Wall AC - What & Where

[mcman56]

I have a 600 sq ft garage. It is sunk in the front of the house with a bedroom covering 1/2 of it. The other half has a vented crawl space. It is finished in dry wall and has insulated doors facing west. This is in Sacramento, very hot but very dry in summer.
1. Would 15,000 btus be adequate to cool it down in a reasonable time period? Could that be too big or too small?
2. Do any west coast stores stock these things? Everything I see on line at that size ships from the east coast. 14,000 btu units are more available if they would be adequate. If there was a warranty issue a local store would be nice.

 

[Falcon67]

They have 6.5, 12, 15, 18 and 24K units stacked on pallets in the aisle of every Lowes and Home Depot around here. 15 should do, 18 would be a little better since the door faces W.

 

[Syberia]

Yeah, it's about the right time of year for the home improvement stores to start carrying these things. I'm not sure I saw any that were in the 15,000 - 18,000 btu range locally though. Amazon has them with free shipping. Keep in mind though that if you get one that big, even if it's only 120 volts, it will need a dedicated circuit to avoid tripping the breaker if you're doing anything else like using a power tool.

The units should say the amount of square feet they are rated to cool. For what it's worth, I'm using a 12,000 btu model in a 400 sqft addition that does not receive cooling from our central air and it can keep it at 74 when the outside temp is 105-110. This one was supposed to cool 600 square feet. This room does not receive afternoon sun nor have a large uninsulated garage door, though, so you might want to go a size larger than what is "rated" for your room size.

One thing that you may find beneficial is a ceiling fan or large pedestal fan running at the same time as the a/c to circulate the cold air rather than forming a pocket of air that gets continually re-cooled around the unit.

 

[Falcon67]

One thing that you may find beneficial is a ceiling fan or large pedestal fan running at the same time as the a/c to circulate the cold air rather than forming a pocket of air that gets continually re-cooled around the unit.

This 2. I have a 42" cheapie ceiling fan and together with a 10.5K Samsung AC unit in the wall, I can keep 672 sq/ft in the 70s in the summer. Helps to give it a run at the temp when its 110000F outside, but I usually set the thing to trigger about 4:30ish, assume getting home around 5:30.