Stand-alone or portable air conditioners are self-contained air cooling devices. Unlike their central or window-mounted counterparts, they do not require any permanent installation. They sit on the floor and are powerful enough to cool any one room.
Their most significant advantage over other AC types is their portability – they are compact and ensure easy mobility.
These mobile ACs usually come with wheels and handles for easier movement between rooms. And, since they don’t require fixed installation, you can use them anywhere inside the house.
A good thing about these versatile units is their ease of setup. Although they don’t require any permanent installation, some units come with a window kit that creates an air-tight opening for the exhaust hose. Others don’t need to be hooked up but work best in a well-ventilated area.
Just like their window-mounted variation, stand-alone ACs work by pulling hot air from the room inside the unit. Once inside, the air passes over condenser coils that cool it down. The process also condenses the extra airborne moisture on the coils as water.
The cool air is then blown out into the room via outlet vents. Throughout the entire process, the system generates heat that must be vented out. For this reason, these units come with an exhaust hose.
The water collected from the air is disposed of either by self-evaporation or by draining.
Self-evaporative devices use the system’s heat to evaporate water and vent it out the exhaust hose along with the hot air.
Draining units either use a hose to drain the water out of the system or collect it inside a built-in reservoir that you have to empty later.