Does a Humidifier Make a Room Warmer?

If you have a warm mist humidifier or vaporizer, then your device is creating steam by boiling water.

Though technically you may not see the number on the thermostat get any higher, steam can make the room feel warm.

I remember a few Christmases ago ( maybe more than a few, I’ve lost track)
Me and my wife were at a Christmas party where they were having a white elephant gift exchange. If you have never heard of a white elephant gift exchange, the idea is simple.

The participants all bring a gift that is supposed to be around the same value. Once the gifts are opened, you have the opportunity to steal someone else’s gift one time till all the gifts are taken.

This particular Christmas, I got what I thought was a humidifier as a gift.

I was pretty excited, a humidifier is a pretty decent gift and we did not have one in our bedroom.

That night, I put water in it, turned it on and went to bed.

I thought I was in for a refreshing cool air coming from the direction of the humidifier but that is not what I got at all.

We woke up to a swampy hot bedroom.

Turns out what I thought was a cool mist humidifier was actually in fact a vaporizer.

And I had been filling the room with hot steam.

Does a humidifier make the room warmer?

A humidifier can make the room feel warmer when the humidifier that you are using is a warm mist humidifier or a vaporizer.

Vicks is one of the most popular vaporizers. And they are sold primarily as a way of delivering their eucalyptus smelling medicine to help you breathe better.

For that, they work very well.

And as a humidifier, they do raise the level of humidity in the air.

What type of humidifier do you have?

Do you have a warm mist humidifier or a cool mist humidifier?

If you are using a warm mist humidifier, then you can expect the room to feel warmer because the humidifier is basically providing you with a sauna type of atmosphere.

Warm mist humidifiers or vaporizers are excellent for helping open up your airways with the steam that comes from them and the fact that they lend themselves to being able to add a medicine like Vicks or eucalyptus that can also help clear your airways.

They also have the distinct characteristic of not growing mold or bacteria inside of the machine because boiling water kills those things.

On the other hand,

A cool mist humidifier emits moisture that is primarily room temperature.

The feeling you can get in front of a humidifier is similar to the feeling of a cool breeze.

Summary

Does a humidifier make the room warmer?

The type of a humidifier that can make a room feel warmer is a warm mist humidifier or by another name “vaporizer”.

Vaporizers bring water to a boiling point to create steam as a means of humidifying the air.

And adding steam to your room can make it feels a little swampy or a bit like a sauna.

If you like the idea of using steam to humidify your room, then vaporizers do have some good features.

If not, a cool mist humidifier will not make your room feel swampy.

Should I Put an Air Purifier in the Baby’s Room?

As a new mother or a not so new mother we are always looking for the best way to keep our baby’s room safe from the things that would keep our little ones from sleeping well and being susceptible to colds and viruses.

The typical “go to” device for the baby’s room is the humidifier. And it is true that keeping the relative humidity between 30 and 50% is very important especially considering the effects the dry air can have on a baby.

But what about the other parts of the year where humidity is not an issue or when it is an issue, but not the lack of it.

Should I put an air purifier in the baby’s room?

Yes an air purifier should be part of the defense against the airborne germs and viruses that can make your babies, as well as your own life miserable.

Air purifiers, unlike humidifiers, are useful for reducing airborne contaminants that can get into your baby’s lungs and nasal passages all year long. Not just during the dry winter months.

What kind of air purifier do I need for my baby room?

1. HEPA filter

The primary thing to look for in an air purifier for the baby’s room is that it uses a HEPA filter.

H13 HEPA filters which have rapidly become the norm for baby air purifiers can filter out contaminants as small as .01 microns.

Which makes them very good as a defense against the common cold.

2. Carbon filter

Carbon filters are sponge like filters that are very good at filtering out VOCs, gases, and odors.

This type of filter is important because it is able to absorb the type of airborne contaminants that can come from chemicals. Things like paints and adhesives that are underneath the carpet as well as aerosols.

They are also useful for absorbing chemicals from cigarette smoke if the baby is being exposed to a smoker.

Other air purifier considerations

1. Filter price

HEPA and Carbon air purifiers require replacement filters every 3 to 6 months.

The price of the filter or filters is a big consideration when purchasing an air purifier.

Some air purifiers may cost a little less up front but the price of the filter more than makes up for it on the back end.

And there are a lot of air purifier companies that only sell combination hepa and carbon filters.

Which from a convenience stance is great, but considering that carbon filters can last much longer than HEPA filters depending on your needs,

You could be buying twice the amount of filters by choosing an air purifier that has a combination filter.

2. Ionic technologies

You can also purchase air purifiers that use ionic technologies like Plasmacluster.

The main thing to think about with ionic technologies is that they can create a bit of ozone. Which can be a long irritant.

But at the same time, a technology like plasma cluster can completely kill airborne viruses and bacteria, whereas a HEPA filter will only capture them.

Air purifiers like the Winx Plasmacluster feature the bipolar ionic technology as a completely independent feature on their air purifier that can be turned on when you are out of the house.

That gives you the option of using the technology to reduce the chance of airborne viruses and yet not have to ever use the feature when your baby is sleeping in the same room.

Summary

Should I put an air purifier in the baby’s room?

An air purifier in the baby’s room is one of the best ways you can help defend your baby against airborne germs and viruses.

And unlike humidifiers which are excellent during the dry months, air purifiers are useful all year long to help keep your baby breathing clean air.

The type of air purifier that is best for a baby is the Hepa H13 and carbon air purifier .

But remember, a HEPA filter and a carbon filter do not necessarily have the same lifespan, so it is useful to do your research before you get into purchasing an air purifier that requires a combination filter that is not necessarily useful and costs much more.

Can You Over Humidify a Baby’s Room?

A lot is said about the importance of keeping the humidity at the proper level in your baby’s room.

And it’s for good reason. The effects of dry air, especially for a baby, can make a person miserable.

Dry cough, sore throat, dry and stuffy nose, to name a few.

Overly dry air can also facilitate the transfer of viruses and allergies that only make matters worse.

So having a good humidifier for the baby’s room can be a godsend. They can help your baby breathe and sleep so much easier when the air is too dry.

But as much as a relief that humidifying your baby’s room can be when the relative humidity is too low,

High humidity also affects the way the babies breathe and sleep too.

Can you over humidify a baby’s room?

The answer is yes. You can over humidify a baby’s room.

Though a humidifier can be one of the best ways to clean the air when the relative humidity is low,

Adding humidity to a room that is already humid can have the opposite effect than what you intend.

High levels of humidity can make the air thicker and harder to breathe.

High humidity also facilitates the growth of mold and becomes a source of nutrition for dust mites.

Which is also a cause of congestion which leads to problems sleeping and breathing.

So there are times of the year that instead of adding more humidity to the air with a humidifier,

You may actually need to take steps to reduce the humidity in your baby’s room.

Sometimes that means running the air conditioner on dry mode, and sometimes that can mean having a separate dehumidifier.

How do you know if you’re over humidifying the baby’s room?

Fortunately you do not have to rely on frizzy hair and static electricity to tell you that the humidity level in your home is out of balance.

A hygrometer is a humidity gauge to let you know exactly what the humidity is in your home and in the baby’s room.

According to most sources, keeping the relative humidity between 30 and 50% is the key to avoiding health problems that arise because of low relative humidity.

Hygrometers can be purchased fairly inexpensively and they also come packaged as a humidity gauge and thermometer combination.

Also humidifiers and dehumidifiers can be purchased with a built-in hygrometer that displays the relative humidity in the room on the front of the machine at any time.

Modern humidifiers come with a hygrometer and a humidistat that you can set to a specific humidity level and will automatically control the humidifier and keep the room at the proper humidity level.

Summary

Can you over-humidify a baby’s room?

Using a humidifier when the relative humidity is already high enough can lead to over humidifying a baby’s room.

The easiest way to avoid over-humidifying is to use a hygrometer to measure your humidity.

A hygrometer is a humidity gauge that is similar to a thermometer but works for humidity rather than the temperature.

Modern humidifiers come with hygrometers built-in so that you can see the relative humidity in the room on the front of the humidifier.

So keeping the relative humidity between 30 and 50% is much easier when you know what your humidity is.

And if you want to spend more, there are humidifiers that use sensors to measure your humidity and control the humidifier to make sure that your room does not become over humidified.

Are Outlet Air Purifiers Worth It?

Sometimes called plug-in air purifiers, outlet air purifiers are small air cleaning devices that plug directly into an outlet and hang on the wall by being connected to the outlet.

Most of the outlet air purifiers on the market are actually air ionizers.

An air purifier is usually what you call a machine that uses filtration as a means of cleaning the air.

If you look at the top Air purifiers on Amazon, you’ll see that they all use a HEPA filter and a carbon filter.

Outlet air purifiers are not big enough to have a large enough filter to make a difference in the air quality.

There are some outlet air purifiers using ultraviolet light with a catalyst.

And even one brand that is strictly a miniature ozone machine.

But the majority of outlet air purifiers are negative ion generators, for ionizers for short.

Ionizers work by emitting negative ions into the airstream.

Through polarity, the emitted ions attach themselves to the particles already in the air.

Which makes them too heavy to float so they fall to the surface. Leaving your ambient air clean to breathe.

Are outlet air purifiers worth it?

Outlet air purifiers may be worth it in certain situations. I can envision a scenario where they help keep the air quality good in a cubicle or small office.( Although you want to keep a microfiber cloth handy to keep your computer screen wiped off. More on that later.)

But for things like kitchen odors or cat litter odors, I would say don’t waste your money.

One thing they don’t tell you about ionizers is that they tend to get very dusty.

The ions that are supposed to float and clean the air throughout the room tend not get very far and end up as dust all over the device itself.

The ions are also infamous for collecting on TV and computer screens because of the magnetic pull.

If you have your heart set on buying one, then I would definitely pick the one that uses a ultraviolet light with a catalyst.

This is a technology that is used in large air sanitizers that has the ability to oxidize germs and viruses leaving them inactive.

There are some very effective air purifiers that use this technology like Air Oasis and Guardian Tech.

I believe that you could get a better result with one of these and you than just a simple ionizer.

But the bottom line is these are very small air purifiers, that will only work in a very small space.

If you keep that in mind and don’t get your hopes up too much, you’ll probably like the results.

But since most of the literature on these small outlet air purifiers tend to boast their ability to work in larger square foot areas,

You might be disappointed.

Are outlet air purifiers worth it?

Personally I would rather have a smaller purifier that I can move around and actually have a HEPA filter and carbon filter.

The ionizer is a good extra feature if it has it, but it’s the first thing I would go without.

Thunderstorm Air Purifier – What Does That Mean??

It’s interesting that so many of the air purifiers from the ’80s and ’90s used the “after a thunderstorm freshness” to describe what their air purifiers were supposed to do. And now that advertising has become popular again.

The air purifiers that use the thunderstorm jargon were responsible for the measures to prevent devices that produced ozone from being sold as home air cleaners.

The after a thunderstorm effect that the advertising alludes to is the fact that lightning creates ozone and it oxidizes all the contaminants in the air, leaving the air clean and fresh.

All very true.

But the problem with using ozone as an air purifier is that it does not only oxidize the contaminants in the air, it can also oxidize your lung tissue when you breathe it.

That’s why they say that ozone can be a lung irritant.

And ozone has a nasty habit of building up inside of a closed room.
What makes it unsafe to use as a domestic air purifier.

There are not too many companies selling ozone machines as air purifiers anymore.

No one wants to be associated with something that actually could cause harm. Especially if you’re claiming the opposite.

And there is the problem with not being able to sell to California at all because of their specific ozone laws.

But just when you thought it was safe to come out of the water,

There’s a company selling a…

Thunderstorm” plug in air purifier.

The air purifier in question is the EdenPURE® OxiLeaf® II Thunderstorm™ Air Purifier.

The literature for this air purifier specifically says that it uses ozone molecules to clean the air and that it is not available in California.

There is no one trying to hide anything here.

The device is a miniature ozone machine that you plug directly into an outlet.

And the reason they can get away with selling it is that it does not create enough ozone to be considered a breathing hazard.

And to be fair, any air purifier that has an ionizer, whether it be a negative ion generator, a ultraviolet light, photocatalyst, or plasma,

All create a small amount of ozone that is considered to be negligible because it is not enough to be dangerous to breathe.

And though these plug-in air purifiers are made to simply place them into an outlet and leave them, there is nothing saying that that is the way it has to be done.

If you don’t want the chance of breathing in ozone, even at a very low level, but you do like the ideal of what ozone can accomplish as far as killing germs and viruses,

Turning the air purifier on when you are not in the house and turning it off when you are is always an option.

Thunderstorm Air Purifier- Are they effective?

Plug-in air purifiers are very small air purifiers that will clean a very small space. They do what they say they do but on a very small level.

Odors are one of the hardest things for an air purifier to remove, even a large air purifier with a large weight of carbon does not remove kitchen odors at a rate that makes them worth purchasing for that specific reason.

Personally, I don’t think the effectiveness of a small plug-in air purifier is worth the money that they are asking for them.

And I don’t really have an outlet that I am ready to completely devote to one of these contraptions.

But that being said, if I’m going to spend the large amount of money on a full sized air purifier, I would want something that has the optional ionizer when I need it.

Which is Better? Ionizer or Air purifier?

What is an Air Purifier?

If you do a search for air purifier on Amazon, you’ll come up with brands like Levoit and BlueAir that appear at the top of the results.

There are a few other big brand names but they all have the same thing in common.

They all use a combination of a HEPA filter, a carbon filter, and a pre-filter to clean the air.

So when you mention air purifier, what you’re talking about is a air filtering machine.

This is what the industry has said that is the best way to clean air. Who am I to argue?

But if you go down into the results of Amazon a few pages, you start to find air purifiers that use other types of technologies besides the standard HEPA and Carbon.

The Sharp Plasmacluster is one of the first ones you come across that does anything to stray from the straight and narrow.

Plasma cluster is an ionizer that releases both positive and negative ions simultaneously.

Ionizer?

A little further into the search results and you find other companies like Guardian Technologies and Air Oasis that are also doing something different.

Ultraviolet light with photo catalyst and Bipolar are terms that you see associated with these air purifiers that are at the core; Ionizers.

Interesting.

What is an Ionizer?

A simple ionizer is a machine that emits negative ions into the airstream.

The ions because of polarity, combine with the contaminants in the air.

After which they become too heavy to float and fall to the surface.

That’s the simple version.

Other versions of ionizers combine ultraviolet light and titanium to create super ions that actually kill the contaminants in the air before causing them to be too heavy to float.

Bipolar ionizers like the plasma cluster technology, release negative and positive ions at the same time.

As soon as the ions are emitted from the machine, they begin snapping together, trapping and oxidizing all the contaminants in the air in the process.

Wow..

As you can see, Modern ionizers are pretty sophisticated.

Which is better? Ionizer or air purifier?

So you may ask yourself, if these ionizers can actually neutralize and kill contaminants like viruses and bacteria in the air?

Why would I want an air purifier that just filters them?

Get ready for the Big “O”.

The answer is ozone.

Even if it’s a negligible amount, and most companies claim that it is of course,

There is one thing that they can’t get away from and that is that Ionizers manufacture ozone as a byproduct.

Ozone is a lung irritant if you breathe too much of it.
Which is kind of the opposite of what you want out of a air purifier.

But if you’re willing to go down that rabbit hole, you may find that the benefits outweigh the risk with these ionizers.

Which is better? Ionizer or air purifier?

The standard air purifier with the HEPA and carbon filter combination is a easy answer.

There is no risk involved in simply filtering out contaminants from the air.

Not to mention, that HEPA filters these days are insanely effective.

And ionizers do have a chance of manufacturing some ozone as a byproduct.

Even if it’s a safe amount, it’s understandable if you don’t want to mess with it.

But personally, I like the ideal of having an air purifier that has both HEPA filter and ionizer technologies available to me.

For instance the Sharp plasma cluster that we talked about a little earlier,

The plasma cluster ionizer is a extra feature that you can turn on when you want it, or leave off when you don’t.

I like the ideal of having the option of turning it on if I want to.

I also like the ideal of the science behind the plasma cluster technology.

So which is better? Both is better.

Do Humidifiers Help With Congestion?

Nasal congestion is widespread, and can occur during sinus infections such as the flu and the common cold. Some symptoms include sinus pain, mucus buildup, a stuffy or runny nose, swollen nasal tissue or sinus pressure.

While medicines are recommended for such infections, taking extra precautionary measures to tone down the discomfort from congestion is also recommended.

This is where the question occurs; do humidifiers help with congestion?

The short answer is yes, they do.

Humidifiers turn water from its liquid form into vapor. This vapor is then released into the air to increase the humidity, which further helps in loosening dried-up mucus secretion in your nasal passages.

You can then easily blow your nose, getting rid of all the mucus and giving you maximum relief.

Many people undergo home treatments to relieve congestion, and using humidifiers is one of these methods. All types of humidifiers can help with congestion, but first, let’s dive into the various types of humidifiers and how they can help.

Warm-mist Humidifier

Whether shopping for a car, a commercial hand dryer or a PC, you always look through the different models and their functions. The same is true for humidifiers.

The warm-mist humidifier comes with a heating system used to boil water internally. Once heated, the nozzle releases water in the form of steam.

Using warm-mist humidifiers should be avoided in the presence of children or particularly energetic pets. If the humidifier is knocked over, it can cause severe burns, so it must be handled carefully, even if by yourself.

Regardless, they are still highly effective against congestion and fully serve their purpose. Additionally, they can come with compartments to add calming essential oil or vapor rub to be released into the air. This will aid more soothing relief.

Since warm-mist humidifiers keep the water at a boiling temperature for as long as they function, they also use a lot of energy.

Vaporizer Humidifier

For smaller bedrooms, using a vapor humidifier is recommended. These are very similar in function and effectiveness to warm-mist humidifiers, minus the ability to remove the tank. Despite this, they are just as good as other humidifiers in regards to providing relief.

The process is the same as a warm-mist humidifier. Water is boiled to create and release vapor into the air to be inhaled, helping to clear congestion.

Similarly, these also must be carefully handled and kept away from pets and children for safety. The boiling process that vaporizers use helps get rid of all the pollutants that may be present in the water. This way, when vapor occurs, it is of good, clean quality that is safe for you to inhale.

Using only vaporizer humidifiers will not be as effective in larger rooms due to bigger spaces needing more ventilation. The vapor needs to circulate in the room so you can inhale them to clear congestion.

Cool-mist Humidifier

A cool-mist humidifier is an ideal option, since it offers the same relief as other humidifiers whilst being safe to use around children or pets. You can even find models that are explicitly designed for infants and children.

As the name suggests, the cool-mist humidifier can turn room temperature or cool water into a mist, providing relaxing, therapeutic relief.
The distinguishing difference between warm-mist and cool-mist humidifiers, despite the temperature, is that no fan is present in warm-mist models, as the boiling effect releases energy, forcing the vapor out of the machine.

Naturally, the cool-mist model does require a fan, which may result in a loud noise when it is on. However, this is a small price to pay regarding the effectiveness, low energy use and safety it offers.

The cool mist humidifier further comes in two forms. Namely, evaporative humidifiers and impeller humidifiers. These vary in the ways they release mist into the air.

Evaporative humidifiers can release the relative humidity inside your home with a fan. The water is pushed into the air passing through an absorbent material, creating vapor.

Impeller humidifiers use rotating disks that move at a high speed. The disk is responsible for rotating the water around, turning them into droplets that are released into the air. They are comparatively safer than evaporative humidifiers since they do not use fans.

Ultrasonic Humidifier

Ultrasonic humidifiers work by creating small waves using ultrasonic. These waves break down the water, creating small vapor that are released into the air as a cool soothing mist. This model of humidifier is both very quiet and low maintenance.

Since the sound of a fan from a cool-mist humidifier may be irritating, especially when already congested, an ultrasonic humidifier can provide more quiet relief. It is one of the best and most recommended options due to this reason.

Since ultrasonic humidifiers have the same function as cool-mist and warm-mist humidifiers whilst being quiet and safe, people tend to prefer this option. You can sleep peacefully at night while enjoying the luxury of having a safe vapor released into the air, without the worry of children or pets getting burnt.

The bottom line

Ultrasonic humidifiers take the prize as being the safest, fully efficient and quietest option on the market. Humidifiers that produce sound may not seem like such an inconvenience in the daytime, but quiet noises often sound louder at night.

There is also the concern of using vaporizers and warm-mist humidifiers around children or pets. In contrast, ultrasonic humidifiers have all the benefits of the other options, whilst still being safe to use around your family and pets.

Ultrasonic humidifiers also have a far lower noise level than other options. There are other aspects to consider, like having an automatic humidifier so that it can turn off when not in use to save electricity and prevent mold.

We hope this article helped enlighten you about how humidifiers help relieve congestion and about the different types that will be best suited for you. Thank you for reading!

Windowless Air Conditioner Solutions- Adding New Ductwork

Getting cool air to a room that doesn’t have any windows can be a challenge sometimes.

But depending on what type of room and what size of a room you were trying to cool, the answer may be closer than you think.

There are so many different scenarios of rooms that need cooling but do not have any windows.

One example is a garage that has been converted or closed in to add another bedroom.

Garages are typically not part of the HVAC zoning system of your home.

So you don’t have cool air running to your garage from the main hub of the central heat and air.

Windowless Air Conditioner Solutions- Adding New Ductwork

Running ductwork from your existing HVAC to your new room can be a solution if:

1. You have an adequate size HVAC that can handle it.

2. You have other rooms in the house that are not being used

1. Adequate or bigger size HVAC than you need.

Many times the HVAC system in your house is bigger than you actually need.

In this ideal situation, running new ductwork to your new room will be relatively simple and do a decent job.

For specifics, you will need to know the size of the room you were trying to cool and the tonnage of your HVAC system.

An HVAC tech will be able to tell you whether or not this suits you are not.

Diy

When you have rooms in the house that are not in use.

This is something I’ve seen in a rented house where someone was using the garage for a podcast studio.

He portioned off part of a single car garage to set up his equipment and built a makeshift studio. Since this was a rented house and he didn’t plan on living there forever, he converted the garage in a way that he could take it apart whenever he decided to move.

The problem was that there wasn’t any heating or air in the garage and it was extra hot throughout the summer.

And by no means is this a recommendation, I’m only telling the story to give you an idea of things that can be done if you think outside of the box.

In this specific rental house that he lived in, there was an area next to the garage that was supposed to be a dining room (maybe). The room didn’t make a lot of sense and he was just piling stuff in there.

So to cool his studio area that he had built into his garage, he got into the attic, removed the duct that was running to the dining /storage room he wasn’t using, and extended it to the garage.

A pretty good solution since he had a room that was only being used for storing stuff.

This was a good idea for him since he was a single man and wasn’t using one room for anything besides storage and didn’t care whether or not it ever got cooling or heating to it.

This idea can also work if you have a house with a room or two that you keep closed off but do not want to completely remove the heat or air from the room

In the above scenario, the man could have tied into the existing ductwork and ran a new duct to the garage.

Then added vents that could be completely closed to both the dining area and the new garage area.

That way both rooms could share the Heat and Air in an either/or situation.

I say either/ or situation because simply tying off a new duct from an existing room will probably not give you enough air into the new room for you to be satisfied.

Summary

Windowless Air Conditioner Solutions- Adding New Ductwork

If you have a room in your house that doesn’t get air from your existing HVAC, sometimes a solution to cooling the room is to add an extra duct from the HVAC hub.

This works if you have a bigger HVAC than you need or if you have rooms in the house that are closed off.

If you do have rooms that are closed off you can run the duct from those rooms to the room you want cooling,

Or you can tie in from the ductwork going to those rooms and add vents that completely close off, to the room you’re not using and the new room that you’re running air to. That way you can still open the vent and get air to the old room in an either/ or situation.

Windowless Air Conditioner Solutions- PTAC

How do you cool a room with no windows?
Is there such a thing as a windowless air conditioner?

There are a few types of air conditioners that you can use to cool a room with no windows.

Some expensive, some not as much. Some that take a whole lot of installation knowledge and work, and some that take less.

One solution that falls under the moderately expensive side and does take a moderate amount of installation is the PTAC.

PTAC or packaged terminal air conditioners are through the wall air conditioners that require the wall that they are installed to to be an outside wall that has the outdoors as one side of the wall.

PTAC air conditioners are known as commercial hotel air conditioners because that is where they are seen the most.

But they can be used in almost any type of application where you have a room that has an outside wall.

Advantages of Packaged Terminal air conditioners

1. Quality.

PTAC air conditioners are commercial grade ACs that can literally last you 20 or more years.

2. Work as both air conditioners and heaters.

If you have ever stayed in a hotel that has a Packaged Terminal air conditioner installed in the room that you were sleeping in, you know very well how intensely cold that room can get using a PTAC.

You also know how hot one can get in the winter.

3. Energy efficient.

PTAC disadvantages

1. Installation

Not nearly the amount of installation that a mini split requires,

but installing a Packaged Terminal air conditioner does require a large rectangular hole to be cut through an entire wall. And for most people that means that they will have to hire an outside Carpenter to do the work.

The size of the hole that you are cutting pretty much dictates that you are invested in using the package terminal air conditioner for a very long time.

And once the hole is cut, you are stuck with that location for the air conditioner.

Of course you can always fix the wall if needed. But that would be an entire job on its own.

2. Single room only

PTAC air conditioners only work in the room that they are installed in.

And they are a point of origin type of air conditioner. In other words, they are very cold, the closer you are to the air conditioner.

Back to the hotel reference,

If you ever stayed in a room with two beds that used a PTAC air conditioner, you know that the bed closest to the air conditioner is going to be the one you want if you like to sleep with a lot of covers.

Otherwise, it may get a little warm on your side of the room.

3. Noise

Just like a window air conditioner, all the components of a HVAC system are located in one package with a Packaged Terminal air conditioner.

There is no getting away from the sound of the compressor running and cycling on and off while the air conditioner is on.

Because of that point, PTAC air conditioners are not very suitable for use in recording studios or podcast studios where you need as much quiet as you can get.

Summary

Packaged Terminal air conditioners are a commercial grade windowless air conditioner solution when you have a room with no windows.

PTAC air conditioners are known as hotel air conditioners because that’s where you see them the most.

But anywhere you have a room with one wall that is an outside wall, you can use a package terminal AC.

The installation for a Packaged Terminal air conditioner requires that a large rectangular hole be cut into your wall.

So not only are you looking at the installation cost, you are also looking at a fairly permanent solution when you install a PTAC.

And though they are very powerful air conditioners with a long lifespan,

They do have the disadvantage of being a single room air conditioner that has a noisy compressor built right in.

And they are a point of origin air conditioner that can be freezing cold when you are next to it.

Windowless Air Conditioner Solutions -Mini Split

How do you get air conditioning into a room that does not have any windows?

In a series of articles, we are presenting different options for air conditioning when you have a room that doesn’t have any windows.

We explore through the wall air conditioners, portable evaporative coolers, HVAC options, mini split, PTAC, and more.

In this article we are talking about the mini split as a windowless air conditioning solution.

Mini Split Windowless Air conditioner

Mini split air conditioners are a windowless air conditioner solution that are a very close cousin to a traditional HVAC central heat and air unit.

The difference is that mini split air conditioners are more of an afterthought and usually go into a house after the house has already been built.

Where HVAC systems are built into the house and ductwork is installed as the house is being built.

That’s not always the case, but it is true most of the time.

Just like a HVAC system, the compressor of a mini split is outside of the house.

The compressor runs to an air handler( or multiple air handlers) inside of the house via conduit on the outside of the house. And on the outside of the walls inside of the house.

That is why we say that many split air conditioners are more of an afterthought because they are installed via the outside of the walls.

Mini splits are a much more sophisticated way of getting air conditioning into a room with no windows then say a portable evaporative cooler.

But the price and the installation of a mini split is considerably more also.

Mini split air conditioner Benefits

There is a number of benefits to using a mini split air conditioner:

1. Quiet

Since the compressor of a mini split air conditioner is outside of the house, the only noise coming from the air conditioning is the light sound of the air handler.

This is a good solution if noise is a problem. For instance, a recording studio for a podcast room needs silence as a prerequisite.

With the mini split air conditioner, you can achieve less noise.

2. Individual temperature settings

Another big advantage of mini split air conditioners that even HVAC systems don’t have is the ability to set the desired temperature for every room individually.

Since each room has its own air handler with a mini split, the temperature of each room can be sent differently.

Mini split downsides

1. Installation

The installation of a mini split air conditioner requires quite a bit more than other types of portable air conditioning.

Installing a mini split is more like installing two air conditioners because you have to install the outdoor compressor and the indoor air handler.

They also have to be connected via conduit.

Other factors to consider are that electricity has to be run to the compressor which means a new circuit.

And a condensate line has to be installed to drain the moisture outside.

2. Maintenance

Maintenance is also a huge part of owning a mini split air conditioner.

Two separate parts of the air conditioner required two separate maintenance.

The air handler has to have filter replacements and cleaned at least once a year.

The compressor outside requires disassembling to clean and also needs at least a yearly cleaning.

And the condensate lines need checking and unclogging if a problem appears.

Summary

A mini split air conditioner is a good solution for a room that does not have any windows.

A good solution but one that comes with a big price tag and requires installation and maintenance.

But they do have the benefit of being extremely quiet when noise is as much of a factor as getting cool air into a room without windows.