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So we have a heat wave this week. Air conditioners are the one product where supply does not ever meet demand. Even in a prolonged heat wave, factories will not manufacture more units.

All the air conditioners are made in the winter and sold to stores in the spring. There is only one manufacturing run, and that’s it. They don’t even care about global warming.

About 17 years ago the folks from Delonghi approached us with a business proposition. Sell the first portable air conditioner named, believe it or not, the Pinguino. These were priced at $999, and sold remarkably well. Some of the early units were air conditioners and humidifiers in one, some models even had a heat function. This sounds like a good idea, right? Unfortunately they were also returned at an alarming rate of over 95% due to reliability and overall customer dissatisfaction. Let’s take a look at some of the possible reasons why, and also compare current portable models from Frigidaire and Friedrich.

Portable air conditioners are designed for use in buildings with smaller windows, historic buildings where window units are not allowed, and in buildings where ductwork cannot be installed for a typical central air system. The ACs have both an intake and exhaust hose mounting to a window. The intake will obviously supply fresh air to the unit, and the exhaust will expel any heat generated by the unit. One nice feature is that these units can be moved from room to room as necessary. The downside is that these units need to be installed in the window correctly. Some people will assume that you can just move the unit from one room to the other and they will magically provide cooling.

We partner with EnergyStar a few times every year. They support different energy efficient initiatives, and we market mostly energy efficient appliances. It's a good partnership.

This annual post is almost two months earlier than last year. Hard to believe, it will be 80° this week. There are a few tips to buy a bedroom air conditioner.  For all the Marathoners, hydrate and slow your pace.  I ran the 2004.  It was 89 degrees in Brookline...awful feeling

Today is a good day to republish this AC post

1. Buy it early. Air conditioning is unlike other appliances. Manufacturers produce one run and that's all even in cases of extreme heat.
2. Do not oversize. Your air conditioner will not be able to dehumidify and will eventually freeze itself.
3. Air conditioning is quite simply a function of square footage plus an accumulation of heat emitting factors like people (yes, you give off heat), appliances and sunny exposures. You would add BTU output for these various factors.
4. That being said, 98% of the room air conditioners sold, are between 5,000 to 6,000 BTUs. Typically, when you sleep it isn't sunny and there are few appliances in the room. These air conditioners can cool up to 250 square feet.

This post will be a mashup of several different posts with a few new nuggets.. Some heatwave info:

I wrote the my first AC post when it was freezing. We also covered bedroom ACs during the first cold snap. So now might be a good time for a refresher and to cover some exceptions.

Air conditioning season starts when people cannot sleep for over three nights. Today is Day 1. We wrote a post about bedroom air conditioners last week.

The air conditioner post is an annual affair. Given the recent weather, it may have been unnecessary. However, air conditioners and air conditioning have changed over the years.

New appliances actually debut every April. Recessions normally force companies to shrink R&D and new product introductions, so there isn't the plethora(love that word) of the more gilded pre 2007 age