The central air conditioner at an east Las Vegas home was struggling to keep the house cool in the late-August heat.
It had become too hot inside to cook, so a woman living there with her husband, two children and an elderly relative ate takeout pizza at the kitchen table while workers installed portable air conditioners.
“It has been rough,” said Angel, who is pregnant and declined to give her last name.
Las Vegas AC Rentals was there with a fix — or at least a temporary one. The business rents out more than 140 portable AC units, providing temporary cooling for people facing potentially life-threatening heat in their own homes.
“I’ve lost about 30 pounds in a month from sweating while I install AC units,” owner Frankie Valenzuela said with a smile as he and another worker installed three units at the home.
A temporary lifeline in the heat
Valenzuela, a 29-year-old Las Vegas native, founded Las Vegas AC Rentals with his brother in 2020. The business has handled more than 800 jobs across the valley and increased its AC inventory more than twelvefold since its early days.
“I love helping people out and offering solutions to people,” Valenzuela said.
The business is largely based in Valenzuela’s east Las Vegas home garage, but equipment is also stationed around the valley to shorten delivery times. A team of six people helps handle deliveries and other work, including Valenzuela’s brother, sister and father.
For homeowners, portable air conditioners typically rent for about $25 a day per unit, according to Valenzuela. A typical rental lasts seven to 10 days, though customers can keep the units until their central air conditioner is repaired, he said, adding that the daily cost decreases the longer they rent and the more units they rent.
“You’re only going to spend one-third to a half of the cost of buying your own portable,” Valenzuela said.
Valenzuela said some callers initially balk at the rental price, only to call back later.
“They’re like, ‘Excuse my language. What? I’m not calling you back. That’s way too much,’” he said. “They’ll call me back like an hour or two later” because it costs about $1,300 to buy two portable AC units, which is typically what most homes need for adequate cooling.
From an idea to a business
Valenzuela got the idea for Las Vegas AC Rentals in the summer of 2020, shortly after graduating from UNLV with degrees in biology and business.
In June 2020, Frankie Valenzuela got a call from his grandparents after the air conditioner at their east Las Vegas home stopped working.
When Valenzuela arrived at their home to help, his grandparents were sweating as the temperature inside reached about 90 degrees.
“It was super hot,” Valenzuela said.
Valenzuela later took his grandfather to Sam’s Club, where he spent more than $2,000 on three portable AC units to cool the home while they waited for central AC repairs.
About three days later, the AC was working again. Valenzuela thought they should return the portable units, which had barely been used, but his grandfather disagreed.
“What if it happens again?” Valenzuela recalled his grandfather saying.
But that experience planted a seed for Valenzuela. After searching Google and various online marketplaces for AC rentals and finding few options, he saw an opportunity.
Valenzuela initially tested his idea online. He posted advertisements for portable AC rentals on Craigslist and OfferUp and said more than 50 people contacted him within about three hours.
Valenzuela said he paid $1,100 for a pallet of 11 portable units from a wholesaler clearing out his warehouse during the pandemic — far less than his grandfather had paid for just three units at retail. The lucky find helped launch the business, with Valenzuela and his brother handling about 25 jobs during the summer of 2020.
What’s next?
Six years later, Las Vegas AC Rentals sometimes handles more than that first summer’s workload in a single day. On one busy day in August, it delivered 28 units to about 14 homes as temperatures climbed well past 110 degrees.
The business began rapidly expanding in 2023 when property management companies started calling him to provide temporary cooling for tenants waiting for permanent AC repairs, Valenzuela said. He now works with more than 50 property management companies and about 14 HVAC companies.
Valenzuela said he wants to grow the inventory to about 250 units with five or six drivers in less than five years.
And within the next four months, Valenzuela plans to hire service technicians and begin offering permanent AC repairs.
“I have so many people that are like, ‘Hey, do you fix the units also?’ And I always tell them, ‘No, we just do portable,’” Valenzuela said.
Contact Lucas Hellberg at lhellberg@reviewjournal.com.
