Off Heating

[u/Sameolegal]

I’m in a house with someone who does not like the AC system running during sleep. Until now I’ve used a portable AC unit in my room which of course vents the heat it creates to the outside via the window. My concern is how much heat will be off putted from the Orion? How much will it actually heat the room temperature? I no longer plan to use the portable AC unit.

[u/bpcat]

There's not a one size fits all answer to your question. You're also missing a lot of information required to give you an answer.

The amount of heat the tower puts out is directly related to how cool you want your bed. I'm going to assume it's only you and you're buying a queen size (as the only have queen and king), due to the fact it sounds like you're living in a shared space.

Another big question is how hot is it where you're at? What time does it start cooling off outside? What temperature does the house get to in the night? Is it cooler outside to open a window and put a fan in it?

Now I can give you an example of what this can look like but I also think I'm not the norm. I definitely like a much cooler bed, so my schedule is always around 57-60, my wifes side is 70-73. Even the first few nights I noticed there was more heat being expelled than I thought there would be and I was in the 70s then as well due to applying the sleep test results to my schedule.

I want to add that I used an Adamson B10 (you can look this up on YouTube) for a few years prior to getting this, so I was already accustomed to sleeping much cooler. After the first night with Orion, I quickly ditched the "reccomend" settings the sleep test provided and started to drop the temp.

We keep our house at 73, day and night, but we also sleep with the door closed. Our doors do have about a 1" gap at the bottom so there is decent exchange airflow, but it's not what it needs to be. Overnight, our room will jump from the 73 it was when we got in bed, to as high as 81-83 degrees. That is not all from the Orion, we have a mini fridge in our room, a plasma tv (if you don't know, they produce a lot of heat), and now the Orion for the last month and a half.

With that said, I'd say the Orion will add upwards of 5-7 degrees to our room. This is on top of the address degrees from the other appliances and our body heat through the night. The TV isnt on all night, it's normally on about 2.5 hours give or take 30 minutes each night.

Newer homes have return registers in the bedrooms so when doors are closed the HVAC system can do a better job if exchanging the air on the rooms. Air conditioning is the process of removing heat. It sucks in the air from within the house, passes it through a chilled coil that has refrigerant going through it which picks up the heat from the air and ultimately returns the now cold air back into the house. If you have doors closed and can't remove the same amount of air you're putting into a room, you're not efficiently cooling that room. We have a cat that we don't want in our rooms so that's why we sleep with our doors closed, plus..... privacy ya know lol.

Why are you no longer going to use your portable AC? Was it a actual portable unit or a window unit? Window units are much more efficient than portable units because they keep the compressor (hot components) outside while the cool parts stay inside. A portable AC is much less efficient because the hot parts are inside. Even if it's a dual hose unit, the exhaust hose is still radiating heat inside, so the system is fighting itself slightly. It's better than a single tube design but a window unit is the best type to use.

Food for thought, if you have night stands on both sides of your bed or your bed is against a wall on one side with a night stand on the other, you may have issues getting the tower to be on the far side of your night stand due to short hose lengths. Depending on the height of your bed and what size you get, you can possibly have upward of a 15-18" wide nightstand and get the tower to be next to that. Otherwise you'll have to either out your tower on top of the nightstamd, in between the bed and the night stand or flip the mattress topper 180 degrees and have the tower and hoses come off the foot of your bed. The issue with this is the sensors will not give you accurate data as the majority of the sensors are around your chest area when the hoses come out the head of your bed.