As I mentioned in my last post, I turned on my air-conditioner this week. I am thankful for it but it has a major drawback. It’s a single-hose design. The hose exhausts hot air outside. The unit must also draw air in because it can’t just move hot air out without replacing that air, otherwise there would be a vacuum created somewhere.
The A/C unit needs to draw the air in and creates a negative pressure situation so the air gets drawn in from my other open windows. Whenever I turn on my A/C, it’s sort of a double-edged sword because while my bedroom will get cool, the rest of my apartment will have hot air from the outside drawn into it.
My living room and kitchen will get unbearably hot when my A/C is on. The hot outside air that is drawn in then just stays there. It’ll take forever to cool down and it’ll be hot well after midnight.
This is why lots of people insist on buying an A/C unit with a double-hose design. The second hose is used as an intake. So instead of creating negative pressure and causing hot air to be drawn into the other parts of your home, the incoming air comes through the hose and directly into the A/C unit.
This week, I learned you can sorta convert a single-hose design into a double-hose one. It requires that you figure out where the air is being drawn into your unit. You then create a custom shroud around it and attach another hose, which then you connect to the outside. I saw a picture of one such “conversion” using cardboard.
I got inspired, so this evening, I created my own very janky and messy cardboard shroud. I also ordered a cheap, second hose from Amazon. It’ll arrive on Thursday. Once it arrives, I’ll cut a whole in the back part of the shroud, attach the hose, and then duct tape the whole thing shut. By the way, duct tape is essential if you’re doing this type of inexact production of cardboard elements. The shroud needs to be airtight, so the duct tape covers and seals all the gaps I had.
I can’t wait to try it out. I’ve haven’t done this type of homemade engineering in a long time.