Frigidaire FAC106P1 Thru-Wall/Window Air Conditioner

The Frigidaire FAC106P1A is my new best friend. I picked this unit up at Lowe's for $200, on sale. On the box, it mentioned that it was a Best Buy in a "leading consumer magazine" (further research revealed that to be Consumer Reports, which did give it high marks), and an Energy Star (EER) Rating of 10.8 out of a possible 11.0 for this size air conditioner.

It's a 10,000 BTU, or British Thermal Units, per hour model which is listed in the instructions as being able to cool a 490 square foot area. 490 sq. feet works out to a living room size of about 16 feet by 30 feet.

I installed it in a casement window of my bedroom after removing a pane and building a little platform for it.
There were no difficulties in installation, other than you need to give the outside edge a little more downward tilt than the inside to make sure the water vapor exhaust works properly.

After our central air unit died during this summer's heat wave, and a replacement compressor couldn't be found, I had tried two other models before finding this Frigidaire. One was a "portable A/C unit" at 8,000 BTUs that couldn't cool a 225 sq. ft. bedroom from 92 degrees Fahrenheit to any lower than 84F in three hours, and had to have a water bucket emptied every 4 hours. Not very stellar performance for the 1000 watts it used. The other was a 10,000 unit model from Fedders that was simply too loud, though it cooled adequately.

The floor of the house where the unit is installed is about 850 square feet large, including a bedroom, bathroom, large living area and hallway. The unit itself is in my bedroom. The house was 92F, confirmed with an accurate digital thermometer on the far side of the bedroom when I first started the unit. The Frigidaire FAC106P1A, also known as one of their Compact II models, cooled the bedroom from 92F to 70 degrees within 2 hours. Absolutely amazing, considering that the walls, furniture, air, and floor had been over 90F for a week. That's a lot of latent heat to remove!

After running the unit for a night at the 70 degree setting, it had the room at exactly 70 degrees per the independent thermometer. I opened up the bedroom door and let it try to cool the rest of the floor, not expecting much as it's only rated to cool 490 sq. feet of space, not 850. This unit is a little underrated in my opinion! Over 24 hours, set at 72 degrees, the Frigidaire kept the bedroom at 72F, and brought the rest of the living space down to 79F. 92F to 79 is a huge difference, let me tell you. I'm extremely pleased with this unit. Enough anecdotal evidence, let's take a look at the specifications and features:

The FAC106P1A comes in a few sub-models. Same base air conditioner, but a few features change. For example the FAC107P1A is exactly the same, but the remote doesn't come with a thermometer reading on it.

___________________________________
This model comes with:

The unit itself

A remote control that can set the variable fan speed from 10-99, the temperature on the unit, the "auto-temp" setting, sleep mode, Energy Saver mode, the timer, fan only setting, and of course, the power.

Two accordion-style attachments for the main unit to block off any open space on the sides of the unit in the window.

A nice instruction manual with simple instructions and setup information.

Some foam weather stripping with self-adhesive backing

__________________________________

The FAC106P1A has the following features:

Only uses 925 Watts for 10,000 BTUs of cooling! Very efficient.

Cools all the way down to 60F, rather than the 66F most models offer.

Variable fan speed from 10-99, digitally controlled.

Full electronic controls for everything except the air-flow louvers.

10.5 GALLONS per day of dehumidifying functionality. That's rather extraordinary, especially since there's no water pan or hosing to deal with. It vents it all to the outside after spraying it on the hot outside coils to increase their efficiency. This level of dehumidifying makes the cooling much more effective. I have a good, dedicated dehumidifier
that can only take care of 6 gallons a day, and it has a tank that has to be emptied. Again, 10.5 gallons per day is how much water this unit can extract from the indoor air. Amazing.

Sleep mode - A/C will increase the temp setting by 2 degrees every 30 minutes for the first hour after you press it, raising the setting 4 degrees for 7 hours, and then at the seventh hour, setting back to where it was originally so you'll be cool when you get home from work.

Energy-Saver mode - Starts and stops the compressor while blowing the fan on high across the cold coils, turning on the compressor only when necessary.

Auto-Temp mode - Controls the fan speed in accordance with temperature changes. If the room is cool and stable, the fan stays on setting 10 of 99 (very low speed). If a door is opened for a minute, and the unit senses the temperature rising quickly, it increases the fan speed accordingly until the temperature stabilizes again, then lowers the speed. Handy for sleeping at night with less noise.

A simple pull-lever that can pull some fresh air inside from the outdoors while still cooling, or fully open for total ventilation (not for cooling, but to act as an air-exchanger), or a closed position to recirculate pre-cooled air from inside for maximum efficiency.

_________________________________________________


The only negative I can think of for this unit is that the compressor has a high-pitched "chatter" sound to it that some people may find annoying. It doesn't bother me, but it's not very rhythmic, so it may get on your nerves if you're very sensitive to noise. The fan on maximum is much louder than the compressor at what I would estimate to be about 65-70 decibels. Not super-loud, but not whisper quiet, either.

Other than that, with the low energy use, low cost, extremely efficient dehumidifier function, great feature set, and most importantly, very impressive cooling ability, I would recommend this unit unconditionally. I love it!