Air Conditioned Comfort

Earlier in the week, I made a trip to Home Depot to price out air conditioners. When Silver and I moved into this apartment in 2008, there was an air conditioner already in the bedroom window. This was good, since we didn’t bring one of our own. The bad thing is that it was an ancient monstrosity, and by “monstrosity” I mean “It’s wide enough that our bedroom window is actually broken to accommodate it; the window doesn’t stay open even if you try locking it.”

After a couple years of moving this thing in and out of the window, we decided it was time for a change. I had actually wanted a portable air conditioner, but since they need to be “hooked up to” a window anyway, Silver convinced me to put the money toward a smaller window unit and use the leftovers to put toward a new bed. At Home Depot, units ranged from a cute little 5000 BTU unit, all the way up to the 25000 range (In the words of my uncle John, “I don’t even think my CENTRAL air is 25000 BTUs!”).

Today, we went to purchase an air conditioner, and it turned out I was in for a pleasant surprise. I had thought the 5000 BTU unit was $149. It was nice and light, but the downside of it (And A/Czilla’s one upside was that it cooled everything) was that it would only be enough to cool our bedroom and not the rest of the apartment. As it turned out, I misread the signs; the 5000 BTU unit was only $99, and our $149 would get us a slightly bigger 6500 BTU air conditioner. Even at the larger size, though, it was far quicker and easier to get into the window than the one we had; I feel like I could actually install and remove it (Properly, not the way I removed the last one) by myself if I absolutely had to.

Not only that, it actually works pretty well. Even if it didn’t, though, I feel like the electricity savings will help the unit pay for itself. Plus, we’ll be able to actually take it with us whenever we ultimately move out of this apartment.

How about all of you? How’d your air conditioner installation go, if you live in a place where it’s necessary and you’ve done it already?

-EE

1 comment

    • James on May 30, 2011 at 10:03 pm

    Heh– I remember the *EPIC REMOVAL* story of the last refridgerator… err I mean air conditioner. Here in Colorado (where it BAKES in the summer) I only have crank-open windows so my only real option was a portable. This is mostly because I rent and can’t modify the windows too much. Anyhoo, I got a good deal on a Craigslist monster at a good price it’s literally saved the day! I really only have one cool room, my bedroom, but this is where I spend most the time anyhow. Plus my dog needs to stay cool too — we hate being hot!

    You can figure out the install pretty easily, the window units are a snap.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.