Four ways to get the best out of your portable air conditioner

Issue: In order to push out cold air, a portable air conditioner inhales warm, humid air and blasts it with refrigerant chemicals before running it over cool metal coils. The remaining heat is vented outside through its hose. This creates a vacuum, with the hot air removed from your room needing to be replaced. In my experience, what almost always happens is that more warm air from outside seeps back into the room through cracks in the floorboards or gaps above the door, counteracting the work of the air conditioning unit. As the exhaust pipe expels air outside, some residual heat may radiate back into the room, too. Solution: Position the air conditioner as close to a window as possible, keeping the hose short. Check your window adaptor too. If it achieves anything less than an airtight seal, hot air will start to creep back in. Most portable air conditioners come with a window kit included, but if it doesn’t seem reliable enough, then I would recommend purchasing a better one online. Dual-hose air conditioners are the best solution, as these cool air drawn from the outside, eliminating the aforementioned negative pressure problem. Unfortunately, EU and UK energy regulations mean that these aren’t readily available. Don’t worry about the noise