Jer, have you used the heater function of this unit yet? If so, what do you think?
How can I find out if Media Markt still carry it? I look at their website but only see the current offers or where the stores are located...I'm sure I'm not looking at the right spot...
Grassyass.

PS. I dig your Eurodirect card!

hi Ola.

no, you are looking at the right website but mediamarkt does not list products online, their site is purely info on the stores and where to find them. odds are they will not have the product available as it is plugged more as an ac with the heat function thrown in and this is not the time of year they would have ac units on display (me thinks).

i would say my unit really blows but that would mean it sucks

it is good, it is a bit loud for sleeping but we don't have it on when we go to bed as there are other things that can keep us warm in bed

between the unit and our spot heater, we be toasty for the winter

Ok, so this seems like a good time to start talking about AC units again...

I have a stupid question - what does one do what that monstrous tube that comes out of portable AC? you stick it in a bucket or something?

K

Nope, that hole is supposed to go outside. You can either drill a hole in a window, or if you have french windows, you can buy a piece of plastic that is the width of the hole and the height of the window. You then have to get some kind of an aluminum stick to place on the inside of the window since it no longer locks (I would guess).

Keep in mind kinga that these A/C also need to evacuate water that accumulates in the unit, so you either need some kind of whole in the wall or you will have to empty a bucket of water every day.

Regards,

Fab.

Oh thats just lovely then... is there a less extreme option? meaning less drilling? more "portable" than this, smaller?

hey Ola.

i drilled a hole in the balcony door to run that tube outside. you can see the slop-job in the pano at http://www.multimadrid.com/plazapad (on the bottom part of the right balcony door).

the "chapuza" recommended by Fab is not necessary since most (if not all) portable units (even the cheapies) come with a piece of rigid foam (what Fab called a piece of plastic) that you use to put in the cracked open window and that piece of foam has a hole in it for the ventilation tube.

the only reson i did not use my piece of foam and drilled instead is because i wanted to be able to close the balcony doors to isolate the noise from the plaxa at night and it works like a charm.

as for smaller portable units, the problem is that they do not cool well but it really all depends on how many square meters you need to cool. we only cool the living room and our bedroom (total of approx. 50 square meters) and the portable unit we have is the min. we can use to cool that much space.

also, if you get one, spend the extra euros and get a quiet one. ours is a bit louder than i had hoped it would be when on full blast but i prefer to have a little noise and be cool than to have complete silence and die from the heat.

hope this helps.

quote:

Keep in mind kinga that these A/C also need to evacuate water that accumulates in the unit, so you either need some kind of whole in the wall or you will have to empty a bucket of water every day.

hmmmm... i read that on my instructions manual somewhere but we used it all summer last year and did not have to empty the water out at all. maybe that is a bad thing?

saludos,
jer...

The portable ACs (not the fancier mini-spits) are vented the same way that a dryer gets vented, right? I believe that hot air comes out, which is why you won't want it inside. You just have to find a window that you can leave open. You can then get a piece of plywood with a hole for the hose cut to fit the open window.

Jer--is yours expensive electricity-wise?

Trying to decide if we splurge this year... Last year I saw some fans that use evaporated water to cool--only works in dry places like Madrid--and they don't cost more than a regular fan to run. Anyone ever used one of these? But I do so love the heat-induced summer siesta...

ok, again, you need not get any plastic nor plywood nor do any major hole cutting.

the units come with a piece of foam that does this and has a ready-made hole for the tube to stick out. so, at worst you would have to simply cut the foam to fit the width of the window as the bit of foam is pretty big. peeps just cut it as needed depending on the width of their windows.

mariposita, not sure, never noticed any major increase in the elec. bill so i guess it is not too expensive.

saludos,
jer...

Megan, where did you see those evaporated water cooling fans?

Jer, I just want to cool only my living room so thats about 25m2. My apartment seems fairly cool so far so maybe I should just wait and see what kind of option I should go for.
Anyway, good to investigate ahead of time

I saw them at El Corte Inglés last year. This year they have a couple on their website:

http://www.elcorteingles.es/hogar/secciones/guiafacil/b...to_seek=climatizador (the top four)

They aren't much cheaper than the cheapest portable ACs, but they use almost no electricity and you don't have to vent them and can use one with the windows open. In the US I think they call them "swamp coolers". I've never used one, but I'm curious, because I don't really like AC, but we have one room that is an oven all afternoon.

Megan, I don't think those fans are very effective , a couple of reasons:
1. You have to leave a window open in order for them to work properly, now I am no rocket scientist, but my guess is that if you have to leave a window open this thing will be as effective as a regular fan, if not worst, when the afternoon Madrid air is warmer than the air in your thick walled apartment building.
2. These things work by humidifying the air, now again, still no rocket scientist here, but isn't the humidity in the air what makes heat much more noticable, like in Miami hitting 85-90 degrees already feels really hot, and in El Paso, you can be at 100 and not feel as hot.

Writing from New Mexico where almost everyone has a swamp cooler, yes these are very effective when the humiditiy is very low, not very when the humidity is very high.

quote:

You have to leave a window open in order for them to work properly

Yes a window needs to be left open for the hot air to escape, but I open the window only about 2 inches, approx 5 cm.

quote:

isn't the humidity in the air what makes heat much more noticable

Have you ever stood in front of a fan when you are sweating and felt cooler? This is the same basis. The air is blown over or through something that has been moistened.

The only draw back is they do use more water, not sure how much you pay for water over there.
In July, when we typically receive the monsoon rains here, these are not effective at all, but that is usually with a humidity in the 60% and above.

Irene

I think it never gets that humid in Madrid, unless its actually raining, so this might work.

Today the humidity is 12% and it's 95 degrees! My metabolism has slowed to that of a sloth (I learned from keeping snails that this is called estivating--as opposed to hibernating. Or that great Spanish verb: agostar). I'm just about to leave the apartment for the first time today...

Seems like whenever it gets humid or overcast here the temperature goes down a lot. I think that I might try one of these things. PaulandIrene, what brand to people use there? All I've seen is the Convair.

That is exactly the type of weather we have been seeing for the last two weeks and the cooler has worked perfectly.

The cooler is on the roof of our house. It is the one that came with the house when we bought it 11 years ago.

Irene