Friday, June 26, 2009

Willis Carrier, hero

Willis Haviland Carrier, 15 years old when my house was built, invented the air conditioner a couple of years after that. The big house is actually pretty well-designed in terms of summer coolth, but the carriage house apartment is just a tad on the warm side this week, so I made the investment of this "portable" air conditioner.

These things are pretty neat, because you don't have to sacrifice a window for them, as you can see. The exhaust hose needs about 3" of clearance in any window, and the unit itself sits on the floor. Verra practical if you're not quite sure where exactly you want to cool on any given day.

I hooked it up about an hour ago in the bedroom, and here in the front room it is already nice and comfy. You'd think I would hook it up in the room I'm in, but that would be far too logical. (See, I have a working window there, but a relatively clean office space here. Maybe tomorrow I'll move my office.)

3 comments:

  1. That's a big honking hose. I hope there are no mosquitos in the neighborhood; opening a window that high here would get me chewed in a hurry.

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  2. There's a little plastic closure thing that more or less seals up the window. You don't want hot air (or mosquitoes) blowing in while you're trying to cool. If I were really serious, I'd weatherstrip it, too, but that kind of obviates the concept of a "portable" air conditioner.

    (I'm using scare quotes on "portable" because it weighs roughly 5 metric tons. There's no real way to make a compressor anything other than heavy.)

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  3. it weighs roughly 5 metric tons. T

    OK, now I'm imagining a big hole in your floor.... ;-)

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