I bought aircon for under £200. Does it actually work?

22.5 degrees? Pfft, I wish my house was that temperature! I'm sat here watching this as the temp in my bedroom is 32.1 degrees and is seemingly still rising. I don't know what to do with myself and tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter!

I have this unit and it's great. Let's have a moment of silence for anyone trying to purchase one during the uk heatwave 🙏

And heres me paying 350 for a dyson fan that blows hot air ffs 😂😂

I'm from Kuwait, and it gets crazy hot here! temperatures easily shoot past 50°C. Because of that, air conditioning is an absolute necessity of life. Literally every single building you walk into here is fully air conditioned. Luckily for us, the cost of electricity is incredibly cheap. We pay about 0.002 KWD (2 fils) / Kwh, which is only around £0.005. Cheers

Nice to see someone talking about a basic Air Con that does not cost over £1,000 with the presenter not making it clear that they were given the costly device for free.

my bedroom was 30c last night, probably going to sleep downstairs on the sofa tonight!

Okay. So I was born and raised in Florida, but moved to the UK 20 years ago. When I first got here, I was genuinely shocked to learn that nobody had AC, but quickly realised how unnecessary it was … until the heatwave of 2022. Last year, I purchased a cheap Challenge portable AC from Argos… and I can say hand on heart, that THIS WAS THE BEST PURCHASE I HAVE EVER MADE IN THIS COUNTRY! Especially after this week, where I have pressed my Challenge to full service 24/7. I move it to my home office during my shift, then to the living room afterwards, then to my bedroom at night. I swear to you, this little machine has prevented so much suffering… and to think I only spent like £150 for it. Would not give this up for ANYTHING!!!!

:46 "How Noisy is it? Hopefully you can hear it in the background..." No mate, no one car hear it because everyone watching this right now has a very loud free standing cooling fan blasting into their face and ears in a room with no AC... and that's why we're here... teheheh. 😉

I bought a very similar unit in 2020, it is fantastic for getting a good nights sleep. A couple of tips, I had some silver bubble wrap style insulation and I made a sleeve for the exhaust tube, The tube gets quite hot, and the insulation just stops any of that heat radiating back into the room before it goes out of the window. Second tip I had a sheet of 6mm foam board (the stuff used in crafting) I cut a piece to fit over the frame of the window the hot air goes out of. Trace and cut out a hole the same as the one in the adapter which came with the aircon, put the exhaust in the hole you cut, and then stick the board over the window opening with duct tape. this stops any hot air blowing back through gaps like the one you pointed out at the top of your window, plus the foam board is white so remains pretty cool even in direct sun

The button that you didn't know what it was for actually turns on the louvre movement function. It will "stir" the air without using your pedestal fan.

The big weakness with these single-hose portable aircon units is that they do work, but they’re fighting themselves the whole time. They cool the air coming out the front, but they also use air from inside the room to cool the hot side of the unit, then chuck that air out of the window. That creates negative pressure, so warm air from outside, the hallway, vents, gaps, floorboards etc gets pulled back into the room. So you cool the room, but you’re also constantly dragging warm air back in to replace what you’ve just exhausted. The window fitment makes a massive difference too. If the adaptor doesn’t properly seal the window, a lot of the benefit is lost. I had the same issue with UK windows, so I ended up making a removable panel out of foil-lined insulation board, cored holes through it for the intake and exhaust, then used velcro around the window frame so the board seals the whole gap properly. I bought a single-hose portable unit myself, but did a bit of DIY to turn it into more of a dual-hose setup. I cut out the air intake section on the body and made an insulated adaptor from the same foil-backed board with a duct flange on it, so the unit pulls condenser air from outside rather than using freshly cooled room air. That gets rid of most of the negative pressure issue and also helps insulate the hot side of the machine. I also replaced the standard exhaust hose with a £15 length of insulated industrial ducting, basically 150mm air duct wrapped in fibreglass insulation and aluminium sheathing. That completely stopped the exhaust hose radiating heat back into the room. All in, the materials cost me under £50, and it made the unit wildly more effective. It still isn’t as good as a proper split system, obviously, but once the window is properly sealed, the intake is brought from outside, and the exhaust hose is insulated, these little portable units become much more useful. Without those mods, they can cool the room you’re in while quietly heating the rest of the house. Happy to show you what I bodged together or help anyone wanting to do the same!

We have one of those, wouldn't be without it now, a real blessing at the moment. Our son has recently had three aircon units professionally installed in his house and it is beautifully cool in there. Cost him about £4500 which he was happy to pay for a good night sleep and he needs it as a train driver. We live in Kent.

Its 10.30 pm here in the south of uk and my bedroom with massive window wide open it 33c. I want air con now!!!

We have a similar AC unit with uk hinged windows. We have the pipe going through a plywood board and have velcroed that to the window frame. No need to message about with the gaps around the open window. Much more effective that way.

Amazon sell window kits for portable aircon that would perfectly solve your window gaps issues. It’s like an expanding triangular tent thingy that you can customise for your size and shape

My top floor flat hasn't dipped below 28c for days 🥵

From the UK here. I bought one of these about 20 years ago from B&Q for about £250. It's the best money I ever spent.

The instructions manual is like one of those choose your own adventure books with the amount of jumping around you need to do!

In bankrupted poor Greece, we pay £0.20 to £0.26 per kWh, including all the added tariffs and VAT. And you can't really manage summer over here without A/C unless you live high in the mountains or in a basement. The vast majority of houses have at least one wall split-unit, usually in the bedroom. Larger ones (12000+ BTU) do actually manage to cool down a whole small apartment. Mind you, no-one sets the A/C to 18C room temperature over here, anything below 22C for us feels like a blizzard. It's currently midnight over here and the room temperature is 29.4C, for the time being I'm managing with a couple of fans.

Here's a cheap modification you can make to your air conditioner to prevent it from pulling hot air in through cracks, gaps, and other rooms in your house. Take some cardboard and build a small enclosure around the intake vent, leaving an opening where you can attach a flexible air-conditioning hose. Then run that hose out the window, similar to the exhaust hose. This way, the unit draws its intake air from outside instead of from inside your home, while still exhausting air outdoors. That helps reduce the negative pressure that can cause hot air to be pulled in through leaks and openings elsewhere in the house.