Riddle.
What kind of room has no doors or Windows? A mushroom. Haha.
But what kind of room actually has no windows?
I can think of a few… A recording studio, the basement, storage shed, garage, laundry room, converted closet… It starts to be a pretty big list when you start trying to think of all the kinds of rooms that don’t have Windows.
There’s all kinds of scenarios where rooms are built without windows for one reason or another. And it seems that these rooms pretty much always lack Air conditioning.
So what do you do when you have a room with no windows but you need air conditioning?
Table of Contents
One Windowless Air Conditioner Solution is a portable evaporative cooler
If you’re doing a search on Google for a windowless air conditioner, evaporative coolers are pretty much the only suggestion that you will get.
So what exactly is a portable evaporative cooler?
An evaporative cooler is an air conditioner that uses a fan blowing over water to cool the air with evaporation.
Kind of similar to the feeling you get from the wind blowing over a pool.
A cool breeze.
What makes a portable evaporative cooler a good option for a room that does not have any windows?
It’s because they do not exhaust heat in any form.
Other portable air conditioners or window air conditioners use a refrigerated air cooling method that creates a large amount of heat that exhausts either through a hose or by sitting in the window.
But when you do not have a window, you do not have anywhere to exhaust the Heat.
Portable Air coolers come in different size packages. Larger ones have wheels for mobility while smaller ones are more like the size of a small ice chest with a handle that you can carry it around by.
Portable evaporative cooler downsides
1. Water
The number one maintenance that a portable evaporative cooler requires is filling it with water.
And of course the mess that comes along with filling it with water.
Some air coolers have removable basins that you can fill under a faucet similar to a humidifier, other types you have to externally fill the water by carrying the water to the machine.
And most modern air coolers have a compartment to put ice into them.(optional)
There are larger portable air coolers that have a garden hose hookup so that you do not have to continuously carry water to the machine.
2. Mold and bacteria
Related to the first required maintenance of filling the air cooler with water,
Is the necessity of dumping the water that is not used out of the air cooler when you are done.
Stagnant water can start growing bacteria and getting moldy in as little as 48 hours.
So it is a requirement to keep an air cooler clean and dry when it is not in use.
Turning on an air cooler that has germy stagnant water in it,
will distribute all the germs and bacteria in the water, into the air where you will breathe it.
Airborne mold can cause symptoms similar to the flu or pneumonia.
And there’s also a disease called legionnaires that originates from bacteria growing in water.
Nothing you want to mess around with.
3. Don’t cool very well in humid climates
Another issue with evaporative air coolers is that they use humidity as a source of cooling off the air.
But when the air is already humid, adding more humidity to the air makes the air feel hotter .
And that kind of makes using an evaporative cooler pretty much useless in the high humidity months or if you live in an area that has a higher year-round humidity.
Summary
A portable evaporative cooler is a windowless air conditioner solution.
While most air conditioners require that you have a window to exhaust the heat that they create while cooling,
Evaporative coolers do not create any heat at all. So in turn they do not require a window to vent any heat.
But they do require a little more maintenance in that they have to be continually filled with water.
And they must be cleaned and left dry when not in use.
And one of the biggest issues with evaporative coolers is that they do not work in high humidity.
Which describes a large portion of the world as well as a couple of the months in summer where temperatures are at their hottest.
