Before we get into what window air conditioners are and how they work let me take a moment and paint a picture for you. Let’s say it’s August you are in Oklahoma. The outside temperature is one-hundred and four degrees. Nobody dares go outside unless they are working or going to the pool. The moment you step outside the heat hits you like a furnace. While most people are hunkered down in their homes with their central air conditioners running you find yourself in a one-hundred year old farm house. Sure, you got the house for a great deal and it’s pretty up to date. There’s just one thing missing. There is no central air conditioning. You have no ducts in between your walls. You have no vents to route the air. You have nothing. All you can do is plug in a couple of fans and hope that you can survive the summer’s excruciating heat.
Well my friends, this is where window air conditioners come in to save the day. Window air conditioners work exactly the same way as a standard split system air conditioner. The only difference is that they are much much smaller and are able to be mounted to any window in your home. I won’t get into all of the details on exactly HOW an air conditioner works in this article, but if you are curious please click this article to be taken into my ‘how does it work,’ guide.
Window air conditioners are an amazing invention. They give the guy who is stuck in that farmhouse in the dead of summer an option. The installation is easy as well. On most units you can get away with securing it to your window, pulling the curtains out, and locking it in place. All in all it may take ten to fifteen minutes for a summer of cool air. Some of the larger window units will require mounting brackets to be put on the outside of your home. This is to ensure that your unit stays in place and doesn’t accidentally fall out the window and slam into the ground.
Speaking of sizes there are dozens of varying sizes on window units. The sizes are measured by British Thermal Units, or BTUs. BTUs are the traditional measurement unit of heat. In the air conditioning world BTUs are a measurement of the cooling capacity of your window air conditioner. The bigger the number of BTUs the more powerful and the higher cooling capacity of your A/C unit. As a standard measurement an air conditioner needs around thirty BTUs for each square foot of living space that you wish to cool. You can get a unit as small as 5,000 BTUs or some as large as 30,000 BTUs. If you are unsure exactly what size of air conditioner you will need please click here to check out our window air conditioner buyer’s guide. This guide will go into each size and what sized rooms they are rated for.
Rather you are in an old farmhouse like our first example or you are in a high rise in Miami that has no air conditioning a window air conditioner will provide you with the comfort and relief to help you get through the summer. Some people just buy one of these for their bedroom so that they have a nice cool place to sleep. While others will buy two or even three units to have installed through out their home. So, the next time you suffer through a summer without air conditioning remember that there is a cheap and relatively easy alternative out there called window air conditioners.