Air conditioner advice needed

[Rob Littleton]

Since you guys were right on with the heater I ordered, the Hot Dawg (I forgot where I got that from but it was recommended off here), I am looking for a thru the wall air conditioner for around 600 sq ft...ish. I need it to connect to the thermostat the I have installed for the heater. 220 V preferred but 110 will do.

Any advice, links?

Cheers

[Cecil Arnold]

I can't give you a brand but I will say that I have 11,600 btu's (110-20v) cooling a 250 sq ft shop and in Houston, with any equipment running I think that is about the minimum. One other thing you should consider is some additional filtering. On the first A/C I installed the coils would become coated with fine sawdust which stuck and reduced efficency. That unit was 8000 btu's and could not hold up to the heat load. I built a frame that is attached to the front of the new unit that holds an additional filter which seems to be addressing the problem.

[Matt Meiser]

I just put in a 24,000 BTU unit window unit which I will probably reinstall later as a through-the-wall unit. I have 960 sqft with 12' ceilings. The walls are well insulated, but I haven't gotten someone in to insulate the ceiling yet.

I imagine it is a little cooler here in Michigan though. So far this summer, we've only been up in the mid-90's.

[Rob Russell]

... I am looking for a thru the wall air conditioner for around 600 sq ft...ish. I need it to connect to the thermostat the I have installed for the heater. 220 V preferred but 110 will do.



If your thermostat isn't a line voltage type, you can simply use a contactor with a 24vac coil to power the receptacle for the A/C unit. That way you can do either a 120v or 240v A/C unit (depending on how you wire the circuit through the contactor).

The thermostat would "call for cooling", power the contactor's coil which would close and power the receptacle the A/C unit is plugged into.

[Thomas Canfield]

You might want to check into a stndard house unit with external compressor. I looked into the window type units and combined units used at motels, and then decided that the small additional expense was worth the money for reliabiity and efficiency to go with the more efficient 2 ton residential unit. I built a filter box stand liquid nailed to floor to mount the air handler unit on that has 2 filters now and space for a third when I buy another filter housing. The standard filter is still used in front of the air handler to ensure clean air going through the coil, and requires infrequent changing. Running the unit on fan only also helps remove dust from the shop overnight for the next day. The discharge has only a small plennum with 3 registers to direct the air flow. My shop has a tall ceiling and the air distribution is not a big problem. See the pictures attached. The only change I would make if doing it again is to build the filter stand taller to get the filters more off the floor.