Portable Air Conditioners

Portable Air Conditioners are one of our most popular sellers, however we only really specialise in the big, industrial and commercial portable air conditioners.  Currently we get a lot of non-converting traffic on people searching for portable air conditioners, but why?

One theory is that the people searching are actually looking for the smaller, cheaper plastic portable ac units which are imported from China and sold in the likes of B & Q and Focus.

These units can retail for as little as £150 or less, and they do work, we used to carry a stock of these units and sell and hire them - however the market appears to have died.  The question is why?  The answer I'm guessing is the massive influx of cheap foreign units which are sold with very little margin making it a market not worth being in.

Are these units worth having?  Surely they're no good if that's the price?

Well, yes and no.  If you want some cheap cooling in a bedroom or living room then they're not bad and they're definately cheap - but a twin duct would be far better, because it draws fresh air in, and cools it  as well.  Cost wise we're going to be looking at closer to £1000 but it will perform far better.  For shops, offices and commercial environments it's all down to capacity.  If you run any AC unit in a room too big for it to cool or with too much heat gain for it to cool - it is only ever going to spot cool and never lower the temperature.  It may even damage the machine. 

In these instances, an MCM or an MCWCS unit is a better option.  Of course if it's a 6' x 6' office with a desk and and a single worker - then the £150 plastic, chinese option is probably going to be perfectly effective and should perform adequately.

More about me.

So apart from writing technical jargon about portable cooling who am I ?  What do I like doing?

Well, I spend a good portion of my spare time writing star wars fanfic on a star wars roleplaying board.  Which is good fun, though the board is a little down on members at the moment. 

I've been an avid  video games player for over 30 years and I have recently started getting into Lego, in particular Lego Design by me .

I also have a bit of a hobby in websites, I operate several information sites one on supercharging Mazda MX5's and MX5 Turbo.  There's one about taekwondo a martial art I have a second degree Black Belt in, but not trained for a while.

Then there's my site about house building which is based on personal experience of building my own house.  There's more actually... I have a lot of websites and blogs and things...

Monobloc portable air conditioners cause negative air pressure.

There is a problem with monobloc portable air conditioners, these are normal kind of thing you buy with a tumble dryer hose on the back to pump out the hot air.


The problem is their efficiency.  Firstly, if you have a long hose passing through the room - it's going to radiate a certain amount of heat back into the room. 

Secondly, because of the 100% it draws in, being split into two halves, and one half being heated then pumped outside - they cause slight negative air pressure in the room.  What this means is wherever the room is not air tight, air from a neighbouring warm room will be pulled in reducing the cooling efficiency.

The easy way to tackle these problems is to use a water cooled split portable air conditioner such as the MCWCS250.  Sometimes this might not be practical or affordable though - so what can you do to reduce the problems?

Firstly, insulate the exhaust hose - particularly if it trails around the room, and have as little exhaust hose in the room as possible.

Secondly, think about where the air drawn in by the negative pressure is likely to come from - if there are two doors to the area and one leads to a cooler place than the other - consider openind the door to the cooler are and taping around the other door to seal it.  This will actually aid efficiency if the cooler area is sufficiently cool rather than harm it.


Given the high cost of running air conditioners, due to the big power requirements, it's important to have them running as efficiently as possible, and this can require an understanding of how the various types of unit work, and a little thought.

Cooling Fans - What NOT to buy.

If you're looking for a powerful industrial cooling fan, because perhaps the area is too large to cool with a portable air conditioner then you need to think carefully about what to buy. Many fans on sale from online shops look powerful, and look big but can only be felt if you're standing right next to them.

The key things to look for are multiple impellers, if it's only got 3 blades, it's going to be a very weak fan, look for at least 5 blades. Look at the wattage of the motor, if it's less than 150W then it's not going to be very powerful.

This video shows you the difference between a good and a bad fan. Both of them look powerful and industrial... Until you turn them on!