What type of air conditioner are you using at your house or your cabin? Looking for info on either type of set up thanks in advance.

For years used small, 5 - 6000 btu window AC's, 2 would usually keep my small house if not cold, comfortable...finally upgraded to central air as my wife has MS and the hot weather is hard on her...
I guess the mini splits are pretty popular now but I have no knowledge of them...

Down side of window units is they're kinda loud, but you get used to it.

Most mini splits are loud too. Motel rooms are mostly all loud mini splits.

I have an old Kenmore window unit. Got to eat your Wheaties to put the thing in. It's about twice as heavy as modern ones. Noisy too. But that sucker will blow some ice cold air. This is only my 3rd year with a.c. My old un-insulated farm house is boiling hot upstairs. We close the windows and upstairs door and sleep downstairs on those hot/humid nights

I'm remodeling our house right now and going with inverter type heat pump mini splits. They allow me to zone the house any way I want. I can cool the bedrooms at night, keep them on very low to just maintain humidity during the day and do the opposite with kitchen, dining room, and living room.

The inverter lets the compressor and fans vary speeds so they can run at very low cooling capacity when needed and ramp up when needed. This allows perfect humidity control. Oversized units always have humidity issues because they cool the air fast enough that there isn't time to remove the humidity. Being infinitely variable solves that. Exactly the cooling capacity for the demand right now.

They can also heat down to zero degrees outside without needing electric heat strip.

And, I can install them myself. I used to work as an HVAC tech 30 years ago but haven't really done any HVAC work in a long, long time. These new units come pre-charged with refrigerant. Hang them, wire them, run the lineset from the outside unit to the inside unit, tighten the fittings, and open the valves.

I can also get them with multiple inside units that operate from a single outside unit. I'm doing two bedrooms on one condenser and the living room / dining room on another.

I've been considering one of the DIY mini-split kits for my wood shop.

I didn't know they made them for a whole house set-up.

Those are p-tac units & they're noisy since the compressor is all one unit like a window or portable. Good minis especially are whisper quiet since the condenser is outside & the evaporater is separated by a line set.

My hunting camp has three mobile homes. They are at least 40 years old. There is a mini split for each. One trailer has three air handlers, the others have two. Ours are whisper quiet. Much more economical than window units which never worked as well as the mini splits. I am sold. Remote controls are confusing to me. Too many features.

It takes multiple units to do a whole house
And if you're thinking about using it for heat in the shed
They don't do so well below 20 degrees
Just my experience

Geothermal here. Probably not a common method in Alaska....

I am thinking about using it for heat. I'm currently using a window AC to cool and a blue flame LP heater in winter. My thought was to combine both functions in one unit. I keep it about 55 in he winter and 75 in the summer. Do you think a 12,000 BTU unit would do that. I guess I could use supplemental heat in very cold weather. I really just need it to stay above freezing so glue-ups cure and paints don't freeze.

One condenser can serve several indoor evaporates through different linesets. Mitsubishi even tees linestes to different evaporaters from a single condenser or uses multi zone indoor branch boxes. Newer units are rated to well below zero with low ambient kits, your sq. footage, insulation, windows, etc would need to be calculated to se if 12K was adequate.

Lugnut, I would look for a manufacturer your interested in and go to their temp ratings
And then go to their comments section

I only recommend them for cool air, I think we just get to cold for them to work properly when the temperature drops in January February

A customer I'm doing a remodel at showed me a mini-split proposal he had received today.

Part of it read; Option #1 and #2 would be the two hyper heat 2-1 systems. These systems are getting 100% of their heating capacity at 5 degrees.

Option #3 would be for installing the standard heat 2-1 systems. They have the same cooling capacity as the hyper heats systems; they achieve around 60% of their heating capacity at 17 degrees.

So maybe the newer systems are heat more efficiently at lower temps? I don't know but will be keeping tabs on whatever system he installs.

Anyone use the stand up room type units portable ones how do they work and how’s the noise.

The customer where I'm working has one in an upstairs bedroom. It works okay, about the same noise as a window unit maybe a little less. It still has to be ducted outside. So you have that big hose and the unit itself taking up floor space.

I'd go with a window unit before one of those floor units.

We have used a bunch of them at work when an ac unit goes down until we can fix it. Loud and in the way.

I have one of these in the sewing room

and I bought another for my kids in MKE for their apartment.

first one is fine at about 6 years , the second one was just last month.

https://www.fleetfarm.com/detail/perfect-aire-10-000-btu-window-air-conditioner/0000000205141?bc=11434|11695|11696|11699

Home owner service on my condenser
is coming up on my chore list.
Real summer this year.

I have a small window AC that sits on the floor waiting to go int he window, but I always use the whole house window fan instead. It cools off so much at night, I frequently have to shut it off.