We live in a new house with solar panels fitted as standard.
Its a win win as when its hot we use it while the sun is providing the power.
I’m not a techno but it consumes ariund 1.5 kw and does a great job.
The UK planning laws have allowed us permitted development for our conservatory but if we had installed a typical air con unit with inside and outside fixed unit it would have brought the entire conservatory into building regs. This way using a portable unit, it doesn’t.
Its a great unit which I can recommend.
A fixed air con unit would have cost around £1800 where as this unit cosy £450 and does the same job.
3 Likes
I think the important part of that statement is the last word in it. We bought first one and later another air to air systems, described to us as a fridge in reverse, but of course they are not portable. At the touch of a button they change from cool to warm air.
The one in the salle allows the cool air to fill the room and then overflow into my bedroom adjoining, with the door open of course. It is cool enough at bedtime to not need to be on all night.
I have had that one on for 12 hours each of the last 7 days and the kitchen one for short periods too. The cost in electricity for both has been 1 euro per day.
It’s recommended that you do not turn them off once going until it’s no longer needed when the seasons change etc. On/Off continually buggers up the unit. Mine is on 24/7 and I just adjust the vane if needed and the temp but it does not get turned off, the sensors do that depending on the temp. The plumber warned me not to do that and my cost is about the same as it uses very little power and the new gas now is eco too and cheaper to put in the unit outside. Like you, a touch on the keypad can change to heat instead. French made too down here in the south and not some foreign stuff
1 Like
It’s brilliant having solar. Once you get your head around getting the most from it and see how much it saves you, you wonder why you didn’t get it earlier !
We have a multi split system with three indoor units and like you use them almost always whilst the sun is up. When all three are on it takes about 1.5Kw. With just the bedroom unit on it’s about 400W.
2 Likes
Nobody told us that when we installed them, they are both Misubishis sold and installed by a company in Limoges.
My Mitsubishi that was put in with the house build was a heap of rubbish and did not work properly and no one told me at the time it was not meant to be switched on and off but to leave running so that it did not have to work hard to build upto the previous temp again. I had the whole system replaced at my own cost last winter and its a very good system and powerful compared to the Mitsubishi which I found out only has two years guarantee and this make Heiwa, built in France gives a ten year guarantee.
The older one, fitted about 10 years ago works very well, but the later model did have some problems. I had a man come out to fix it and he said the outside unit 'doesn’t like cold weather. ’ 
A bit slower to wake up but it is ok now.
The house we bought last year has a Toshiba split a/c system. It has ceiling ducts in the three bedrooms. When used to cool it will drop the room temperature by around 1 deg C per hour. I’ve been up in the loft accessed by lifting roof tiles trying to find the fan in the unit. The air flow - same in all bedrooms no matter how many rooms calling for cooling, is nothing like that from the single system we have in the cuisine americaine. The airflow can be felt metres away. Bedroom unit was installed around ten years ago and I suspect it may be a hamster wheel type fan gunged up. I had to delay further investigation because it was too hot on the roof/loft. Anyone had a weak flow issue with a split system? I’ve found a manual for it thankfully.
Any opinions on ceiling fans?
1 Like
Yes indeed.
We have them in all of our big rooms and they are amazing. Super quiet (they have DC motors) and can run in reverse in the winter.
I buy ours from Faro Barcelona. Super chic.
One if them (second photo has a diameter of over 1.5m and the first photo fan has a dia if 1.2m). Faro give good advice on sizing to suit your room.
This time of the year, we run them 24/7 and in the evening and night with all windows open to flush any residual heat out.
3 Likes
We had three rooms fitted with ceiling fans in UK.
Loved 'em, but only brought one with us here to France as the Buyer there wanted the other ones left in situ.
The fan has a switch to change how the air is circulated. Summer has the draft blowing downwards. Various speeds give one the chance to choose how strong a draft one wants to feel.
Winter switch has the draft being drawn up from the floor and bounced off the ceiling.
One doesn’t actually notice any draft in this mode.
Any heat which rises naturally to the ceiling is grabbed/mixed with the heat being brought upwards…
and it’s all sent down to where it’s needed.. but without any draft… again speed is adjustable.
I hope someone can make sense of my burblings…
With this heatwave, we are using smaller, portable fans which waft air over our feet wherever we are sitting… 
The ceiling fan is fitted over the dining table in the dining half of this rather large room. so not much use for us sitting watching our dvd’s half a mile away. 
2 Likes
Good ecological and efficient low’ish tech option. If we had electricity anywhere near our ceilings we would add them.
1 Like
We had ceiling fans in our last house and they worked well. We’ve just ordered some for this house that will replace some ceiling lights we don’t use.
There was an item on TF1 today and they said that moving the air can make it feel 3-6 degrees cooler.
2 Likes
Our ceiling fans all had lights included, so simply replaced the central light which so many rooms had/have.
Likewise here, what is now our dining end has a beautiful old ceiling decoration from which a candle-lit thingy might well have hung in olden days, before leccy arrived in 1970.
The fan-triple-light is optional and we rarely switch it on, preferring to use just the sidelights which are on the walls, even if the fan is running.
1 Like
We are in the process of buying one of the last available Midea Portasplits. My concern with the much cheaper and less effective evaporative fan coolers is that they massively increase internal humidity, and so discomfort. We have a 2 litre dehumidifier that normally is emptied every other day or so. With a fan and evaporative cooling I am emptying it every 5 or 6 hours. I read that the Portasplit condensate is pumped outside. I have paid 1180,80 € TTC, using PayPal and am living in hope. The Ventigo.fr website states that it is being shipped, but it’s no longer in stock on their website. The demand is so great that there is a German website tracking availability in every shop and online! https://braucheklima.de/ There was one available yesterday from the Midea shop priced at over 2400 euros! Another Amazon shop has posted one at over 3000 euros. There is a smaller less powerful version that only cools, and there appears to be some stock available of these still.
Hope it works out for you. I have a cheapo 9000BTU Alpina portable that I bought 2 years ago at Action for 159 euros that works OK, but I moved it to my new rental house and had to suffer without anything but fans . I’m not going to compete with anyone for any replacement this year, but early next year I will see what is available. I think these are about 1000 euros for the 12000 BTU when demand is not high, and by then there may be some new options.
We are almost 850 metres up, in what our French friends always told us is the coldest part of France (close to Mouthe and Combe Noir). I have had a weather station here for about a decade. We have never recorded over 33c here before, but Saturday was 36.3c, and due to the steady heat for so long, inside was between 26c downstairs and 27c upstairs, despite fans, external screening of glass etc. So I think we are all going to have to think about linking PV to AC in refuge rooms in the increasing intervals of extreme heat. (I came across debate re Australia and AC use a few years ago. It identified how in the early days people moved to live in semi-buried basement refuges when it was extremely hot. The discussion was that the grid would not be able to cope with AC in every room in the future, although increasing use of PV may compensate for that).
On researching the Midea unit, I found they had a recall in the US a couple of years ago due to mould, but developed a kit that is claimed to have solved it. Although there are other split units available, including a “generic” one on Amazon, in discussions it was claimed that only companies with the size of Midea could afford to develop and market a niche portable product like the Portasplit. (Climatiseur Mobile Avec Evacuation Rafraichisseur Silencieux Chambre Structure Divisée Avec Tuyau De Raccordement De 1 Mètre Aucun Assemblage Requis : Amazon.fr: Cuisine et Maison)
Is you’re external unit in the attic space of the house ? If that’s so it’s pretty much the worst place for it to be for cooling. If your attic space is anything like ours it’s incredibly hot and you want it to be radiating the extracted heat outside (ours is in shade most of the day) rather than somewhere that’s as hot as hell.
If it’s in the attic, then that’s probably your problem. Also, these units can slowly leak refrigerant and can need topping up to work efficiently. This happened to ours a few years ago.
My house in Turks & Caicos had ceiling fans in all rooms and they worked well. Pretty much a standard fitment in the islands, if air con is not installed.
I had louvred windows with insect mesh, not glass, in all windows except the sliding patio door and that helped by allowing any available breeze to waft through the house.
It was also standard to have high ceilings like @MikeyPotts photos above which helped the heat to not hang about in the areas we humans inhabit!
2 Likes
A chandelier, I only know that because I watched Only Fools and Horses, many times.
1 Like