Your Indoor Portable Air Conditioner: 4 Areas to Avoid

An indoor portable air conditioner works well if you put it in the correct area. How well they cool a room will depend on the size of your room (measured in square feet) and the BTUs of the unit. In addition to those factors, you want to put the air conditioner in a strategic location in your apartment for it to be most effective. That means there are at least 4 areas to avoid:

1 – The Apartment Kitchen

Although you probably want your indoor portable air conditioner in the kitchen when you’re cooking during hot summer days, it’s one of the areas you want to avoid. Before you buy a portable air conditioner, you have to check the BTUs that each unit puts out. You want to buy the right amount of BTUs for your room size. For example, 13,000 BTUs will cover a room that’s 450 square feet. However, you have to add 4,000 more BTUs to what you need if you plan to use it in the kitchen. There’s a price difference in units based on BTUs, and the higher the BTUs, the more expensive an indoor portable air conditioner is to buy. You’ll save money if you can avoid using it in the kitchen. Use a fan or open the window instead.

2  – Right Next to Your Bed

Some indoor portable air conditioners are more quiet than others, but none are so quiet that you’ll be able to sleep next to them without being disturbed. The noise will bother you and you’ll become restless and not sleep well. You can still run these at night in your bedroom, but you’ll have to rearrange your bedroom if needed. For example, set up the air conditioner by the window and put your bed on the opposite side of the bedroom, against the wall. Don’t put other furniture in front of the air conditioner to try to lower the noise, because you’ll disrupt the cooling effect.

3 – Near the Laundry Room

When the laundry room gets hot and humid, it will have an impact on how well your air conditioner cools the room that’s adjacent to it. The humidity alone will drive up the need for more BTUs, and it will cause the air conditioner to cool only parts of the room. The way to fix that is to place the air conditioner away from the laundry room, but still near a window. If that’s not possible, don’t do laundry while running your indoor portable air conditioner. Save laundry chores for early in the morning when it’s still cool outside.

4 – Bathrooms

Like the kitchen and laundry room areas, humidity builds up in the bathroom as well. You don’t want to put your indoor portable air conditioner in there for the same reasons. You may not have a window in there anyway for the hoses. Even if you’re using a ventless portable air conditioner, you won’t get great results.

Avoid these areas in your apartment so that you unit works properly. An indoor portable air conditioner can cost almost as much as one month’s rent (depending on where you live), so it’s worth your time and effort to do what you can to make it work right.