On Jul 13, 7:39*am, jamesgangnc wrote:
On Jul 12, 8:37*pm, Gz wrote:





On Jul 12, 2:50*pm, jamesgangnc wrote:

On Jul 12, 2:09*pm, kansascats wrote:

I plugged my window AC into a "killawatt". *It was running 900 watts,
then the past few days it's been climbing to 1000, then 1100, even
1200 as the day wears on -- and the sun beats down on the unit to the
west side.

Suppose shading this could make a big (300 w) difference?

It's been suggested and disproved that shading the outside half of ac
has any notoicable effect. *What you are seeing is the reduced
transfer rate of heat to the atmosphere because of the increased
outside air temp. *This raises the high side pressure and makes the
compressor work harder.

Bottom line it's not the sun beating down on it. *It's the higher air
temp.

You might think shading the unit has no effect, but it does. The
biggest thing is the whole wall in the sun. The brick or siding really
heats up the whole intake area.

You need to shade the whole wall.

Greg- Hide quoted text -

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I suggest you do some more research. *Shading the unit makes no
difference. *The factor is the ambient air temp around the unit.
Shading the entire area might lower that temp a degree or two from the
nearby air temp in the sun but short of planting trees and waiting 10
years there's no way to do that. *And 1 or 2 degrees is not going to
make much difference.- Hide quoted text -

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Do you have research that shows direct sun on a window unit has
no effect? If direct sun on a window can add heat to a room, one
would think that same heat applied to both the window and a
window unit AC would have an effect.

I've seen some studies done with CENTRAL AC, where shading
the CONDENSER made no material difference because as you
say, it's the air temp that counts. But I have not seen the same
for window units and for obvious reasons I don't believe the results
for split systems can be applied to self-contained window units.