a sturdier screwdriver, the job went quickly. I just hope I never have to remove them! As far as the short little screws, I did not bother using them to keep the pannel at a set size. The pannel seems to hold it’s size pretty well on it’s own. It comes with one pannel that has two holes for the hoses, and two others for size adjustment. One of the ones that came with my unit is a bit warped, so there is a little gap, but it fits just fine. Again, not the best quality I have ever seen.

The next little irksome quality was the remote control. I could not for the life of me figure out how to open the battery compartment (FYI, the batteries came with this item…though I began to wonder if the remote even had a compartment for them to go into!). We tried prying along the seems, and everything else we could think of. We even *gasp* looked it up in the instruction manual! Just to learn that the remote in the manual looked NOTHING like the one I was holding in my hand! It showed an image of a remote that had a plastic pannel that opened like a door on the front, and a very ordinary looking battery compartment on the back. Mine does not have an obvious battery compartment, and a pannel at the bottom that reveals more function buttons.

The instructions on the back of the remote were just as perplexing, simply stating:

” * insert 2 pieces of AAA/1.5v batteries;

* if the device is not in use for a long time, please remove the batteries;

* if batteries week,please replace both;

* After batteries replaced,please press the Reset button awhile, then you can use the

device easily. ”

After wrestling with the remote for what seemed like forever. An accidental too hard downward and lifting tug on that moving bottom pannel finally revealed the elusive battery compartment!

Finally after all the frustration and drama, I had a fully assembled, fully portable air conditioner, and the first thing I wanted to do was to cool off after all that hard work! So, I set it up in my bedroom, plugged it in, and turned it on. It is a bit loud (my room is somewhat small), but it cooled my room beautifully! Now, I make a point not to run this thing all the time…I dread what the electric bill may look like after that…but for the past few months, our airconditioner has been running on one compressor, as we are still waiting on parts. I think cooling such a large house is straining the remaining compressor, and lately, the temps in the house have been getting too hot to be comfortable. So, in a despirate attempt to make the house at least bearable, I went through the house and closed the air vents in the areas of the house we are not using, and placed the portable air unit in the kitchen window. The kitchen has a large opening into the main living room. Now, this unit says it can cool about four hundred square feet. My kitchen and main living room (which has twelve foot ceilings) are much larger than that, and open to the rest of the house. So, I figured the air around the unit in the kitchen would only get somewhat cool, especially since it did not bring down the temps in my room dramatically.

I guess the large space makes for ample air exchange or something, but we have been running this little machine daily from about 3:30 in the afternoon till around 11:30pm for the past couple of weeks, and I cannot believe how much it brings down the temperature in the entire house! Again, we are trying not to run it too much, but just running it for that length of time seems to take the strain off of the central air unit during that hot time of the day, and keeps the house cool enough to sleep comfortably for the rest of the night. And, this may vary by your climate, but I have only had to empty the water once in the two weeks that we have been running this air conditioner.

Just for a little comparison, with the one working compressor running (our central air), by 12 midnight, around the time I get home, the house is about 74-82 degrees which is WAY too hot for me to fall asleep at. By running the portable air unit, by the time I get home, the house is right at 72-74 degrees very consistantly, and the house is significantly larger than 2,500 square feet.

The only reason this unit earned so many stars from me after all of the effort, anguish, and somewhat disappointing craftmanship is due to it’s incredible ability to suplement my central a/c, and bring down the temperature in the entire house consistantly and significantly.

On a side note, I appologize for such a long review, but I was very frustrated with the limited information I could find on these units. Hopefully, I was helpful in your purchasing decission.
Rating: 4 / 5