Our tools

Simple tools to help you pick the right appliance, without the technical jargon.

How much does your cool box or fridge really use?

Pick an appliance type, a capacity, an outside temperature... and get a realistic consumption range, converted into an electricity cost.

What air conditioner power do you need?

Enter your room's size, ceiling height, insulation, sun exposure and number of occupants, and get a recommended power range, with matching air conditioners from our selection.

How much does your air conditioner cost to run?

Pick a model or enter its power draw, your hours of use and the heat intensity, and get a realistic cost range, with a comparison against a fan.

Before buying an air conditioner or trying to work out what an electric cool box costs to run, it's tempting to rely on the figures printed by manufacturers, which are often optimistic and measured under ideal conditions. Our tools take a different approach: a realistic range based on a simple physical model, rather than a single figure that would hide how much real-world use actually varies.

The fridge / cool box calculator works out what an appliance really consumes over 24 hours, based on its capacity, the ambient temperature, airflow and how many times a day it's opened, converted into an electricity cost per day and per month. The air conditioning power calculator works out the recommended power (in BTU/h and kW) for a given room, from its floor area, insulation, sun exposure and number of occupants, with an extra margin based on how intense summer heat is in your city. The air conditioning running cost calculator builds on that by estimating what an air conditioner actually costs to run, hours of use and season length included, with a direct comparison against a simple fan.

Every result is deliberately given as a range (minimum to maximum), never a single figure that would suggest a false sense of precision. These sizing rules, close to the ones used by professionals, remain an order of magnitude to guide a purchase: they do not replace a proper room-by-room heat-load survey carried out by an installer. More tools will be added to this page over time, following the same principle of simplicity and honest results.