How to improve efficiency of portable air conditioner AC units to cool rooms faster

Great idea, I have a unit that draws indoor air and with the thermistor monitoring the room air I was thinking of rigging the intake evap coil air from outside but not sure that would work.

Thank you. Very helpful to me. 🎉

Can I use this Supershield Reflective White Foam Core Pipe Duct instead

Looking through your thermal device just confirmed my personal observation of the glass on the window conducting and transferring additional heat from the outside. Might as well insulate that from the outside. Hence making your ac not work as hard to cool down your area. I don’t think other people have that point in consideration and just totally focus on the unit for the problems. Thanks for posting this video.

Hey thanks man! Imma get some and do this this afternoon!

Great idea. I bought a machine today - was amazed at the heat coming off the tube!! I just found an old foil backed foam ground sheet in my STASH! . I cut it into 8inch sections to make it flexible & wrapped each around the tube. Its 20¨wide so just enough to go around & affixed -with the traditional GAFFER TAPE. Foil side down & white side it to the room so don´t look too bad either!! ! Definitely makes a difference. Cheers From Madrid. :face-green-smiling: It´s 2am & still 28´c outside.

I did that a couple years ago, no FLIR so hard to prove any gains. Next thing i did was put the portable on blocks to shorten the exhaust tube as much as possible, current setup has just 6" of double thick foil/bubble insulation between the AC and window.

Fantastic, my mother uses one when the temperature gets really high and I couldn't fail but notice that the tube in the back is super hot essentially heating part of the room around it to an extend that i could feel it if ibstood behimd it... I will try your solution as I am sure it will improve the performance dramatically.

I'm curious. Do you think a heavy duty aluminum foil would have done just as well? It would probably be much easier to apply and press onto it. Maybe I'll try that before the reflectix insulation. Thanks again.

I was thinking of doing this with mine. I'm using the portable unit as a last resort because my RV ac quit on me a few days ago and we are still in the middle of a heatwave in NM. I don't have the narrow roll of reflectix that you used so I am going to have to use much wider pieces and instead of wrapping and overlapping, I'll be wrapping it more like a gift. I have the metal tape so that should help. Ugh. I hate that I have to do this but we couldn't have lived had I not brought this portable thing back into our environment. Thanks for the video and info. Word to the wise: Don't buy these portable units, people. You're just throwing money out the window.

install an inline extractor fan may help .

I added a second hose for the intake air and added thermal insulation to the exhaust hose, i also use a 12 volts fan to blow outside air in the intake hose but recently am thinking about creating a thermal insulator in the portable air con for the condensor

Just put the air con on a table shorten the hose and shove it near the window a lot easier

Just random thought in mind...can the hot exhaust air be used to cook food or the least heat a pan of water ? 😇

I'm trying to find information on leaving the plug out with the drain hose in a bucket. I tried it just now on mine the last couple days and oh my God the water that comes out

You are supposed to use a second hose to use the outside air to cool your evaporator instead of inside air. That way you wouldn’t use the air you just cooled to cool the evaporator.

why didnt you connect the second hose?

does the hose have to go outside for heating?

How about pvc pipes replacement

But you are still sucking the air from the room and pushing it outside, hence creating vacuum. Thus the hot air from outside will enter through the walls to equilibrate the vacuum. Thats why this system cannot work.