Koldfront 8,000 BTU Ultra Compact Portable Air Conditioner
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of Koldfront 8,000 BTU Ultra Compact Portable Air Conditioner
Customer Review: Absolute Garbage
Summary: 1 Stars
I've had this AC for about one year and I hardly use it. It's much better to wait until the outside cools down and open all the windows. Like many one-hose portable AC units, the Koldfront draws air into the room from the outside or the rest of the house, which effectively creates a negative pressure into the room. The end result is that you bring as much warn air into your space as you cool down. My room is 144 square feet with 8 ft cielings, so it is not a particularly large space. According to my digital thermometer, my room cooled down by one degree after 5 hours of running. It went from 79 to 78 degrees F. After 5 hours, the unit stopped working and just blew warm air. I live in Southern California, which is not a particulalrly humid environment, and outside was only 85 degrees. If you do buy a portable AC unit, MAKE SURE IT IS A 2 HOSE UNIT.Customer Review: Decent for small rooms
Summary: 4 Stars
We just had a record-breaking heat wave. I live in a poorly-insulated house that becomes hot in 85-degree weather, and we hit 100. (Just north of Seattle, WA.) This A/C did a great job of cooling two small rooms (cool one room, move the A/C to another room, cool that one, then back again, for about a week).
Some observations:
1. You MUST vent a portable A/C out a window or into a drop-ceiling, or you just pump the hot air back into the room.
2. Portables seem to work better when elevated (hot air rises, so this helps keep the "convection effect" going by getting closer to the hot air).
3. It's a little noisy. Adding rubber gasket material to the vents reduces the noise a lot by damping the vibrations.
4. An A/C's BTU rating must match the room size, or the unit simply won't work right. This is true of all A/Cs, and seems to be somewhat critical for portables.
5. It acts as a dehumidifier, which means that you have to drain the water tank regularly or the unit will shut off until you do. (An indicator light tells you when you need to drain the tank.)
So, for those who need to cool small rooms, I think this is a good buy. It has been for me.
Follow-Up on Aug 28, 2009:
I just put the a/c into the garage to store until next year. This thing worked beautifully in the small rooms, but I didn't try it in any of the larger rooms.
Follow-Up on Aug 31, 2010:
I just put it into the garage to store until next year. This year I used it in one of the larger rooms because I installed a window a/c in the smaller room, and it did a decent job of keeping the place cool. So far I've had two seasons of trouble-free cooling, so I'd say I got my money's worth. I may buy one more next year for my studio.
Customer Review: I am a Cool and Happy camper!
Summary: 5 Stars
I had suffered for over two summers in the new townhouse the investment firm bought. I had 3 choices, i.e.: Quit, suffer or get my own portable air conditioner. I had been thinking about it from the first summer in townhouse, but could not afford.
My particular little corner of townhouse gets afternoon hot sun, even with blinds closed for within my small space I have too many machines sending out heat, i.e.: postage meter, shredder, water cooler, printer,fax machine and my own beautiful computer. My particular space is always 2 degrees F warmer. But, the real problem was the principals in the upper rooms got cold with too much air conditioning. My collegue and I in the small room in back suffered in the heat. We talked to knowledgable people how to cure, but there was no answer. I just happen to sit at a hot spot.
It is supposedly Spring in Washington, D.C., but believe me I have needed even when air conditioning is allowed in 80 weather. I love my job and now I can do it better because of wonderful personal air conditioner. It is an answer to my prayers. My only fear is if it breaks down.
Customer Review: I love it and ordered another one
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great, economical portable AC unit that has been a blessing in the Texas heat wave and drought of 2009. We are so dry that all I did was plug it in. No extra water, no venting, it just sits there in the middle of the room and cools. I don't know what all the griping is about except that folk must not have priced these units elsewhere. It was easy to set up and the instructions were clear and in a booklet. The unit saved my life one night when my Central AC went out. It weighs 55 pounds and is on wheels. Best bargain I have found! Home Depot's cheapest offer was an evaporative cooler. Ugh! If we ever have winter, I can put it in a corner until spring.Customer Review: Only option that would fit - and it works
Summary: 4 Stars
PROS
about as small and light (50lbs) as they get
comes with remote
comes with window kit
powerful fan
thermostat
very little assembly/packaging
CONS
no accessible drain pan
machine itself only had power button (no controls)
loud
OVERVIEW
I live in a 300sq foot studio with a 15 foot ceiling and a south-facing bay window. My apartment gets hot when it's sunny and is almost always damp/humid. I got the Koldfront because it was the only unit that would fit in my available surface area: on top of my kitchen cabinets. I already had ducting running through my cabinets to vent my over-range microwave, so I popped the Koldfront on top of my cabinet and tied the exhaust into my existing duct work.
It takes the Koldfront about 5-7 minutes to cool my apartment down to habitable from digustingly hot. Technically, I think my space is supposed to be a little too big for this machine, but having it blow cold air across my ceiling seems to do a good job of displacing all the hot air, and since it's located high up, it should be sucking warm air out as it cools the condensers.
I ran this machine for a couple of days at ground level and was less than excited about it's potential, I could actually feel a temperature differential about two feet off the ground between cold and hot air. But moving it closer to my ceiling made all the difference. When it was on the floor, all it did was move air and maybe cool a little bit. Now that it's at ceiling height I'm actually getting chilly.
FAN SPEED
There are three fan speeds: high is pretty loud, and low is still relatively loud. I've gotten used to it pretty quickly though, it pretty much acts as white noise, dampening external sounds.
MODES
AC, Dehumidifier, and Fan are the available mode settings for this machine. I'm happy about these options since you won't always need/want the condensers coming on and off, and you can dehumidify when it's cold out without turning on the AC.
WATER RESERVOIR
The koldfront is supposed to vent humidity out through the ducting, but has a water resevoir for high humidity situations. Unlike some machines, the reservoir isn't a bucket that you can remove from the machine. To drain the reservoir, you have to pull out a little plug at the bottom of the AC, which is about two inches off the ground. That doesn't give you much room to maneuver a drain pan. Fortunately, at 50LBS, it's not too heavy to put in the bathtub and let drain there. The lack of an accessible reservoir is a definite con though. Apparently the Koldfront is made to be able to hard-wire a drain, so that may be an option for some. I ran my machine on and off for a couple of days in San Francisco and it drained something like a cup of water. I don't know the total size of the reservoir, but the drain indicator lite hadn't turned on yet before I drained it.
THERMOSTAT
I've read some reviews complaining of an inaccurate thermostat on the KOLDFRONT, but mine seems to be about spot on.
REMOTE AND LCD PANEL
Don't lose the remote, or if you do, hope you had your Koldfront set exactly how you want to have it because there's no way to change settings without the remote. The remote itself is pretty intuitive, with power, up, down, mode, fan speed, Celsius/Fahrenheit, timer, and cancel buttons. And it comes with batteries. The LCD panel reads the ambient temperature in either Celsius or Fahrenheit until you press the up or down button on the remote, in which case it reads your preset temperature preference. There's a blue/green/yellow LED that indicates whether you're in AC/dehumidifier/ or fan mode, respectively. The information on the LCD is large enough to read from several feed away.
ASSEMBLY
Like most appliances, the Koldfront came with a cardboard cover over the packaging and plastic ties keeping it on. You just cut the ties and lift the cardboard cover off the machine. Inside, there's just a couple pieces of Styrofoam, the AC, and the window kit, plastic duct, instructions, remote, and two AAA batteries for the remote. The AC itself doesn't require any assembly, aside from plugging the duct in. The drain plug on mine had popped out, so I just twisted it back into place. There's a little more involved in assembling the window kit, but the instructions are pretty good on how to get that together. All you need (if your window is the right size) is a phillips head screw driver. The window kit is held into place by the weight of your window and doesn't need to be screwed into the window frame at all.
CONCLUSION
Overall, I'm happy with my Kodlfront. Mine arrived fully functional out of the box, and raising it to ceiling height has made it a lean, mean studio-cooling machine. It's a little bit bigger than I had guessed from the picture, but it's still smaller than most, and fit where I needed it to. It's loud, but inexpensive and has a built in thermostat and remote. Draining it is going to be a hassle, since I've moved it out of easy reach, but there's nothing else on the market that would have worked for me, so four stars for working properly, but not five, because of the lack of controls on the machine, the lack of a removable reservoir, and the loudness of the fan.