Buying new appliances has been an ongoing learning experience for the last 20 years of my life.
Ever since I accidentally bought a lemon refrigerator from a store with a 48 hour return policy, I have felt cursed with large purchases.
I was living with my mother while finishing college and I had convinced her to let me find the new fridge after our old one died following 23 years of solid performance. My ego got the better part of me and I jumped on a sale I saw at a local big bog hardware store. Using name recognition as the sole source of trust in this large purchase, I pulled the trigger without doing the bare minimum of due diligence on my part. At the core of it, I should have simply called before buying it online so I could ask for a clear explanation on the store’s return policy regarding this particular brand’s appliances sold at that store. This memory has haunted me since, so much so that I have been stuck trying to decide on the right portable air conditioner to buy for my small studio apartment. The two windows I have are too small for a traditional window air conditioner, and a ductless mini split is simply too far out of my budget range until I get a better job. This led me down the path of looking for portable air conditioners. Since these are essentially indoor package system ACs, they still have a hot condenser that needs to be cooled somehow. My choices are single hose machines that pull air conditioned air back into the machine to cool the condenser before being pushed out the exhaust hose through a window or a port in a wall. Two hose systems are more efficient. Instead of wasting air conditioned air to cool the condenser, it has a second hose to pull in outdoor air for this task. Although more expensive, a two hose machine seems better fit for long term use.