Placement

• Portable air conditioning units have the benefit of not requiring permanent installation into a wall or window and allow the AC unit to be placed anywhere in the home or business and moved anytime as need arises. The only limits on placement is that there must be some sort of nearby outdoor venting access, typically within 7 feet or so.
  
  

Cooling Mechanism

• As with installed AC units, portable air conditioners draw in the warm ambient air, draw it across freon-coolant filled coils thereby reducing its temperature and blowing the cooled air out of the unit into the room. The byproduct in this cooling process is some water in the form of condensation, which is caught in a reservoir inside the unit and for portable units must be manually emptied.
  
  

Venting Standards

• Though portable air conditioning units can be placed almost anywhere, they still need to be vented in order to allow the warm air exhaust to be carried away. All portable AC units come with a window venting package that can be modified to suit your needs. Standard length of exhaust hose for portable units is somewhere between 5 and 7 feet in length, about 5 inches in diameter and highly flexible much like dryer vent duct pipe. The window venting kits fit most any horizontal or vertical sliding window in your home up to about 5 feet. It can simply be cut to fit your window, the window closed tight around it and a rubber or foam seal placed on the exterior to make it air tight. You can then make a small cutout and fit the exhaust hose through. For casement windows you will need to purchase an appropriately sized piece of Plexiglas and cut the 5-inch opening through which to vent the hose. Foam or rubber insulation strips can again be used to make it air tight.