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I moved into an apartment with a loud (and somewhat not so cooling) PTAC in-wall AC unit. Each room has its own, a total of 3. The land lord is super cheap and only replaced the 8+ year old unit in the bedroom. That bedroom unit is relatively quiet and very efficiently cooling the room. The living room one is loud and does not cool so well.
What can I do to reduce the noise?
It is possible the coils are full of dirt on the outside coil. They can be hosed down. Don’t use high pressure water that will fold the fins over and make it worse. Also when flushing make sure the water is coming out the drain. I put several gallons of water on my sister-in-law's floor cleaning her window type unit, but it worked better after that (or she was so hot from mopping just the fan felt cool). Also verify the inside filter is clean and dust free.
Turn it off (I'm not trying to be funny). There's little you can do to quiet it down. If you cover it up to muffle the sound, you'll reduce the efficiency even more. You'd be better off running your more quiet, better AC unit and getting a small floor fan to spread the air into your living room. It would be ashame if the old, inefficient unit developed a serious malfunction and had to be replaced.
