Advice Wanted: Modifying an Air Conditioner

Jay

So I’m about to start my summer school term at university and I am living at residence in an apartment style setting. The residence has no central air and the building policy strictly forbids the use of A.C. The dons walk around the residence and if they see one sticking out of your window you will be fined. I know people that have been fined so this rule is enforced. I live on the fourth floor and dons never go into our rooms. I also have used mini fridge along with other high energy cost equipment before with no complaints so it does not appear the energy usage for the apartment, or at least the room, is monitored. So, to my knowledge, the only way to be caught using A.C is to have one sticking out of your window.

What I plan to do is using duct tape, plastic, and a large rubber tube, form a seal around the air intake of my A.C and connect it to the inside of my window (also forming a seal around the window using plastic and duct tape). This way my A.C would be able to take in air from the outside sticking out of the window. Are there any reasons this wouldn’t work? Any suggestions for better materials to use that would still have a reasonable cost? I understand my plan would not give a perfect seal but I imagine it would be good enough for my purposes.

Omnutia

You would need to disguise the tube somehow.

Jay

The screens for residence windows are a black mesh, as I am on the fourth floor I would imagine anyone inspecting the windows would have to walk fairly far out to see inside the window. The tube will not break the mesh. I can make the window seal such that the tube does not even press against the mesh. I’m going to do a little walk near apartments near my house to make sure on my way home today but I’m fairly confident you wont be able to see inside the window from the ground floor.

Lusankya

As an RA at my university, I have to be on the watch for air conditioners. A lot of people try to bodge together ducting to take air in from outside, but it never works unless your model of A/C also has a heat return line that blows out the side or back. Almost every model of out-window A/C has no need for return lines, because it just uses the outer casing as a radiator. No device is 100% energy efficient, so for every degree that you reduce the air coming in the window, you also heat the air outside the window by close to two, or even three degrees. Your room will get warmer instead of cooler, in much the same fashion as if you left your fridge door open to try to cool the room.

In addition to this, the ducting would be quite visible from outside your room, and your RA will immediately suspect that you are either operating an illegal AC, or you've set up a blower for smoking in your room - both of which constitute reasonable suspicion for a room raid.

WallyBman

Where exactly do you live? If a school down here pulled that kind of shit, it would be lawsuit time. Like serious lawsuit, as in "wrongful death."

Of course, it gets both hotter than hell and humid as fuck here.