Homebase Aircon units...

["Phil Harris" <phillip.harris1@xxxxxxx>]

Hiya Guys...

Well, I can't remember whether he posted on the group or whether he mailed
me directly but Ian B pointed me in the direction of Homebase in Andover
who
were clearing out some big(ish) split unit air conditioners that they had
left over. I guess they were selling them off as customers were put off
them
due to their £600 asking price and their bulk preferring to go for the
smaller and far cheaper "hose out the window" type that they
carry.

Anyway, he said there were two left and he got one on Friday evening ... I
went over this morning and they had found another one (leaving two) and so
I
bought them both - they were knocked down to £299 each.

Not expecting too much I hooked one up this afternoon and was very
pleasantly suprised with their performance ... our fairly large living room
which is roughly 14ft wide by 26ft long with a large open staircase and
landing was kept nice and cool this afternoon even though it gets the
afternoon sun and once it had turned a tad chilly after sunset the heating
capability of the unit was also found to be pretty effective too.

They're reasonably quiet ... certainly not inaudiable but not loud enough
to
spoil our movie watching this evening (at neighbour friendly levels as
they're back today) and at £299 have to be counted as a bargain. (At this
point Li is probably chuckling away to himself as that's what I class most
things I buy as.)

Anyway ... if anyone's interested they're branded as "Gree" and
are pretty
hefty (they weigh in at 48kgs in the box) but certainly very capable. They
are a heat pump design and so can be used to heat as well as cool (they
don't have a heating element but run the compressor "in reverse")
and they
also have a fan only setting and a de-humidify function. The dehumidify
function has to be one of the most aggressive I've come across as it's
rated
at 1.6 litres/hr or 36 litres/day ... certainly over the time we were using
it today it drew a good 1.5 litres of water from the air. They have a
9,000BTU heating/cooling capacity and a three year warranty.

I can't remember who it was that was offering to look into Air Con for the
group but I think you could do far worse than perhaps try to see where
these
are from as I would hope that given Homebases price slash from £600 to £300
per unit they're not that expensive if sourced directly.

I am certainly impressed by the units ... so much so that I'm tempted to
hang on to the second one (it was bought for a fellow group member) but I
know the missus is going to be mad enough when she gets back from South
Africa and sees one let alone two! I certainly think it's way more than was
originally required (the reason I bought it was to cool my kids bedroom as
that bakes in the afternoon/evening already) and I think I might pop back
tomorrow to Homebase and perhaps get one of the "hose through the
window"
jobs for his room.

I even managed to get a 15% discount on the second unit as it had no box
...
the customer service guy that I'd been "negotiating" with gave me
a hand out
to the car with them and when he saw that I had an MX-6 he looked at me as
if to say how the hell do you intend to get those in there. The one without
a box went inside the car with the main unit on the back seat and the
outside unit on the front seat. For the other one I took it out of the box
and stuck it in the boot - it just fitted. I don't think he was too
impressed when I asked him if there was a skip that I could dump the box in
and he did comment on the fact that I'd made quite a fuss about the second
not being boxed ... ah well ... *grin*

Phil




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