Nekosan wrote: ↑17 Feb 2018, 04:39
If my experience in selling the things is anything to go by then you aren't going to be satisfied with it. I just wont sell them to people any more.
Yeah, a room mate of mine had an Olympia Splendid one which was meant to be one of the quieter ones at the time from what the folks on Whirlpool said. I told my room mate that she was better off getting a fan to help funnel cold air from the living room's split system into her room. She said she wanted the privacy that the portable offered... and ended up selling it less than a year later and doing the fan thing I suggested.
So I very much agree with your thoughts and why I kept telling Mum and Dad to just get one of those Mitsubishi Heavy Industries 7.1kW split systems Bunnings occasionally has on sale... it'll cost them $2500-3000 all up incl delivery and installation but it'll do the job well (this is what my bro did when he got aircon). However, the only place a split system can be installed will have the condenser on a common area walkway and their complex has shitheads who may tamper with the condenser so they weren't keen on the idea.
Originally, dad was under the impression that the portables were flexible enough that you could wheel the unit around several meters away from the window. I had to tell him not to be gullible (which he has a tendency to be) and that if he had 30cm of wiggle room he was lucky. Mum said she wanted the flexibility of being able to set this thing up in her bedroom. I told her to set it up in the living room first and to see if she can deal with the constant noise when it's operating as these things are loud as fuck. Not to mention that some of them need a water tray emptied every hour or so meaning overnight operation isn't an option but I don't think they're fussed about that due to the cost of operating the thing for such a long period during the evening and then overnight... they'll likely have it on for a few hours before bed, funnel the cold air into their bedrooms and then turn it off when they go to bed.
We'll see how they find it either way. I told them to think carefully about this option as it's a heavy unit and they're up two flights of stairs from the garage so after the delivery man drops it off, it'll be stuck in their unit for a while. But my folks don't have much of an ability to mentally visualise situations so they need to go through the experience half the time even though I've painted a very detailed picture that one option is by far worse than the other one.
And mum also has a bad habit over over worrying herself on negligible things. She kept worrying about the last lot of shitheads they had for neighbours... she thought they were thieves as they were lugging stuff into their unit late at night all the time and the shitheads kept messing up the common property too. That might be the case but the way she was dealing with it wasn't good for her health and probably caused her breast cancer to metastasise quite quickly. She's not good with dealing with stress so I didn't want her worrying about a new split system air con condenser being out in the open for the shitheads to tamper with.
My personal thoughts is that once the value of their unit goes up and dad retires, they'll sell up on their unit and buy a ground or first floor unit somewhere... one with a courtyard or balcony so an aircon condenser can be placed there and mum won't stress. Until then, I'll let them try out the portable air con unit. If they don't like it, I'll sell it on gumtree.