The Lighthouse 1893 in the summer gets extremely overheated having hundreds of kids in the building and a lot of sunlight entering the rooms. Air conditioning is the best solution to cooling down the building but complications arise with what type of air conditioners to use. Central air conditioning is almost completely out of the question due to how expensive the installation of the entire system would be and it would not be the most cost efficient with not all rooms always needing to be cooled. Individual units in the room is the least expensive and most efficient method for Lighthouse 1893 to cool the building.
Solution
The two options of individual units are in window units, which they already have some of, and all interior portable units that vent through the window. The main problem with normal window units is the chance of them being pushed in from the outside in order to break into the building. The windows in the building have metal grates on the outside to prevent the windows being broken through and putting an air conditioner window unit requires removing part of the metal grate. The all interior portable units however do not affect the outside of the window so the metal grate remains in tact. Also these units are much easier to move from window to window along with storage in the winter which contains heat in the winter.
Cost
Portable units have several different sizes depending on the size of the room and what the purpose of those rooms are. According to the information we gathered observing the building ourselves we determined ten air conditioning units would be necessary. Two of these units would be the largest type that cool a very large area and the other eight are medium sized for the average room size. The price of a high end large units is $600 while the price of a medium unit is between $350 to $450. For all ten units the price would be around $4,500.
