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I'm a resident of Washington State. We're notorious for two things: it rains a lot and people live in denial that it ever gets hot here. While not it may not reach the soaring highs of the mid-west that I left 18 years ago, it certainly heats up. And when you're acclimated to mid-60s for most of the year, the mid-80s and mid-90s of summer can feel as devastatingly uncomfortable as those 109 degree Kansas City summers. Even so, the houses in Washington state are built for precipitation, not warmth. They're well insulated against rain and snow, and terrible for ventilation and air-conditioning as a result.
In an effort to cool my obscenely-well-insulated house down on even the more temperate of warm spring and summer days, I've installed a solar attic fan and a whole-house fan. Both help a lot in the right situation (the solar attic fan helps keep the attic cool, which means lower overall temperatures, and the whole-house fan can bleed the heat from the house in a few minutes flat -once the ambient outside temperature has dropped low enough), but when you suffer from seasonal allergies, sometimes the right situation is two weeks away when the pollen count drops. Not much help!
Because of my casement-style windows, I've been relegated to using free-standing A/C systems to augment the attic fan and the house fan for the past few years. But free-standing A/C units are almost worthless. First, their power is insufficient. 12,000 BTUs aren't enough to control a large airspace like my vaulted, open-floorplan kitchen+dining+living room combo (a very, very common layout in Washington. This state loves its split-levels, and that's almost always what you encounter at the top of everyone's stairs here). Second, the dryer-hose they use to convey the heat outside (through a cracked window) inevitably heats up, warming the air around the A/C unit, defeating a large part of its purpose. Third, the heat from outside almost always creeps in, as casement windows are hard to seal well, especially when you have a big, heavy dryer hose hanging from the cheap plastic window shim. Lastly, even the models that claim to evaporate the extracted moisture from the air don't really, and you wind up emptying a water reservoir several times a month (if not several times a week on the warmer days). If your A/C unit is big enough, you must lean it out of a doorway and let it drain, allowing the warm air from the outside to easily defeat a portion of the cooling you just paid for in precious electricity. Crazy? Yes.
This season we decided to purchase a big, powerful air-conditioner that could be installed in-wall. We settled on this Frigidaire. I called up my electrician to install a dedicated 20A circuit with a 230v outlet to feed this beast and got his recommendation for a contractor to come cut a hole in my wall at the same time. We scheduled a date for a few weeks out. The A/C arrived within a week, and within 2 weeks we had 25,000 BTUs of real, honest-to-God air conditioning in the house. After the first day I left my lady at home and went to work, I asked her how she was doing. She said, "it got cold, so i had to turn the temperature up!" That's a good sign. Usually she doesn't say things like that until 4am when the old, freestanding A/C had been running *constantly* for 24 hours and had finally had a chance to catch up well after the sun had gone down.
This thing has several useful modes. Our favorite by far is combining the 'energy saver' and 'remote sensing' modes. Energy saver tells the unit to move some air every 10 minutes or so to see if more cooling is required (because the ambient has risen above the set point). If so, it engages the condenser and injects some powerfully cold air into the room for a few minutes, then goes back to sleep. Remote sensing is enabled from the remote control, which has its own thermistor and temperature display built in. At the touch of a button, it starts sending its temperature readings to the air conditioner at regular (~30m) intervals. The air conditioner defers to these readings and attempts to make the room cold enough to bring the temperature near the remote down to the desired one. The remote runs on a couple of AA batteries, so keeping it fed shouldn't be a problem with all the rechargeable batteries we have laying around. (The included batteries are still going strong several days later, though). It also has
On the more critical side of things, the unit is quite loud when cooling at full blast. This was initially bothersome, as the unit occupies a space in our living room wall, but once we realized that 'energy saver' causes it to run for just a few seconds every 10 minutes, it became far less of an issue for us.
In conclusion, I am in awe of just how powerful this thing is, and how well it cools. Standing close to its air vents when the condenser is on is a bit like sticking your head in the ice box... which is as it should be. The remote temperature sensing feature is awesome. I only wish the remote was RF instead of IR, but that can be overcome with an IR repeater or two. The real test will come in a few weeks, as summer rolls in and the "real" heat arrives. So far, I'm confident this unit (rated for a ~1600sqft. "room") will more than adequately keep the upstairs of our 1800sqft. house comfy, and all without me having to keep a window open perpetually or drain the tank every other day. Hallelujah! ;)
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Oh man!!! We are in central tx with MANY 100+ degree days, we needed relief without breaking the bank. This big ol' Frigidaire FRA256SV2 Energy Star heavy-duty beauty filled the bill perfectly!! We live in 1920's house with little insulation, original windows, all that plus ooold pets, but the a/c cooled us off majorly. And it cooled entire house on low fan, energy save mode set at 70, we have 6 rooms, and it cost the same as using small unit in 1 room!!! We don't use the remote, don't need to, we turned it on, set it on temp & mode we wanted & waited for utility bill. We were so surprised, so happy over bill that we left all settings where they were, only turned it off when the weather turned cool. The filter is so easy to clean. We would buy this big baby again & we have recommended it to others.
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This AC unit was ordered 5-31 and arrived 6-4 installed on 6-4 really didn't fit window properly so I used Duct tape around it in a very thick fashion. I live in a 1970 Mobile home 12x70 badly insulated but this thing cools the entire place even though its installed in a hallway. I am completely satisfied. This is same price as walmart for same model except i got it faster and got a set of 3D glasses for less than the tax would have been from walmart on just the Air Conditioner. Awesome Service. Awesome speed and Awesome unit. Thank you Amazon.
Honest reviews on Frigidaire FRA256SV2 25,000 BTU Window-Mounted Heavy-Duty Air
This is an EXCELLENT air conditioner. It keeps my entire house cool and sucks the humidity right out of the air. It was easy to install and so far has been virtually maintenance-free. It even tells you when it is time to clean the filter.
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Love the look of the unit. For something with so much power it doesn't look monstrous from inside and outside. Does an excellent job cooling the apartment and I am very pleased with the purchase I made. As always, ordering from Amazon with their quick delivery service was a great!
