Air con or air cooler

Agencies and other headaches, keys and cleaners, running costs and contracts...in short, all the things we spend so much of our time doing behind the scenes.<br>
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joddle
Posts: 766
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 11:56 am
Location: Valencia

Air con or air cooler

Post by joddle »

Our little villa in Spain currently does not have any fixed air con system. We get pretty well booked up each year but one or two people have said they did feel a bit too hot at times.

We have a portable air con unit in the house and have considered installing an air con system but have a number of issues to consider.

1) where to place the units - the building is not an easy one to do this.

2) the cost of running the units - do we add a surcharge or install a pay meter as our current rental rates would not support unlimited use of aircon?

3) our bedrooms are quite small but the smallest fixed aircon units we have seen seem to be designed for much larger rooms so we would be worried about inefficient use of power - are small units made for rooms around 14sq.m?

4) our electric supply would probably need to be upgraded as with the new smart meters any overload would trip out the whole system - and our house currently has a 5.5kw rated smart meter and three units would be needed - one for each bedroom and one for the sitting room.

5) and lastly the air con units all seem to be inverters and so also provide heating whereas the villa already has central heating so that facility seems a waste of resources.

Whilst visiting a local store we were shown some small and very neat portable units which provided cooling of the air. These work with water and therefore have to be topped regularly up but appear to be very efficient power wise compared with a similar air con unit. they also can be remotely controlled or simply work as fans if cooling is not needed.

Has anyone else used these devices?

Anyway we are now in two minds whether to provide two of these units for guests this year or wait and later install full air con at some future date along with appropriate ways of charging for the additional power used. Has anyone had a similar situation? and if so what was your experience?
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