Commons Features of Air Conditioning Units
January 22, 2025 Paul
When purchasing a portable air conditioning unit, there are many features and functions available to choose from but what do they do and what do they mean? Here is a quick guide below to show you what the most common features are and what they actually do.
BTU’s – This will be the one thing that all these types of products and evaporative coolers will have in common, how many BTU’s it has. Roughly speaking, a BTU unit, or British Thermal Units, are units that measure the amount of heat that is required to raise the temperature of water or for these products, lower the temperature.
Output – This tells you how much air the appliance can cool, usually in terms of cubic metres. So if your room was 5 metres long by 5 metres wide, and two metres high, that would be 50 cubic meters (5x5=25, 25x2 =50).
Dehumidifying capacity – This can tell you how much water the appliance is able to take out of the air in an hour. For example, our IGLU 9, takes 1.2l of water out of the air every hour.
Tank Storage – This is a very important detail to note as no matter how much moisture your aircon can take out of the air, if your storage tank is full up, it will automatically switch off. You don’t want to be getting up every five minutes to empty the tank. A rough guide would be a tank that is at least 8-10 times the size of what it can extract in an hour. This way you will have to empty it a lot less. However, base it on your needs. If you want a model for offices, then 8 -10 hours is perfect as you switch it off and empty it at the end of every day, whereas if it is for home and you only use it for an hour or two each day, a smaller tank is much more acceptable.
Room Size – Similar to output, but in a more user-friendly way. This will tell you what size room the appliance is suitable for. This usually says something along the lines of; suitable for rooms up to 18 square metres such, as the IGLU 9.
Timers – Timers allow you to control the amount of time you wish the appliance to be on for. This is a great way of making sure you do not use too much energy and a way to control costs. Most products nowadays have a 24-hour timer.
Speed Settings – This allows you to control how powerful your appliance is. If you have a small room and you are turning it on in advance of people arriving, a lower speed setting will suffice. However, if you are in a larger room and people turn up unexpectedly on a hot day, you may wish for a much higher speed setting to enable the room to cool down quicker.
What temperature should AC units be used at?
According to the Department of Energy, 78° Fahrenheit is the perfect temperature in order to balance energy savings and comfort in a home environment.
