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dreamsharkReplaced that dead attic air conditioner!! This has been on my to-do list for years. I don't quite remember when I bought it, but I'm guessing early 2000s. It was total crap - the knobs started cracking and breaking off within a year, then it started rattling and eventually started blowing the circuit breaker when it powered up. There's another working AC unit in the south window, but it can't keep up when the temps are over 90. Which they might well be when Amber's family comes to visit this month, expecting to sleep in the attic. So... yikes! Climate change alert!
So instead of just buying the biggest AC unit in stock at Costco, this time I did some research and ended up ordering a state-of-the-art Dual Inverter Internet-Enabled LG. It's more expensive than the regular compressor type, but promises to be quieter and massively more energy-efficient. (It came with a perfectly good remote control, so I have no intention of using the ridiculous Internet-enabled ThinQ Smartphone technology. Anybody who ever watched Mr. Robot knows better than to wire their house to the Internet)
Getting the old one out was a bloody mess, involving alternately excavating and vacuuming my way through a decade or two of sparrow nest debris, hacking away dead Virginia creeper vines, and unscrewing mysterious brackets from the old wooden casements. Thank goodness Thorin is strong enough to carry 70 pounds of dead weight up and down 2 flights of twisty stairs, because Richard and I could not possibly have done that. But other than that, installing the new one wasn't that hard. You just have to resolve to ignore the bags of unnecessary brackets and screws that must be intended for some other type of window, and pretend that the instructions don't tell you not to install their precious device where it will be exposed to sunlight (WTF? You can't exactly install it INSIDE THE HOUSE).
I'm happy to report that after all that, this air conditioner is everything the product description promised. It is sleek and silent and has a prodigious fan. Although it is only 9500 BTU, it cools the whole attic down in about 10 minutes without requiring any help from the larger, older unit on the south side. I have set that one to serve as a backup in case of more 100-degree days, but so far it hasn't been that hot.
Being one of those strange people that reads the user guide (but doesn't always understand it) I then spent way too much time trying to figure out what Energy Saver Mode is for. It turns out that "Energy Saver" in AC-land just means that when the compressor goes off, the fan goes off too. Okay, fine. Considering how little energy fans use compared to compressors, it seems mostly pointless, but I suppose it could save a little energy. BUT... the whole point of an Inverter AC is that the compressor has the ability to slow down and speed up, so it never actually turns off. So I suspect that Energy Saver Mode does exactly nothing. I disabled it anyway, because I don't actually WANT the fan to go off. I want the whole attic to stay cool, not just the 6x8 foot dormer where the AC is installed.
So instead of just buying the biggest AC unit in stock at Costco, this time I did some research and ended up ordering a state-of-the-art Dual Inverter Internet-Enabled LG. It's more expensive than the regular compressor type, but promises to be quieter and massively more energy-efficient. (It came with a perfectly good remote control, so I have no intention of using the ridiculous Internet-enabled ThinQ Smartphone technology. Anybody who ever watched Mr. Robot knows better than to wire their house to the Internet)
Getting the old one out was a bloody mess, involving alternately excavating and vacuuming my way through a decade or two of sparrow nest debris, hacking away dead Virginia creeper vines, and unscrewing mysterious brackets from the old wooden casements. Thank goodness Thorin is strong enough to carry 70 pounds of dead weight up and down 2 flights of twisty stairs, because Richard and I could not possibly have done that. But other than that, installing the new one wasn't that hard. You just have to resolve to ignore the bags of unnecessary brackets and screws that must be intended for some other type of window, and pretend that the instructions don't tell you not to install their precious device where it will be exposed to sunlight (WTF? You can't exactly install it INSIDE THE HOUSE).
I'm happy to report that after all that, this air conditioner is everything the product description promised. It is sleek and silent and has a prodigious fan. Although it is only 9500 BTU, it cools the whole attic down in about 10 minutes without requiring any help from the larger, older unit on the south side. I have set that one to serve as a backup in case of more 100-degree days, but so far it hasn't been that hot.
Being one of those strange people that reads the user guide (but doesn't always understand it) I then spent way too much time trying to figure out what Energy Saver Mode is for. It turns out that "Energy Saver" in AC-land just means that when the compressor goes off, the fan goes off too. Okay, fine. Considering how little energy fans use compared to compressors, it seems mostly pointless, but I suppose it could save a little energy. BUT... the whole point of an Inverter AC is that the compressor has the ability to slow down and speed up, so it never actually turns off. So I suspect that Energy Saver Mode does exactly nothing. I disabled it anyway, because I don't actually WANT the fan to go off. I want the whole attic to stay cool, not just the 6x8 foot dormer where the AC is installed.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-11 12:06 am (UTC)What the heck does "9500 BTU" mean for an air conditioner? BTUs are a unit of energy, and 9500 BTU is just about 10 megajoules, or 2.8 kWh. It seems like it should rated in terms of watts, or if one needs to be in the stone age, BTU per hour, not just BTU. I know that house air conditioners are insanely rated in terms of tons, i.e. how much ice they could produce per hour or day or something, if they were used to produce ice. Is this something like that?
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Date: 2022-07-11 01:25 am (UTC)The big one we have on the landing between 1st and 2nd floor is 12000 and manages to keep the entire downstairs pretty cool, even during parties. The one in the attic south window is 12000, which is bigger than recommended for the size of the attic, but still doesn't keep up. I'm not sure that's the fault of the AC; it's situated right above the attic stairs and I think a lot of the cold air sinks into the stairwell and ends up cooling off the office. Which isn't entirely a bad thing, but doesn't really serve its intended purpose of cooling the attic.
9500 BTU is in fact exactly the size that is recommended for a 450 sq ft room, so I went with that. I hoped that a top of the line unit in a better location would do the job, and if it doesn't I've still got the one in the south window for backup. So far it's doing fine on its own, but it was only in the high 80's today.
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Date: 2022-07-11 05:03 am (UTC)We got someone to cover most of the window with metal, but there is still a spot that I was afraid might tempt squirrels to chew a new hole higher up. However, I have not seen a squirrel at that window at ALL since the new unit went in. Apparently removing the old air conditioner and messing around with the window was deeply disturbing or offensive to them.
My observation about Energy Saver Mode is the same as yours, in that the air conditioner seems to come alive to sample the air right around itself and then turns on the compressor just enough to cool down that patch of air. If the fan is running, it pushes the cooler air away from the air condiioner and generally moves things around, so the whole room does cool down. Otherwise you just have to camp right in front of the unit, which is impractical.
P.
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Date: 2022-07-11 04:24 pm (UTC)and fan turn off when the set temperature is achieved. Approximately every 3 minutes the fan turns on to allow the unit sensor to accurately determine if more cooling is needed."
This sounds like an attempt to work around the problem you described, i.e., circulating the air a little bit before sampling the temperature around it. But honestly, turning on the fan every 3 minutes as an energy saving mechanism sounds insane. For one thing, fans also use an extra jolt of energy when they start up. The fan would have to run for another minute to circulate the air. So it would only be off for 2 minutes out of 3. Which might be enough to offset the extra energy taken by starting it up, but I'll bet not by much. This whole idea sounds like the equivalent of "wish cycling" - a pseudo feature designed to make the customer feel virtuous while saving little to no energy.
Apparently the Inverter Compressor really DOES save a lot of energy (30-50%, allegedly) just by avoiding the whole stop-and-go cycle, since startup uses massively more energy than running steady state. For this mechanism, I suspect Energy Saver Mode does nothing at all.
However, I did put the backup AC in the south window into Energy Saver mode and set the temperature 5 degrees higher than the new main unit. The intent is that this compressor will be off all the time unless the outside temp gets so high that the main one can't keep the attic cool. If this means the fan comes on every 3 minutes, I might just turn the whole thing off until it's needed to avoid wear and tear on the fan motor.