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Fuck PTACs, and the developers who install them.
All over NYC, Brooklyn, Queens, Jersey City, you see fucking 1.2 million dollar condos or $5000/mo “luxury apartments” with these fuckers in every room.
It’s a giant hole in the wall, you literally can see outside if you take the plastic cover off to change/clean the filter.
They’re window units that have a dedicated window.
They also look huge, in Europe the standard is to have an outside unit and an inside unit.
That’s the standard in North America as well for single family homes or even condo buildings where they might put the condenser on the balcony or use a heat pump with a central loop.
I would guess these are popular in New York because they have many many old buildings with central heat and it’s easier to punch a hole in the wall then hang somethings off the building 8 floors up. Also easier to work on the unit.
They’re also monstrously inefficient compared to mini splits even before you account for leaving a giant uninsulated hole in your wall with free movement of air between the inside and the outside.
I laugh every time I see one of these shoved in right below a brand new quadruple pane low-e argon filled latest ultra efficiency mega R value vinyl window. Yeah, the window is not where your air leak is, bro.
There shouldn’t be free movement of air with one of these. That defeats the whole purpose of it. If there’s actually airflow across, someone fucked up the installation.
Though, yeah, it’s not the most efficient setup. The only thing worse is a portable ac with a single vent hose.
Most of the PTAC units I’ve looked at in hotel rooms have had daylight visible right through them. And I can tell you from personal experience that the GE ZoneLine machines don’t even have the hot and cold sides insulated from each other, nor the outside world. There’s just a poxy plastic partition behind the blower wheel that’s got all holes in it for mounting various components, and since this slides out with the chassis this doesn’t seal against the inside of the sleeve in any way and usually leaves about a 1/4" gap around the top and sides. Maybe there’s some kind of boundary formed by air pressure when the thing is running, but when it’s off it absolutely allows outside air into the room without much hindrance. That’s before you get into fitment of whatever current unit is installed in the old-ass sleeve in the wall.
Even your $99 Walmart window unit has a big polystyrene block insulating the evaporator side from the condenser side (and thus also the outside).
Used to have an office that was an addition to the building, with no room to connect it to the main HVAC. I had one of these to myself. The window on my office door fogged up frequently because I set the thing to give-visitors-frostbite-cold.
i have central cooling instead of this in my country ngl.
Fuck those A/C units that require leaving a card in them to work
Eh, if you’re leaving your ac on all day when you’re out, that’s quite a waste. Card operation helps avoid accidentally leaving ac and lights on.
Is it more efficient to cycle the room temperature though? I’ve heard it’s better to get a room to temp and the machine can work less to maintain it. But maybe that’s old advice…
That is old advice. AC works pretty fast, especially in a small hotel room. If you have floor heating/cooling and a heat pump then it would make sense to leave it on all day.
Air conditioners are heat pumps.
I think that advice is specific to the “underground heat exchanger” type of heat pump.
It’s not; air source are also not particularly fast to make significant temperature changes compared with gas or electric heat when appropriately sized.
It is more specific to radiant (water/steam/in-floor) solutions though, as that is very slow to adjust
Yes I know, I meant air/water heat pumps which heat/cool the mass of a building instead of the air. AC units are oversized more often than not and are not that efficient at modulating. I think it’s safe to say that it’s more efficient to turn it of when you leave for more than an hour or two
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Exactly. It’s an energy conservation measure
Any card works though, you can probably buy blank ones for this purpose.
A library/gym membership card or supermarket points card will work nicely. I’ve yet to find a hotel that takes electricity conservation so seriously to install card switches with RFID readers.
I haven’t seen that but I believe you. Can you not just get an extra card from the front desk, or do they have it further enshittified in some way?
I’ve been in hotels where it’s just detecting that the slot is filled the card doesn’t matter. So you just use the cardboard sleeve the card came in.
Also been in newer ones that have RFID cards though that are harder but not impossible to spoof
Oh really? I can’t say I’ve come across the RFID style—basically every hotel I’ve stayed in over the past few years still happily takes my supermarket loyalty card in the power switch thing
How do you go about the spoofing of those and is it anything simpler than just creating a duplicate card?
Yeah you’d need cheap RFID blanks and a reader/writer. I do it with my phone easily enough. Just read the hotel card, copy, write to new card
You will check out with pneumonia guaranteed or your money back!
Holy crap I stayed at a place In Portland last year that had this exact model. Amazingly it worked.
Amazingly it worked.
Are you doing a Yoda thing, or were you expecting it not to work?
I’ve worked at hotels. People still figure out how to complain about these things.
District heating/cooling should be standard :)
Cold rooms have improved my sleep and made my life better.
Spike?
If only they weren’t so goddamn noisy.
They’re noisy because they are inefficient. But still more efficient than any ceiling fan
They’re noisy because they are inefficient.
It’s probably both noisy and inefficient if it’s made really cheap, but is that causation true?
But still more efficient than any ceiling fan
Not really comparable since ACs change the air temperature, while fans just move air.
The real reason they are noisy is the only thing between you and the compressor is a sheet of metal.
I don’t know how you measure efficiency but if you measure the amount of energy required for each degree of apparent temperature dropped then a fan is way way more efficient.
efficiently doesn’t raise my energy bill :/
And so energy inefficient.
Nah the noise is perfect to drown out every single noise in the hallway because the doors aren’t soundproof at all.
So true. Hotels, you have one job: provide somewhere for me to sleep. That means make an attempt at soundproofing. Ah well.
Amana Distinction PTAC Air Conditioner or something like it
On Hoth, you philistine.
Eh.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Echo_Base
The Echo Base was the facility established by the Rebel Alliance on the frigid planet of Hoth
The interior of Echo Base extended seven levels below the surface, with the lower levels for barracks, rec rooms, maintenance hangars and fuel stores.
on the frigid planet of Hoth
on […] Hoth
Just like when your on a tunnel tens of feet on the Earth
“I’m in a tunnel, somewhere on Earth” – this checks out for me. Can’t add a “the,” since it’s not the Hoth.
In a tunnel
On Hoth, you philistine.
The interior […] extended seven levels below the surface
Yeah but they probably had heat down there.
So.
The pedantry dies by the fires of warmed lower levels.
Maybe they were talking about in the wompa cave
seven levels
HOW DEEP IS A LEVEL THOUGH???
Not if they mean inside the Wampa cave
I will never understand people who WANT to be cold. I’d rather be a sweatball than a little chilly. When I see one of these it usually get immediately turned off, because yeah, they do some fucking work.
edit: Apparently people who like to be cold are really sensitive about not being understood. 😂
Warm hotel rooms always feel stuffy, no thank you
…and smell. They’re stuffy and they smell.
Because I can’t take off my skin but I can put on more clothes/blankets. As a human nuclear furnace, I sweat and get uncomfortable as rooms start going over 70f. It’s miserable.
Trade ya. My feet and hands will start turning to ice in a room below 70F.
I’m the same. Usually still in a blanket even in the 70s.
And I experience both! Thanks, Raynaud’s.
Calculates weird units to celsius…
What the f-
Okay. I tend to, in winter, live in ~60f. When temperature hits and stays at 70, I am moving onto the floor (ground level so cellar cools down the floors a bit)
Edit: Although I just got reminded about a coworker I knew that in winter, where we had around 5f outside, cranked his home heat to 82f. Straight up horror story for me xD
iirc people believe that cold environment warm insulated blanket promotes better sleeping.
because you are wrapped up burrito style like in the womb I guess. and most human heat exchange happens through the head (I read somewhere).
Maybe it’s Placebo but I definitely get much better quality of sleep in the winter time. I keep my room very cold and I have some nice big heavy blankets to keep me warm in the bed. And winter is by far the time of year that I regularly wake up feeling refreshed and not groggy
Yeah but straight up I’m not getting out of bed in the morning in those temperatures
I don’t want to be cold. I want to be comfortable. I want to not sweat. And for that to happen, I need the room to be cold.
Well I don’t want to be cold, but I crank the AC and snuggle up under the covers. It’s a treat somehow.
Humid climates really necessitate it unless you want to swim in bed.
Your opinion is wrong! Screw you for sharing it.
I’m going to make 10 new accounts just to downvote you, you heat lover.
I don’t get it myself. Anything under 75f for me and I’m breaking out the parka. Of course, where I live I’d ice up an ac trying to get my place too much under 80f over the summer.
I’d rather the room be slightly colder than I want than warmer because I can put on a jumper, but the number of downvotes on you sharing your opinion is insane haha
Here’s an updoot to even it out a little, even though YOU’RE SO WRONG
“Doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world, ‘No, you move’.”
You people who like the cold are WRONG and global warming is gonna take care of your bullshit in a couple hundred years! 😆
I got it once I looked up what a Hoth is.
Harrow-on-the-Hill station?
Edit: Oh shit, I just now understood the name of BadLip’s Hostiles on the Hill song
I am so fucking old.
Newer versions of these can have par levels set for the temps and I don’t know who thinks 74f is a comfortable room temp, but no… it is not.
Fortunately, internet legends went on to explain how to put these into service mode, thereby defeating their laughable levels. Just gotta remember to put it back to their mode when you’re checking out.
But, yeah, these things fkn crank coldness. And the electric bill. And the environment.
I think if a hotel billed me for resetting their AC I would throw the bill away and see if they really want to waste their time with collections and court.
and see if they really want to waste their time with collections
It would be the collections agency who’s time would be spent in court, not the hotel’s. And collection agencies are in the business of collecting debt, so I don’t think they would see it as a waste of time.
Whoever is trying to collect on it, unless they have a posted sign to not tamper with the AC controls, with a description of the fines/fees, AND they have a way of proving I was the one who did it, I wouldn’t hesitate to dispute a charge like that. Because I’ve done it a dozen times on small BS charges from companies large and small and 90% of the time the collection or credit hit were successfully dismissed.
Pro-tip on both staying in a hotel or renting an apartment: take a video tour real fast on your way in and out. It’s one thing to dispute something harmless you did do, it’s quite another disputing actual damages that someone else did. If nothing else you get a little vacation clip to remember your stay.
Good luck with that. Collection agencies don’t care a whit how valid the debt is. They just care about how much they have to inconvenience you before you’ll pay them to go away.
“Guy before me did it.” Case closed. Housekeeping ain’t checking shit. I was in Savannah and we got the maintenance guy to give us the unlocked remote for the TV, because nobody gives a fuck. You gotta remember, it’s a bunch of shlubs like us making shit money doing a ton of work. If they walk in and the room is ice cold, they’re putting the thermostat on whatever and walking away.
OK, but my point was that the hotel will have washed their hands of your debt by the time it’s at a collections agency. How much time does it take you to dispute a collection note on your credit report? I’d guess it takes less time to take the AC unit out of service mode before you check out.
How much time does it take you to dispute a collection note on your credit report?
In most cases seconds. This all works online. There are forms. You should get to know your credit history and how to manage it, it makes a huge difference in your financial life.
I know how credit bureaus work. How often are you doing this that you’re able to find the forms, fill them out, and submit them all within seconds? Not to mention logging in to your accounts…
Even if you’re doing this all the time, it will still take longer than resetting the AC unit before you leave. I don’t know why some people seem to seek out conflicts…
I will not guide you how easy and fast it is to submit disputes, because you seem to think this is contentious and as such you will resist knowledge I share now out of spite, because you’re a human on the internet. But if you’re spending more (or less) than a few minutes a month going through the charges, you either don’t need to or don’t care or never learned. Look into it if you care.
Otherwise, I’m done trying to argue the basic point that “it’s not a big deal to leave the AC reset in a chain hotel” like i’m advocating for Unibomber-level anti establishment actions, you do you.
Afaik when talking about computers you can be charged by acessing some thing (a site or a feature) that you know you are not supposed to. The same logic may apply here. If you got into an hotel, the unit was lockedand you used some trick to get it to do what you want, it could be illegal. They do not need a sign
My take was to not let them in on the secret.
Yeah seriously, that’s a comfortable sleeping temp when you can snuggle under the blankets to stay warm, but way too cold for daytime use. I’d be pissed if my hotel kept turning down the temperature for no good reason.
Are you saying 74DEGREESFAHRENHEIT is too cold?? Or has my reading comprehension done its nightly vanishing trick?
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I’m from the planet where it gets 65°F in May. And 85 in July.
Then why even have air conditioning? I would never turn it on with those temps.
Leave your windows open all night, close them in the morning when you wake up. The residual coolness will keep your house a comfortable temperature all day long. That’s what I do in the spring before the temps hit 100+.
