Our Whynter ARC 147 Portable AC/Heat Unit

We purchased a Whynter Portable AC/Heat unit the other day and it arrived this week.  The unit is rated to heat and cool 500 square feet.  Our space is 150 square feet but has a vaulted ceiling...  so, we decided to get the stronger unit just to make sure our space would be heated and cooled to our satisfaction.  Overkill?  Perhaps but necessary, we thought.

Our sunroom space is not a normal space as it was built by the previous owner who was an amateur builder.  On two side the windows are plexiglass and on the third side the windows are single pane.  We are not sure if there is any insulation in the walls...  so, overkill was, in our opinion, warranted.

Putting the Whynter together was EASY.  We were provided with everything we needed.  The window that we are using does not come down on the exhaust and intake pipe strong enough to hold the fixture solidly in place, so we have used duck tape to hold it in place.  It does not look the best but it is functional.

We have used the unit for a couple of days, turning it on around noon and off around 6pm.  In the morning, my wife sits out on the deck under the umbrella and has yet to get too hot.  She moves into the sunroom in the afternoon.  In about an hour or less the sunroom has a comfortable temperature once we turn the unit on.

Not sure how much electricity it will use, but it would have cost us $12-15,000 to seal the sunroom properly with windows and insulation and would still have had to purchase a unit like this to cool and heat it.

Sometimes, taking the cheaper approach works out fine in the long run...  even though the unit must constantly run...  

If this unit raises our bill by $100/month (which is highly unlikely), it will be $1,200/year and will take us a little over 13 years to break even.  We will be 89 and 84 respectively.  The odds are the increase will be less than half that amount which will take us 26 years to break even.  We will both be dead by then.