Arctic King WWK-05CM5 5,000 BTU Air Conditioner | Revisit on a Warmer Day

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Hello viewers, we're back again with the pile of curved air conditioners.

[00:00:06]And today we're going to be revisiting the Arctic Queen WWK-05CM5 air conditioner.

[00:00:21]It is now in range.

[00:00:23]I think there is something very busted about that thermostat because it's it's about 85 out right now and that's fairly reasonable. That seems about right to be cutting off at the end.

[00:00:41]Seems to have a fairly reasonable um range or sweep to it.

[00:00:48]But uh earlier today or no, this was a couple days ago. It was I had it out here in the sun and the I mean the thing was so hot you could barely touch the outside of the case cuz it was sitting in the sun and it wasn't clicking on until like here.

[00:01:05]Now it seems reasonable. So I don't know what's going on with the thermostat, but at least now we can find out if the thing works.

[00:01:14]And then if it works, then we'll go further and see if we can replace the thermostat.

[00:01:25]Okay, so this one has the um the Ritchie Precision compressor and put this on with the magnet. I probably wish I hadn't have done that for this video.

[00:01:40]I paused the video for a second while I put this back on.

[00:01:43]Okay.

[00:01:45]Now we'll start with the fan again.

[00:01:52]It sounds uh it sounds quieter now.

[00:01:57]Doesn't have that that whine to it that it did last time.

[00:02:03]Hm.

[00:02:06]Probably should put the windscreen on this microphone too. I'm really failing with the um recording setup here today.

[00:02:14]You know, I always say record everything all the time cuz you never know what's going to happen.

[00:02:18]Within about 15 seconds of shutting off the camera, I fell up the stairs and that wasn't even on the video.

[00:02:24]All right, I'm going to put the second microphone over here. No, I'll put it over here cuz this is where the compressor resides.

[00:02:32]And let's start it up.

[00:02:40]Yeah, I don't know why the fan sounds totally normal now.

[00:02:44]Someone suggested that the capacitor could be drifting. That's a possibility.

[00:02:47]We can check that.

[00:03:17]Your guess.

[00:03:21]That's a nice quiet compressor. Much better than the GMCC compressors that a lot of these have nowadays.

[00:03:31]That's very quiet.

[00:03:38]That's very respectable.

[00:03:42]Hardly any vibration.

[00:03:49]Coming out cold.

[00:03:54]So this one there's something goofy going on with the thermostat, but that's a couple dollar part. Certainly doesn't warrant throwing a machine out over that.

[00:04:07]And the capillary tubes are nicely tied up.

[00:04:12]For whatever it's worth, this seems reasonably well built.

[00:04:18]Runs very quiet and smooth.

[00:04:25]Oh, I should have got the um I'm going to get it.

[00:04:31]I'm going to get the Kill A Watt Live meter um to see how much power it draws cuz it has a very high efficiency rating on it which is uh actually suspiciously high.

[00:04:46]So let's see if um it's actually as good as it claims.

[00:04:56]Mowed the grass for the first time today.

[00:05:00]You got some leaves on the trees. So it's going to be a few more uh need a few more days to fully pop out, but it's starting to be some hints of green out there.

[00:05:11]Very nice.

[00:05:13]80-something degrees today is beautiful.

[00:05:16]All right, let's unplug this um Kill A Watt meter here.

[00:05:27]Put it to watts.

[00:05:30]And then here we go.

[00:05:35]And then the fan sounds perfectly normal now.

[00:05:38]It does sound only 53 uh 51 watts for the fan. That's not bad.

[00:05:45]Let's push it to cool.

[00:05:49]Wow, that starts up like nothing.

[00:05:52]Huh.

[00:06:00]This is much quieter than the other Arctic Queen one that I have.

[00:06:06]But it's actually getting enough air flow through it.

[00:06:12]Yeah, this is much more reasonable.

[00:06:19]It's not freezing cold, but it's as cool as I would expect for 85 going in.

[00:06:30]It wouldn't even look half that bad.

[00:06:39]See how much power we're taking here.

[00:06:43]397 watts.

[00:06:47]3.39 amps.

[00:06:50]That is pretty efficient.

[00:06:53]Power factor 99.

[00:06:56]Yeah, that's not bad.

[00:07:01]There's some good heat coming out of there.

[00:07:04]I just can't believe how quiet this is.

[00:07:06]These units are notoriously very loud.

[00:07:09]That is a very, very quiet compressor.

[00:07:11]Now granted we're testing it outside in the open.

[00:07:14]Things do appear quieter outside than they do inside, but even outside these things seem kind of noisy and that's not bad at all.

[00:07:26]Yeah, the fan gets kind of noisy on high.

[00:07:31]But it's not that bad on low.

[00:07:35]Huh.

[00:07:37]What do you know?

[00:07:45]3.6 amps and this is not an unreasonable test. It's 85 out.

[00:07:50]Certainly the air conditioners are running higher temperatures than that, but like we're testing it on a 55-degree day like we did in the other ones.

[00:08:04]Now this is this is what I'm talking about when I say and you have these old shaded pole motor box fans pulling three-something amps on high you can run an air conditioner for a little bit more and get more comfort out of it. It just doesn't make any sense to run those in this part of the country in this day and age when the air uh the electricity is expensive as it is.

[00:08:32]You can even run two uh Lakewood 223s for this amount of uh power.

[00:08:47]Yeah, very, very efficient.

[00:08:51]And for whatever it's worth this is from 2014. So this might have been summer 2015. So this this has been working for just over a decade now.

[00:09:08]And there's just some kind of calibration issue with the thermostat which is likely a couple turns of a screwdriver to change the um adjustment screw.

[00:09:28]3.9. So that's going up a little bit now.

[00:09:31]But not bad.

[00:09:35]Is it ugly? Yes.

[00:09:39]Will it last 50 years? Probably not.

[00:09:43]Would I rather a vintage unit?

[00:09:44]Absolutely.

[00:09:47]But this is not something that should be thrown out.

[00:09:50]It's still perfectly good.

[00:09:52]I would use this in the spring and the fall when you just need a little bit of dehumidification.

[00:09:57]You know, put this in in like the kitchen window, let it run.

[00:10:01]Dehumidify the entire house for not much power.

[00:10:05]Reasonably quiet.

[00:10:07]There's just nothing wrong with it. It's not my preference in equipment, but there's nothing wrong with it.

[00:10:18]It really sounds pretty nice actually for what this is.

[00:10:22]I'm pleasantly surprised.

[00:10:25]Is it going back sweaty yet?

[00:10:28]Not yet, but it should be getting there soon.

[00:10:33]It's not humid today, so it might be a while.

[00:10:39]Come on, zoom in.

[00:10:41]Oh.

[00:10:42]All right, is that some water on there?

[00:10:44]Yeah, it is.

[00:10:45]It is starting to sweat.

[00:10:48]So, we're good. This is working properly.

[00:10:52]Nothing wrong with it besides maybe a thermostat calibration issue.

[00:10:58]So, let's see where it clicks off now.

[00:11:01]Or maybe it was thrown out just because of this, I don't know. That's a lot of dust on there.

[00:11:19]Yeah, it's a it's annoyingly loud on high.

[00:11:22]But, I think it's tolerable on low.

[00:11:27]Much of the fan noise kind of goes away on low.

[00:11:30]And it is good and cold. It's as cold as it should be.

[00:11:34]So, let's see where this clicks off now.

[00:11:37]Okay, see there is definitely something wrong here because it was clicking off over here before, now it's clicking off over here.

[00:11:44]I bet if we let it run, it would eventually go back to there and not work anymore. So, what possibly the thermostat is just too close to the coil.

[00:11:54]And maybe with all that dust on there, the air flow reduced enough to the point where it was short cycling.

[00:12:01]Maybe the thermostat's busted, I don't know.

[00:12:05]But, uh the cooling system is definitely fine.

[00:12:09]It's a usable piece of equipment and it should not go to waste. It'll be fixed.

[00:12:15]Just some kind of thermostat problem.

[00:12:28]Now, look how wide click.

[00:12:35]Click. It's much wider now, the range.

[00:12:38]So, maybe the thermostat's just totally warped up, I don't know.

[00:12:42]Look into it more some other time.

[00:12:44]For now, we will put this in the storage just with a note that it needs a new thermostat.

[00:12:52]Quite frankly, if I was to use it, we'll just jump that out. I don't need it.