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Hope someone with some experience can help me. I live in a place that doesn't get hot enough in the summer enough days that homes routinely have central air. But my upstairs bedroom can get pretty toasty, even though the house is new and well-insulated. I installed a ceiling fan last year, which helped a lot, as it does cool off at night. However, leaving the window open at night results in more noise than a light sleeper can handle. I'd really like to get some kind of room air conditioner that isn't installed in a window and doesn't need a drain. I've seen some wall-mounted and stand-alone units but have no idea which ones are any good. So if anyone has any experience with these types of units and can steer me toward or away from any of them, I'd really appreciate it.
Hmm wish I could help, I can't imagine not having AC. We run our AC in the condo 365 days per year even when it's like 38 out lol our place gets too hot without it. In a house I could never have a window open either. WAY WAY too noisy. I consider a single double-pane window construction insufficient let alone just no window lol may as well sleep in a tent outside.
You are going to need a drain line or a catch bucket. Any air conditioner will collect condensation as it cools the air so you need to be able to handle it.
My wife is an Extremely light sleeper and when we were living in the Rockies (no reason to have AC as it's dry and night time temps tend to be in the 50's at the most), we simply used a box-fan in the window. It drew in cooler air and the fan noise drowned out the road noise. The worst part of this method is no sleeping in as you can't really filter the light.
Beyond that the 3 standard options are the portable units (you either have to empty a catch-basin or route to a drain), a through-wall (like a window unit only designed to fit through an exterior wall and drains outside) and a mini-split (also drains outside). Those are ordered by expense as well as efficiency. If you really plan to be in the house and use those rooms for a long time, I'd strongly recommend looking into the mini-split systems as the best overall option.
We are installing 2 ductless mini-split heating and cooling systems in the next two months - one in our studio which is about 50 feet from the house, and another in a sun room that is at the end of the house and surrounded by windows on 3 walls, so it has been getting way too hot in the summer and quite cold in the winter. These systems do heating and cooling, and need to (should) be installed by contractors who do refrigeration. We found out about them last summer when a new restaurant opened in our town and they had one high up on one of the walls. It was quiet, and really effective.
I can say it's been really good. However, with any system that has a condenser, you have going to have water dripping, you will also want to exhaust the hot air that comes out the back somewhere. The unit above has flexible tubing and a window kit.
If we had the option to do a window unit, or mini splits, we absolutely would. This is noisier than I'd prefer, takes up floor space that I wish I could use differently, and needs to be somewhere you can get the venting to a window. However it definitely keeps things cool!
We have one although it's a bit bigger. There is a catch pan you have to periodically empty.
We bought the LG 8,000 BTU ACs last spring until I could have our swamp cooler R&R'ed. We used the dog door to vent the unit. For the short period we used it, it worked very well even in the dry climate of Albuquerque.
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