Once aired, AC claim’s a stretch

By Brendan Buhler

Saturday, July 26, 2008 | 2 a.m.

The ad in Monday’s paper makes an intriguing claim that you can cool your house “with less electricity than a hand held hair dryer uses.”

Wow, can you?

The answer is no, yes and kind of, because the claim is misleading.

First, and you may be aware of this, a hair dryer and an air conditioner are different machines. You use them differently even though each, in its own way, will dry hair. Even the most vain person would have a hard time running a hair dryer for 10 hours a day, which Nevada Power says is how long an average Las Vegan runs his air conditioner during the summer. With hair dryers it’s more like 10 minutes, and that’s for the exceptionally fluffy. It’s not enough electricity for most people to notice on their monthly bills, maybe 60 cents a month.

So, in this sense, there is absolutely no way you are going to cool a single-family home in Las Vegas for what you spend to run your hair dryer.

But the ad is conveniently ambiguous by not making clear how we’d measure the two appliances side by side.

To give the ad the most generous possible reading, we can look not at total electrical consumption but at the rate of consumption. Looking at the rate, it’s possible to compare a hair dryer with an air conditioner. Because, while it is on, a hair dryer uses a lot of power.

How much? Depends. Some use 1,000 watts per hour, some use 3,000. The U.S. Energy Department says a typical hair dryer uses between 1,200 and 1,875 watts per hour.

So what hair dryer is the ad talking about? We called Richie Drew, a manager at the company behind the ad, One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating.

Drew said it was hair dryers in general and that, “I know I’ve seen a 2,400-watt hair dryer.”

Let’s go with that, to start.

If we’re talking about the air conditioner for an average single-family home, a unit with 3.5 tons of cooling power, then, yes, there are air conditioners that draw power at a lower rate than Drew’s 2,400-watt hair dryer.

But most people don’t use monster hair dryers. A more typical hair dryer would use, say, 1,500 watts per hour.

No average-sized air conditioner draws that little power.

Now, if you’re talking about a smaller than average air conditioner, then, yes, you can find one that draws that little power.

To sum up: The claim in One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating’s ad can be true, under certain conditions.

First, you have to ignore how much you use a hair dryer compared with how much you use an air conditioner. And second, you need to be talking about a big hair dryer or a small air conditioner.