How to install a portable A/C unit into a casement window

hi Paula I just thought I'd make you a video this might be easier than to actually show pictures and tell you about what I did so there's the portable air conditioner and here is the window that we install it into back far enough so it's an Andersen casement window and each one of those sashes is probably about 40 inches give you a measurement right now my tape measure working I think they're about 42 inches so not as quite as tall as yours but still pretty tall so the question is how the heck do you get you know one of these portable air conditioners to work in a window like this so the little plastic things that go in the windows aren't big enough obviously so what I decided to do was because you know screens and Andersen windows are removable and they just pop out with the two little blades here I said why don't I just make an insert I'll take the screen out and put an insert in here that will use the the outlet that it was supplied with the air conditioner so I ended up taking a screen out using the actual screen as a template I purchased some stuff at a at a window place you know I guess if you go to a window to have a window place to have the glass prepared or change or whatever they've got all the materials that you'll need and so this is what I built right here and so this one let's move it over here so you can see a little better what we did is we just got some of this aluminum framing and then a piece of polycarbonate so you want to use if you do something like this you'll want to use polycarbonate most people go I need Plexiglas and you can get Plexiglas plexiglass is very brittle if you were to cut it wrong or tap it wrong it would just shatter into pieces so you don't want to do that so go for a piece of polycarbonate it's more money but it's a lot safer and easier to work with now I know you wouldn't be doing this yourself but you can turn this in to a place that does this kind of work so what I did was I again use that screen as the template got the framing material put the framing material together cut a piece of the polycarbonate you put mount the polycarbonate into the frame and then just attach the frame at the miter cuts here that you see and this is the exact same dimension as the screen that goes in that window so now come you know late spring I can pop out the screen and then pop this insert that I made in and then just hook the air-conditioner up to the nozzle to the output so that was the other thing so once I got all this together I used the the outlet that came with the air-conditioner as a template you just put it against the glass and draw a circle and then take it away and then cut the circle out and then drill a couple holes for the mounting screws which you can see there and then there's another one there to just put some silicone in there so it's glued and screwed into its hole and of course you put the little locking blades on so that it can just lock in with the factory slots in the window itself and so like I said once the late spring comes I just pop this out this just pops right out the screen I pop that in and then the tube and just hooks up to the old brick you need to get in the shot didn't you the tube just hooks up to the output right there to the outlet and that's it plug it in and go now the nice thing about this is you get to not block the window off so all the light that would normally come in can still come in you know otherwise people are talking about what we'll put cardboard in there or put some sort of plastic in there yeah you could do that but now it's going to look like crap and it's going to block all that available light out too and so this way by using something like this you know when it when it's installed and you get off the window a foot or so it doesn't look like it didn't doesn't belong there so that's a pretty nice thing so I don't know if you have screens in the window you're talking about hopefully you do and hopefully they're on the inside like this but maybe you could figure something out similar to this that's what I did and that seemed to be to work really well so again we go to a place that repairs windows bring the screen as a template say you want you know essentially the same thing but instead of having a screen in the middle you want a piece of polycarbonate they would have to make the frame they cut the polycarbonate for you they install it all together any kind of hardware needed to hold it in place they could put in and then what I might suggest is have them just do all that first then bring it back home put it in see where you want the outlet to be and then you can use the outlet to mark the hole and then you can just bring it all back to them and then they'll cut the hole and mount the outlet for you as well as long as you bring that back to them too yeah that's what I would do that'd probably be the neatest and cleanest most factory looking installation that you could probably do so okay good luck with your project and let us know how it turns out bye bye

Channel: HubertJass

Views: 648,737

Keywords: How-to (Conference Subject)

Id: fu1u1HoBtUs

Length: 6min 5sec (365 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2013