D is renting a room in a house in Los Angeles. It’s REALLY hot and she needs to get a QUIET air conditioner that is suitable for either installing as a window unit or a portable one on wheels for her room. Does anyone have any suggestions on a great until that could be a good purchase? I’m fine with spending up to $1000 and I believe her bedroom is fairly small.
Thanks for any suggestions. I get the feeling that landlord doesn’t want to install air conditioning but all the tenants feel it is too hot to be comfortable without it. Landlord will allow them to install window units. She did buy and install a unit from Costco but says it seems noisy to her.
I’m leery of window units unless you’re on the second story or can install them in a way that does not compromise security. Let me suggest a different option. I know them as swamp coolers. It’s a fan with a water reservoir. It does not promise to cool the air, but, trust me, if you add ICE to the water tank, it does. Now, we live in Berkeley, and there are probably only 10 to 15 days a year that I wish we had air conditioning (like this last weekend), but these work for us. We have three EdgeStar towers that we move around as needed. Yes, it’s a bit of a chore to keep the reservoirs filled and add ice (we have an ice maker in out fridge and using ice cube trays would admittedly be an additional hassle), but we have casement windows so window units were not an option. The fans we have are not noisy. I actually think I sleep more soundly with them, since the fan is basically white noise.
Thanks for those thoughts. Any other suggestions/ideas? D is concerned because all the units seem loud to her, especially in her tiny room and she still has good hearing that we want to preserve.
Dyson might make one that’s quiet.
We have window AC units in our house and they work great. We bought them at Ace hardware for around $150 two years ago…they are noisy but my understanding is most portable AC units are fairly loud. Fans with bowls of all cr also work great. That’s what we used prior to buying our current window units.
Maybe a combination of a large fan or two in the windows and a dehumidifier would work? The dehumidifier won’t lower the temperature but it’ll make the air way more bearable, and the fans would be quieter than a window A/C unit.
The cheaper window units tend to be noisier, I don’t mind the noise, to me it is white noise, the sound of the fan, when the compressor kicks in, etc, but if that is a problem, I would look into a high end ac like Friedrich, you will pay more but I have heard them and they are pretty quiet, and you can get one for a lot less than 1000 bucks. The portable a/c units, like delonghi and the like, are pretty noisy IME.
There’s really no such thing as a “quiet” portable or window air conditioner. Some are quieter than others, but whenever you have compressors and motors and fans going, quiet is relative.
This site has some reviews. They claim to not to take money for product placement. At the least it gives you some ideas of what to look for.
Looks like the quietest ones measure in the 40’s decibel range. That’s reasonably quiet but there can still be louder noises when compressors and motors turn on and off. And those noise ratings are almost certainly on the lowest fan level, if you up the air volume the noise will increase a lot.
Used the 2 articles above to pick window air conditioner. Got the QUIET Frigidaire model (Frigidaire Gallery FGRQ08L3T1). And, it’s very quiet. Also, have a very old Sharp air conditioner that was marketed as “library quiet,” which it still is. The Frigidaire is whisper quiet.
Good Luck! Hope your daughter finds cool, peace & quiet
Keep in mind that even the more expensive quieter models tend to get noisy as they age from wear and tear. Especially if one encounters long heat waves each summer for several years.
One Frigidaire A/C which was initially very quiet when first purchased by a friend and then given to me after he moved out of the country a few years later became noticeably noisier after another 7 years of hard usage. Even so, still did its job fine until it finally died this year.
Not bad for nearly 20 years of flawless service over many summers with lengthy humid heat waves and reasonably efficient…especially back when it was brand new.
We live near the beach in Southern CA and the coastal breeze usually keeps us cool. I have this for the still, hot nights. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/honeywell-10000-btu-portable-air-conditioner-blue-white/5077508.p?skuId=5077508 It’s quiet and does a good job cooling our MBR. DD is also near the beach but her room faces east and she says it gets hot with no breeze. I’m going to show her the MyChill unit that @AboutTheSame mentioned. It’s more in line with her budget and she only needs a small area cooled.
If her room is small the portable AC unit will take up a lot of floor space - I would go with the window. Got one for my daughter’s studio apartment and it works great in small spaces. I did have it professionally installed in the window (by the apartment maintenance person) so I know it was done correctly. She uses the fan mode when she wants to just circulate air - she loves the white noise (always kept a fan going in her room for white noise)
That was always my understanding @thumper1, and the reason why we went with swamp coolers for our house, but the portable A/C I linked to seems to use a different technology and I saw no reference to external drainage. There does appear to be a continuing cost, however, if you have to replace the cartridge every year.