Why is our new portable AC letting in smells?

Post date: 2025-06-27 11:49:09

We have three portable ACs. The new one is different from the other two and is letting in smells. Why? Can it be fixed or should just replace?

We have two of these, no smells from outside: Whynter

We just added one of these: Hisense

We are using two hoses on all three ACs.

The new one lets in cigarette smoke, weed smoke, burning garbage, other garbage smells, perfumed dryer exhaust, strong bleachy cleaning product fumes, idling commercial truck fumes, etc from outside despite us taping the shit out of every possible crack around the window.

It's almost like it's concentrating the smells and forcing them inside more than if the window were simply left open -- I've been woken from a dead sleep multiple times per 24 hours by the horrific smells invading the bedroom, whereas when I used to just leave the window open that would only happen about once a week or so.

What's the difference between the two models of ACs that's causing this and can it be fixed? I don't understand how these things work.

I'm strongly leaning towards just returning the fucking thing to Costco and ordering another one of the ones that works from Amazon but that would require undoing and redoing the hours of work sealing the window and thus I'm hoping there's an easy fix that doesn't require that.

(The way our apartment is laid out requires separate portable AC units in each of the three largest rooms because they are connected by a long narrow hallway and everything we've tried to promote air ciculation between the rooms has been inadequate. Like we can have two ACs running full blast in two of the the rooms and fans running throughout the apartment and the third room will still be 30+ degrees hotter than the rest of the apartment. Last year with only two ACs we had to give up using one room during the summer. We live on the top floor with southern facing windows so it's consistly 20+ degrees hotter inside than outside, which is nice in the winter but not so much the rest of the year.)

Please click Here to read the full story.