I've worked at hotels. People still figure out how to complain about these things.
this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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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'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).
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.
You will check out with pneumonia guaranteed or your money back!
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.
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?
If only they weren’t so goddamn noisy.
Nah the noise is perfect to drown out every single noise in the hallway because the doors aren't soundproof at all.
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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.
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.
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Cold rooms have improved my sleep and made my life better.
Spike?
I once considered moving from Seattoe to Bremerton, WA to take advantage of the much cheaper real estate. In attempt to get a feel for the daily commute, I decided to stay at a Super 8 in Bremerton for a week. 5 minutes into that experiment, I flicked on the AC unit that looks just like this one and it reeked of cat pee.
I did not move to Bremerton.
In that Super 8s probably rarely see cats who enjoy urinating on electrical equipment (although I'm sure that's happened nonzero number of times), it's probably a ton of condensed meth. When it's in secondhand form, exhaled or wasted, it's hydroscopic and instantly mixes with the room humidity, which is then processed by the A/C coils, where it accumulates.
Possibly the room was actually used to manufacture meth. I mean, I used to manage REO properties on Bremerton, and I definitely cleaned up the remains of a few meth labs.
But maybe Mr Fluffy did go to urinetown on it, who knows. Bremerton.
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You judge a city by their Super 8?
You know from staying in multiple super 8s, this would be a pretty accurate way to gauge a town
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Fuck those A/C units that require leaving a card in them to work
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
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I haven't gone on a vaction where I needed a hotel in a LONG time, but yes. the Ac units in every hotel room I've ever been in are pretty baws
I hope you'll think about not using vacation rentals like airbnb. I obviously have no clue what you actually do on vacation.
They're so destructive to local communities. Homes are for living, not some ~~entrepreneurs~~ dickbags financial instrument.
I hope you’ll think about not using vacation rentals like airbnb.
I'll never use Airbnb or anything like it.
I obviously have no clue what you actually do on vacation.
Camping, sometimes I pull my 5th wheel with my truck, but usually when I go on vacation I camp in my huge tents
This is true but I think it's worth noting that the most impactful and worst aspects of AirBnB and its ilk are from investors buying old apartment buildings and renting them out like hotels, while dodging all the living standards and financial regulations of actual hotels. If they get away with this it absolutely wrecks the local low-income housing market.
Private homeowners renting out rooms in their houses, or even renting out their whole house, for vacationers are not really the problem.
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