For millions of students across the country, the beginning of the school year is an exciting time. Catching up with classmates, showing off new school shoes, and meeting their next teachers are all on the horizon.

 But the beginning of the school year can also be uncomfortably hot, making it difficult for students to stay focused and pay attention as they learn new subjects.

So how can we keep kids cool and comfortable so they can take full advantage of their education and someday change the world?

Two words: air conditioning.

A couple of weeks ago we spoke with Jeff, who is a member of the maintenance department at a school in Virginia.

After seeing TOSOT portable air conditioners at Home Depot, Jeff recommended TOSOT to the school’s purchasing director to add supplemental cooling to certain areas of the school.

Here’s what Jeff had to say about his experience with TOSOT:

Question: How are you using the TOSOT Portable Air Conditioners?

“We are using them [TOSOT Shiny PACs] as supplemental cooling in spaces where our primary cooling system has either failed or for whatever reason was not able to meet cooling demands. Some units did go into classrooms while others went into a nurse’s clinic.”

If your home does not have a central HVAC system or you have certain areas that are not very cool during the summer, adding supplemental cooling is a great idea to help keep you cool and comfortable.

Window air conditioners are one option, but they are usually stuck in whichever room you install them. The biggest advantage of portable air conditioners is that, as the name suggests, they are portable and can be moved around your home wherever you need cool air the most.

For this reason, Jeff and the maintenance department can move the units to rooms that are used more frequently or if they experience an outage in their main cooling system in the school.

Question: What made you choose TOSOT over all the other brands?

“Normally I would lease or rent units from United Rentals or Herc or somewhere else, but those can be cumbersome and a little noisy. Your product [Shiny Portable AC] was attractive because it was small and it was quiet. I could put it in a setting where it would not interfere with scholastic activities.

...with the other units, there's this issue with condensation. Where [with] yours, the condensation is evaporated for the most part. So, the need for carrying off water or installing a drain hose was less significant. So, I found that attractive and that's one of the reasons that I recommended [TOSOT] to the purchasing manager.”

One downside of using a traditional portable air conditioner is that as they remove hot air from the room, water is collected as condensation and must be removed after collecting in a bucket that you must empty out by hand or set the unit up to drain through the included drain hose.

TOSOT portable air conditioners have an auto-evaporative feature where condensation is reused in the unit to help cool down the condenser coils so the unit can work more efficiently. Besides efficiency, this also means the units can run with minimal input from you because there is no water that needs to be drained or removed.

The auto-evaporation function should work in most situations, but if your space is exceptionally humid and wet, you may need to install the included drain hose to keep the unit running effectively.

Unboxing and Installation

When talking about the unboxing and setup experience, Jeff had some unique points to share about how the portable ACs were installed.

Question: when you received the TOSOT products, how was the unboxing and the setup experience? Was it pretty straightforward?

“[Unboxing and setup] was very straightforward. Bear in mind, that you're talking to people who are very mechanically inclined. So, we did not use the window discharge hose or that entire assembly. In fact, all the spaces in which they were installed had no windows. So, what to do with that exhaust hose?

So, in a traditional commercial ventilation system, exhaust air is often drawn up above the dropped ceiling. So, in each installation, I replaced the provided hose with a flexible duct of equal diameter, but longer, and ran it up to the drop ceiling where I cut a circular hole in the drop ceiling and inserted the secondary exhaust hose that I purchased from Home Depot or Lowes.”

All TOSOT portable air conditioners come with a window kit and exhaust hose so you can remove the hot air that is produced during operation. In window units, the condenser is located outside of the window, so you don’t have to worry about this hot air.

With portable units being self-contained within the room, the hot air must be exhausted somewhere. Otherwise, you would be cooling the room and blowing hot exhaust back in at the same time. Not very practical.

Due to minimal window access in the school, and the security concerns of having the hot air exhausted through a window and being unable to lock the window, Jeff and his team had to get creative. As Jeff said, they ended up buying additional exhaust hoses to vent the hot air out through the drop ceiling of the school.

Although you probably won’t have to use this method in your home, it is cool to see the interesting way that Jeff and the maintenance department were able to vent the hot air out of the school to keep the students and faculty cool in the classroom.

Overall, Jeff and his team were very pleased with the features of the TOSOT Shiny portable air conditioner and found a creative way to install the exhaust hose given their sensitive environment.

As we get closer to the first day of school, we are glad to know that we were able to help students stay cool and comfortable as they begin their school year.