And thanks to everyone who pushed me in the direction of a dual hose conversion again. I'm still not convinced I can make that work in my room & window layout, but considering the heat & energy prices these days I'm going to give it my hardest try. Wish me luck.
New backplate for the AC to convert it to a dual hose setup, all parts printed over the last few days and now epoxying together. Thankfully did not have to design this myself, someone already did and shared 👍😊 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5421906
Just hope it really fits 😅
@foosel Oh that's cool! A Graphana dashboard of temperatures around your house?!
How are you collecting the data? Do you have any device recommendations?
@tim I really need to write a blog post about my home automation setup 😅
I have a Home Assistance instance running that interfaces with some self built sensor hardware (ESP8266 + BME680, powered by ESP Home) as well as off the shelf stuff (mostly Zigbee based Aqara multi sensors via Zigbee2MQTT). HA then pushes various data into an InfluxDB from which I then graph it via Grafana. Below is a screenshot of the whole environment dashboard.
@foosel That is incredibly cool! Maybe one day I'll attempt to build something like this!
@ceha @tim I monitor it individually with power monitoring capable smart plugs flashed with Tasmota. I sadly have no easy to monitor overall consumption (renter with ancient meter in the public basement), so I'm slowly building up device specific monitoring instead.
Data flows into Home Assistant via MQTT, from there into InfluxDB and then gets visualised in Grafana.
@foosel Eigentlich ziemlich schlau und kam bisher in meinen Gedanken nicht vor: Man kann ja den Rolladen mitverwenden.
Der hat ein viel angenehmer quadratisches Format als eine angelehnt Tür. 🙂
@lakoja Jup, und das funktioniert hervorragend! Ich hab vor dem Rolladen dann auch noch immer einen Sonnenschirm stehen, und mache innen die Tür soweit zu wie möglich und dichte den Bereich mit dem Vorhang ab. Laut Wärmebildkamera funktioniert dieser Ansatz wirklich gut.
@foosel Stupid question maybe, but why two ducts? Isn't it "just" heat exhaust? Wouldn't one duct be enough for it?
Pardon me please, I don't know much about A/Cs except they are basically heat-exchangers 🙂
@blindcoder Not a stupid question at all! This article sums it up better than I ever could: https://www.woolie.co.uk/article/convert-ac-from-single-hose-to-dual-hose/
But to give a quick tldr, single hose units use inside air for the heat exchange and then pump it outside. That creates a pressure differential in the room that causes hot air from outside of it to be sucked into it. Dual hose setups separate the outside air loop from the inside air loop, which increases efficiency by a lot.
@foosel @blindcoder I wonder why most ACs are still produced without this option. It's not only stupid. Sometimes it's also dangergous and forbidden (for example in cases you are using gas heaters) because of lowering the pressure in the apartment making it possible to suck back exhaust gases.
@foosel @blindcoder did this kind of mod 2 years ago (with plywood and duct tape on the AC, hoses up converted to 150mm, 2 airduct silencers and a 50W support ductfan, including a full size "window replacement" from polyresin fibre)
still working great.
against the hot outlet and 35 degrees inlet, stone fibre/whool with aluminum coating helps a lot better than any household fabrics.
@foosel Wow, that's some new information to keep in mind, thank you!
Seems my unit can not be converted non-destructively as the entire backplate (including the control panel) is a single piece. Next time I buy one I'll definately check if it's convertible, or comes with two hoses from the start!
@hackbyte You know, that just have me an idea ^^ I just averted a clog of doom earlier tonight, and have some stuff in the queue that beds to be done first, but then I might just look into a custom two sided adapter for the window port, given that I have a couple meters of spare hose
@foosel That looks so much better than my improvised solution with a styrofoam box strapped to the unit!
Definitely consider this (accidental*) dip to 23.4°C with an outside temperature at 34.5°C (measured on the north facing front) my biggest win of today! 😊
* Why accidental? Too low target temperature set 😬 Doesn't exclusively happen with 3d printers 😅