Portable Air conditioners
 

Ok I have a 1 bedroom home and have a baby on the way.

The previous owner enclosed the patio but did not run A/C or heat to the room from the Central AC unit.

Me and the wife were thinking about making our bedroom back there (because there is a door to outside. And the front room the babies / kids room.

Does anyone have any expierence with portable A/C units and how energy efficiant the new ones are? There is a wall A/C unit back there now but we had to use that for a couple weeks one time when the central air went out and that thing was expensive to run.

Check the walls/attic for insulation- if there's none in the walls, you can actually blow cellulose into each stud cavity through a 1.5 inch hole at the bottom and top of each cavity.

Th new window units are fairly efficient (I think I saw some at walmart that were about 11 seer)

Yea the 2 windows are problably going to get replaced cause there not that efficient.

I've had a portable AC for several years...here are my observations:
1. They are large and take up floor space. If you live in a large house (or a non-cluttered one) this may not be a problem. But keep it in mind.
2. The exhaust is fed through a flexible tube. It will re-radiate some heat back into the room. The longer you stretch the tube, the more heat you will re-radiate.
3. They are more expensive than a similar window or wall mount unit. Right now Costco here is selling a 12,000 BTU unit for $189.99, and there is a $20.00 mail in rebate as well. A 10,000 BTU portable is $449.99, and I don't recall seeing any rebate.

They can be moved from room to room as required, but you need to provide for exhausting the hot air each place you use it.

Split Portable air con is good, if you can find it.

One other issue with portable air-con with the pipe is that, by blowing air out of the house, it then sucks hot air back into the house due to the negative pressure created. This can be prevented by two-pipe air portable air conditioners (or, depending on model, you can convert a one pipe to a two-pipe air con!; I did this to my air con in the UK).