Air-conditioner two circuits to choose from

What country? What final circuit arrangement?

Most portable and some window based units are pretty useless, because they draw air from the house to cool the condensor, so they are causing outdoor air to be sucked into the house, largely overpowering the aircon.

To be effective, they have to use outdoor air to cool the condensor, which means either a split unit with indoor and outdoor sections, or a combined unit with completely separate air paths which means it will have separate inlet and outlet air ducts outdoors, and not just an outlet.

I'm in Australia.

I've used wall/window mounted air-con's in other homes with great effectiveness, so I guess they must have had a separate inlet and outlet duct.

I really just want to walk into a shop and buy a 10amp unit, whether it's window based or portable and know that I'm not going to blow up anything on the same circuit. I believe one portable model, (portable is less desireable), was approximately 1200 watts input power. It claimed up to

Split-air is great but I'm not keen on this type of installation as it would cost $600+ AUD in installation costs, plus another $700 for a replacement circuit board, and the unit will have to remain with the home.

Final circuit, I'm too ignorant on this topic to know what you mean at this point, I'm sorry. The until will be 10 amp maximum, so I guess 2400 watts max?, plugged into a standard household power-point. The circuit breaker is

I can see from typing this email that I have quite a lot more research to do.

Thank you for your time and reply Andrew.

Ideally you should install a dedicated circuit, but if you need to use what you have it should be the bedroom circuit. You are more likely to trip the breaker on the kitchen circuit with the microwave and refrigerator.

Wall and window units normally have some sort of divider that separates the indoor (evaporator) and outdoor (condenser) air paths, with separate fans (possibly driven by the same fan motor) for each. So they're OK.

The problem that the previous poster was talking about is portable units where the whole thing is inside the house, rolling around on wheels. Some of these have two ducts connected to a window, so their condenser air both comes from outdoors and is exhausted outdoors (which is good). But some draw *indoor* air to cool the condenser, and have only one hose to exhaust it outdoors. Those ones draw hot humid outdoor air into the house via air leaks, removing much of the benefit of the unit.

Dave

Thanks Dave

That'll help me with choos>>I'm in Australia.

Thanks Ben, (and to Roy)

I'll need to install the unit on the bedroom circuit then.

(The owner simply will not pay any monies directly, nor indirectly to the air-con or any other house project, so I'm unwilling to spend too much towards the infrastructure of the house.)

I was wondering if I can safely use my laptop on the same circuit as the air-con, (if I use a suitable UPS/or 'soft start' device that I've heard of, as well)? Also, another thought is, could I use a 5 metre extension cord to run the laptop, with the laptop power coming from the other circuit?

Does any of this sound feasible folks?

Many thanks

Darren