Air conditioning

Room air conditioners lived in this category: window boxes, through-wall chassis, and floor units that exhaust through a hose. Central systems were not the row.

Window and through-wall

A window unit hangs in a sash and exhausts heat out that opening. The side panels and the tilt toward the outdoors are what keep rain and condensate on the right side of the wall. A through-wall unit sits in a metal sleeve built into the wall. The sleeve stays when the chassis slides out, so a replacement has to match that sleeve. The BTU sticker does not tell you the sleeve size. Friedrich-style wall units were part of this catalog's mix. The sleeve measurement is the fit. The capacity number is the cooling.

A hose out the window

A portable unit with one hose pulls room air across the condenser and blows that air outside. The room then sucks replacement air in from the rest of the house, some of it warm. Two-hose portables separate the intake. Either way, the window kit is a leak. These machines cool a closed room more slowly than a window box of the same rated capacity.

Capacity has to match the room, the sun, and the kitchen heat. An undersized unit runs without a rest and still leaves the room warm. The nameplate, not a room-name guess, is the figure to compare.