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Illustration for article titled How to Know If Your Air Conditioner Has the Right Energy Capacity for Your Room

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It’d be pretty convenient if any portable air conditioning unit could slot right into your window and immediately cool down your home, but the size of the room in question is the most important aspect of your search for satisfying air conditioning. You don’t want to situate a smaller unit in front of a large, sprawling room in the hopes that it will offer respite from the heat.

The size and energy capacity have to work in direct correlation to the size of your room. This sounds logical enough, but it’s imperative that you purchase the right unit so you don’t wind up sweating all summer or turning your living room into an ice box.

How to find the right portable air conditioner

The basics are easy enough. You should measure your window, or if you’re lucky enough to have a slot meant for an AC unit, measure that. The majority of big box retailers are going to have options, including Amazon, Home Depot and Best Buy. Once you have the sizing figured out, you’re going to want to get into the more important deliberations: Namely, how many BTUs you’ll need.

There are two different kinds of portable AC units: Those that sit in your window, and dual-hose portable units, which don’t sit in windows or slits in a wall. You’ll mostly see dual-hose models cooling down bigger spaces—like maybe a library, for example—that don’t have central air conditioning systems. For our purposes, we’ll stick to the wall/window units, since we’re talking about cooling down your apartment or house.

What are BTUs?

The metric for the energy used by portable air conditioners is the British Thermal Unit, or BTU. Specifically, as the plumbing website BHI Service writes, “one BTU refers to the amount of energy that’s required to increase the temperature of a pound of water by 1° F.”

All units come with a BTU rating, which is a number that explains the air conditioner’s energy range and power. Basically, the higher the BTU, the more energy the unit consumes, but also the higher its capacity for cooling down a bigger room. Or, think of it this way: High BTU ratings are good for cooling big rooms, while lower BTU ratings should suffice for a smaller room.

The are online tools to help you understand what BTU rating is right for your square footage, but you can also crunch the numbers yourself. As Consumer Reports notes, “an air conditioner needs 20 BTU for each square foot of living space.” Most AC units have ranges from 5,000 to 12,500 BTU, the publication notes, so you can assess your needs based on these criteria.

How many BTUs do you need for your room?

Your living room or bedroom might not be the most straightforward place to cool down, especially if it has large windows centered directly beneath the sun or high ceilings that trap warm air.

Since certain particulars are likely to define your shopping needs, the AC manufacturer Sylvane offers some guidance:

  • 7,500 BTUs will cover 150 square feet x 8-foot ceiling = 1,200 cubic feet
  • 9,000 BTUs will cover 200 square feet x 8-foot ceiling = 1,600 cubic feet
  • 10,000 BTUs will cover 300 square feet x 8-foot ceiling = 2,400 cubic feet
  • 12,000 BTUs will cover 400 square feet x 8-foot ceiling = 3,200 cubic feet
  • 13,000 BTUs will cover 450 square feet x 8-foot ceiling = 3,600 cubic feet
  • 14,000 BTUs will cover 500 square feet x 8-foot ceiling = 4,000 cubic feet

As far as measuring your square footage, Consumer Reports directs “to measure your room, multiply the length by the width. Add together the size of rooms that aren’t separated by doors, because the air conditioner will need to cool both spaces.”

Hopefully, this can get you thinking about the right air conditioning unit to cool down your presumably sweltering home this summer.

 



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