There is a room in our apartment which we use as an office that is always 10 to 20 degrees warmer than the rest of the house. The apartment is cooled using a standard central AC, however the room in question does not have a vent on that AC. I think the reason for this is it likely was previously part of the adjacent bedroom, which is separated by a thin, non-load bearing wall.
Because I use this room frequently, I'd like to add a small single room or portable AC unit inside of it. Here are the constraints that I have to work with:
- The room does not have any windows, and cutting a hole through the wall to use to drain an AC unit is not an option
- I cannot cut any holes through the wall into the adjacent bedroom
- I think water evaporation based AC units are out of the question since it would not only counteract the central AC that does work brilliantly in the other rooms, but also the office contains a lot of expensive electronics that I'd rather not damage with water
- Adding a vent in this room to the central AC isn't an option
If that doesn't eliminate all types of feasible AC units, it at least seems to eliminate the bulk majority of them. I've been unable to find an AC unit that could work in this type of situation. Maybe part of that is because without drainage or water vapor, I'm not sure how one would work. I guess if there was a type of unit that drained into a bucket, that would work. Does such a thing exist, or does anyone have any brilliant insight in terms of ideas?
Best Answer
Congratulations - you have eliminated all the ways this might actually work.
Either deal with it being hotter, or add a few options that you say are "not an option" with the most logical one being a connection to the central A/C.
With a bucket, you could go with 50 pounds of ice, a fan blowing over it and a bucket for it to drain into as it melts. That will get you 7,200, perhaps 8,200 BTUs before you need to get another 50 lbs of ice...or the equivalent of about an hour's run time for a medium window A/C. Not very practical without a large supply of ice and labor to carry ice and buckets of water.