Can you use a window air conditioner if you just set it on a table?

Answer 1

the hot exhaust will just come out the other side No, that won't do any good at all. An air conditioner is technically a "heat pump", meaning that heat energy is transported FROM the coils inside the house TO the coils outside the house. There is a percentage of efficiency loss that turns to heat, meaning that the overall temperature in a room will raise if it just runs sitting ont the kitchen table. When the heat is pumped through the coils of the air conditioner one side gets hot and the other gets cold. Inside air is blown across the cold coils, cooling off the house. In the process the cold coils warm up. Then the freon in the coils is compressed, also condensing the volume of the heat and making the temperature go up. The heated, compressed freon then passes through the coils OUTSIDE the house where outside air is blown across the coils which cools the outside coils. Then the freon is allowed to expand and drop in pressure which evaporates the freon into a gas again and the temperature drops by 40 degrees or more. Without having a place for the heat to be exhausted, the air conditioner just won't work. Heat MUST go outside.