ARC-12SD

After extensive research, reading customer reviews, professional reviews and pricing at my local appliance stores, I broke down and bought two of these units, 2 weeks apart. My son and I moved in with the elderly 'rents to look after them. They keep the central AC at 80 and watch TV with wool caps, slippers and lap blankets... yes, in the middle of the Florida summer! To say the least my son and I were sweatin' it out at night. I got only one portable AC (PAC) at first because of some of the negative reviews, large investment on something I wasn't too sure was going to work well for us, problems with the drainage, etc... I didn't want to invest in two, if one didn't work. The room I am cooling is approx. 12x 12. I probably got too much in the BTU department, but I wanted to be sure that it would do the job. It ABSOLUTELY DOES THE JOB AND THEN SOME! I did get the second one.The PAC came in a large box, packaged well. Easy to disassemble, box was taken away by recycling. All good. My brother-in-law set the PAC in my bedroom. I only have a sliding glass door to work with, so he needed to do some modifications and adjustments. All of the parts were in the box and easily assembled. Follow the directions (and pictures) and all should match up well.I went to Home Depot, purchased a 4' x 8' piece of AC insulation board (foam in the middle and covered with silver foil on the outside...cuts easily with a utility knife), a roll of AC duct tape (not duct tape, but the kind that is foil and used for AC duct work), 2 packages of 1" x 1" foam weather stripping, and 3 feet of 1/2" diameter tubing. ($30-$40 all together). The tools that my brother in law used were a drill to make a 1/2 inch hole in the insulation board, a utility knife, and a measuring tape.I'll tell you how he put it together and the reasons for doing it the way he did... after all, he is a clever guy and he saw a design flaw here or there...First, he measured how wide he would need the insulation board to be. Remember, it went into a sliding glass door, which would render the slider useless, once the PAC was installed. (I didn't care, I NEEDED the AC). He cut the insulation board 4" wider than the width of the plastic window kit (comes with the unit, has 2 holes to attach the duct hoses). Of course, the height of this piece has to fit into the door. Next, he decided where he wanted to put the plastic window kit in the insulation board. He centered the plastic window kit vertically and pressed it into the insulation board to leave an imprint in the board. He used the utility knife, followed the straight lines of the impression, to cut out the shape of the plastic window kit. He used the AC duct tape to tape the window kit into the insulation board, front and back. He next taped this, (the piece of insulation board with the plastic window kit taped into it) into place in the door jamb/frame of the slider. All taped in. It doesn't look pretty, or it looks as good as it can for being what it is, but it certainly is functional. He then attached the exhaust hose to one of the round circles (4" hole on the plastic window kit) and put one of the caps (provided) on the other. ***HERE IS WHERE HE THINKS THERE IS A DESIGN FLAW, AND WHY HE DID NOT ATTACH THE SECOND HOSE TO THE SECOND HOLE. The directions and the whole idea of the DUAL HOSE SYSTEM is to blow out the hot exhaust through one of the hoses and then to draw in cool air, from outside, through the other hose. This is the problem with this idea (according to my brother in law): "THE TWO HOSES, WHEN CONNECTED TO THE WINDOW KIT, ARE ONLY 1 1/2"-2 " APART. HE DOESN'T BELIEVE IT'S POSSIBLE TO DRAW IN "COOL" AIR FROM THE OUTSIDE FOR TWO REASONS: IT'S HOT OUTSIDE, HENCE THE NEED OF THE AC AND BECAUSE THE INTAKE IS GOING TO 'SUCK' THE HOT AIR IN FROM THE EXHAUST BECAUSE IT'S TOO CLOSE TO THE INTAKE." So, the intake hose is attached to the unit, but not to the vent hole. It's simply leaning up against the door, out of the way, sucking in the cooled air from inside the room.When I explained what I was doing to the Home Depot guy, he reminded me that once that sliding glass door was opened a few inches, there would be a gap between the two doors... in the middle, if you will. Simple solution was to stuff the foam weather stripping in there! Done.I was concerned about the drainage issues... Florida is HUMID! I read on some reviews that the unit would shut down in the middle of the night because the drip pan was full... Again, my brother in law to the rescue!!!He removed the plug, drilled a hole in the insulation board at the same level or height of the drain. He attached the tubing to the drain on the unit, and threaded it out through the insulation board to the outside. Problem solved!After he installed the unit, I noticed that there were tiny little gaps in the plastic window kit, around the circles... I could see light shining through. I ran a bead of caulk around it. No more light, no air escaping and no ants getting in.I turn the PAC off when I'm not home. Remember, the central AC is set at 80 degrees and the outside temperature, at this time of year, during the day is between 90 and 95. When I return, I turn the PAC on and set it at 74. Within 15 minutes, the room is cooled down to 74. (I have a separate thermometer and wanted to make sure that it was cooling to what I had it set at.) As I type right now, my fingers and toes are cold! I'm comfortable... I might even have to turn it a little warmer!Some reviews mentioned that it is a loud unit.... I don't agree... it is no louder than a window shaker!I would definitely recommend this unit. So far, so good! It's only been three weeks, but I am optimistic that it will continue to work well.(I waited 10 days or so to order one for my son and he, too, is now comfortable in his room. It's about the same size as mine.)

To put it simply, not all units from this company are of equal quality. We bought, for our oldest resident, the top of the line, 14,000 BTU unit, the one that was recommended everywhere, and it works beautifully.For our room we purchased this, the 13,000 BTU unit, the one no professional sites had reviewed, and it was a disaster. The first one we ordered didn't work properly and was missing parts and, in hind sight, should have been a clue that this machine was not for us. The replacement unit that Amazon sent out (which they had no way of inspecting as it was shipped to them via the manufacturer and could not be opened and then shipped) was broken (as in the housing was broken), missing parts (screws that might have kept it from being broken in the first place had they been installed along with half of the window kit and any hint of instructions) and was leaking everywhere. We did fire it up for a test, just in case, and it put out cold air but leaked so much the carpet was soaked in two hours.Needless to say, we had to return both units via UPS, and that was after attempting to salvage the first one by having the manufacturer ship a replacement part that ended up not making it work any better. We were lucky, though. The women at UPS helped us to get them packed securely and gave us a waiver on the one that was still leaking in the box when they confirmed it was water. Then they shipped them off and out of our hair and Amazon gave us our refund which, I must say, was at least an easy process after all the drama of packing these horrible machines up and getting them out to the shipping depot (and we had to take them to the ground shipping center as the local UPS stores were not equipped to handle such large freight items.I want to say this is an isolated incident and you should remember that this doesn't mean that this is a "bad" manufacturer. That having been said, I do believe that you should check any unit you purchase very carefully. It should sit level, have no cracks in the housing, have screws down the sides of the housing (hidden but where you can see them), have a full window kit included with two hoses and an instruction manual, a remote control (neither of ours had that one until we ordered one that was shipped back with one of these leaky nightmares) and, above all, it should put cold air out after a delay of no more than five minutes from power up. Also, it should not leak water all over the carpet beneath it, soaking your floor after two hours of running it.The UPS supervisor actually came out and helped to package the second one. She had to pilfer packaging for from the first one, basically splitting the packaging between the two boxes and adding some cardboard posts that they had laying around because the horribly damaged one appeared to have been damaged from improper packaging to begin with. She took the time to examine both units as she helped to pack them up and found that the insanely leaking one had a broken plug so it was just draining out the back, with nothing to stop it. The less damaged one, that still didn't work, was also leaking but she could not find the cause and it was such a small leak compared to the one that soaked the carpet that we gave up on looking for the cause. I hope this helps.As I said earlier, the 14,000 BTU ARC was brilliant from day one and keeps our beloved old-one very comfortable (though the space it is cooling is only 300 square feet so I do think the BTU rating on that unit is puffed up to make it seem more energy efficient than it actually is).For what it is worth, we are now using a cheap unit we got off of the Craig-list and it is good enough for our purposes. The 14,000 Whynter is brilliant and I am just glad to have the two 13,000 Whynters out of my house with my return confirmation that both were delivered back to the warehouse and my refund came through and I can set my mind to forgetting this ever happened to me (during one of the hottest months in recent years). And with that, I begin to forget....Good luck in making your choice. I hope you have a good experience and, as always, Amazon was great through this whole ordeal which is why I'm basically in love with this company.