Turbo Trainer and Portable Aircon

My turbo trainer lives in what is basically a cupboard under the stairs, it was a home office, but without windows it could be a bit soul destroying after a while, for a turbo, it’s fine as it can stay assembled year round and it isn’t in the way.

I don’t normally sweat much even in summer, but ever with three fans and a cold draw through a vent it gets very hot, can anyone think of any downsides of using a portable aircon unit, the prices seem low enough to give one a try?

Nothing small will keep up with the rate the body produces heat.

You also need somewhere to dump the hot+wet air as they work like any other heat pump, Air from the room goes into two  ducts, one goes over the cold exchanger and produces cold dry air and water, the other goes over the hot exchanger and produces hot air, the water is usually dripped onto the hot exchanger as it’s more convenient than collecting it and running another pipe out the room.

So you’ll need a big unit, and to drill a 6-8″ hole in an exterior wall (or run a hose out to a door/window you can block up and put the duct through).  At which point it would be far cheaper to just put a really big inline fan in that duct and only use the turbo when it’s <14C or so outside.

And they’re noisy.  Way noisier than decent fans because they have two fans, and a compressor running.  When fitting out portacabins we used to build a little ‘shed’ on the side to house 2-3 small domestic sized AC units under one of the windows  , then took the window out and made a plywood blank to run all the hoses in and out.  Solved the problem of space and noise, but in the end we just bought some big split units, which were even noisier but actually did the job.

You also need to consider where the air comes from. You can’t just recirculate or it’ll get stuffy as you use up the oxygen/ CO2 rises. And you can’t have the door open or the AC is fighting a loosing battle trying to cool the rest of the house.  Which is why we used 2+, one was recirculating the air in the room which is way more efficient in warm weather.  The other was taking outside air and cooling it.

Well they’re very noisy and the ones I’ve used have been pretty 5hit for cooling or heat. A fair size too so not sure where you could put that in a small room?

You could get a small split system so the noisy bit is outside and you just have the main unit up on the wall. Here small systems like that can be installed sub $1000 so perhaps 500 quid. You’ll have much better aircon than those portable types.

They also generally advise they’re not used in small spaces due to the risks if there’s a refrigerant leak.

Thanks for the replies, I did think there might be a free lunch element to my question, sweat is just weakness leaving the body right? Or is that pain……

I’d say that the weather is warm enough that riding my bike under the stairs is uncomfortably hot i might look at outside as an option. I appreciate that might still be static if you are unable to leave due a caring role.

I reckon it depends in large part on how big a space you’re in how long you’re actually using it typically.

I’m normally using mine in a double garage (relatively large volume of unheated air) and seldom for more than an hour and a half. So a fan (or two) that’s just creating air flow directly over me is fine, I’m not going to hugely increase the air temp in that volume of air such that it becomes really uncomfortable.

But crammed in under the stairs sounds like a pretty small volume of air, (already at room temp ~20*C?) you need to be drawing in the coolest air you can and ideally exhausting the hot air. At the very least you’d want to have the inlet for the portable AC unit pulling air from outside (can you poke one of those flexy ducts straight out of a window rather than through a potentially restrictive duct?).

Is there an out-building option (shed/garage/lean-to) even if that’s just as cramped, you get the benefit of lower ambient temperatures and/or easier air circulation with the outside world. Assuming you have the outside space available and suitable extension leads for trainer and IT, how does the cost/benefit trade off look for an 8′ shed Vs a Portable AC unit