Portable Air Conditioners: Single Exhaust vs Dual Exhaust in Decorating on May 04, 2011 by Staff Writer Before you finalize your decision on portable air conditioners,  decide whether you want one with a single exhaust or dual exhaust. Each has its own benefits, and what you buy will affect your utility bills. Here’s what you need to know about both, so you can buy a unit that will work well for cooling your apartment: Single Exhaust Portable Air Conditioners A single hose or single exhaust portable air conditioner uses one hose to cool the air inside a room. If you were to open up one of these and examine the inside, you would find a compressor, which is used to remove heat from the air. The hot air is passed through the hose again to the outside, cooling the room. Each time air passes through the portable air conditioner unit, a small percent of air from the room is reduced and negative air pressures is created. Hot air from other rooms in the house will try to replace this “lost” air, and the unit has to work even harder to cool the room.

This is one of the reasons why a single exhaust unit is not as appealing as a dual exhaust unit. Dual Exhaust Portable Air Conditioners No negative air pressure exists in a room that uses a dual hose or dual exhaust portable air conditioner. One hose brings air from the outside into the room, instead of pulling in air already in the room. The second hose takes the warm air out of the room. The mere existence of the second hose makes a dual exhaust unit cool a room quickly, almost three times faster. These are generally a better buy than single exhaust units, and you can expect to pay more for a better performance. Single Exhaust Portable Air Conditioners Benefits There’s a significant price difference between single exhaust and dual exhaust portable air conditioners. Single exhaust units do offer some benefits, even though they don’t perform as well as dual exhaust units. Less energy use because of one less fan and motor (dual exhaust units have two) Costs less than dual exhaust units

It’s important to weigh these benefits, and if money is tight, a single exhaust system may be sufficient to meet your needs. Dual Exhaust Portable Air Conditioners Benefits If you can afford to buy a dual exhaust portable air conditioner, then that’s a better choice. Here are just some of the benefits you can expect: Better air quality (one hose dedicated to bringing in fresh air from the outside) For these reasons, you should buy a dual exhaust portable air conditioner if possible. Whether you buy single exhaust or dual exhaust portable air conditioners, be sure to buy one that matches your room size and has enough BTUs to cool your room. A unit with 12,000 BTUs can cool a room up to 400 square feet. Check the manufacturers guide for the unit you’re considering to find out the maximum square foot area it can cover, and compare that to the rooms where you’ll use your units the most. any experience with portable AC for tents? Re: any experience with portable AC for tents?

Since cold air sinks, you end up losing a lot under the tent walls.air handling unit vs air conditioner lyndausvi said:You need walls.    air conditioner leaking water into room You'd be shocked at the ideas that people come here with. how to reset central ac unitI'd personally going with renting the AC units instead of buying. climbingwife said: treehugginbride said:I'd personally going with renting the AC units instead of buying. I was just kind of thinking "well duh I'll have walls".. but i forget that common sense is not so common. There are a few ac rental places within reasonable distance. Gonna be a matter of seeing what they quote vs how much we could buy one and then use in FIs workshop. At least now i know what size i need.

@southernbelle0915 was it at least comfy inside the tent? I think that was poor planning to separate the dancefloor from everything else anyway, especially outside in august. Our current guest list is looking like 50 plus a few children so right now in looking at seating 65, a small dance floor, small stage, and a buffet table or two. All the tent calculators i can find say I'll need 1000- to 1200 sq ft so my 30x60 might be overkill and may do the 30x45 instead. I think the rental place does have fans. I do reenactment events so i know that being inside of large (or even small) marquee canvas tents with only a slight breeze passing through can be suffocating, even as late in the year as October. (Because AC and fans are sooo not 1499, lol) and i have zero experience with being in an air conditioned tent. So maybe i should downsize my tent and rent a portable ac with a greater capacity than the tent requires? I really want a June wedding, so i also want to go above and beyond to make sure it's not miserable and still enjoy our own back yard.

If that's not feasible however, i want to realize that now while i still have time to change our plans.Thanks for the heads up @adk19. I will take this into consideration and ask the rentals place about it. southernbelle0915 said:Yes, the temp was fine in the tent. But the rental company handled everything and knew how to keep it at a certain temp (another reason to rent). I would go with the bigger tent. You can always fill space with a guest book table, a cake table, a gift table, a coffee station, etc. But if you go with a smaller tent, you can't make more space if you need it. Ill keep shopping around and hopefully ill find a rental company that has tents AND ac units. If you buy or rent a tent, make sure it has a door option so people can easily enter or exit the tent. With a tent that size, you'll probably need a minimum of 6 a/c units. If you go for the portable ones, possibly more. We had portable A/C units in our home until we had Central A/C installed and to be honest, they don't provide that much cool air.