Outside of air conditioners are there any clever tricks to give a little cooling boost? I’m not above opening a freezer and putting a fan in front of it, but I start sweating profusely at any temperature above 78 degrees. I always run hot so any ideas would be appreciated. Air conditioners only do so much. A friend told me to put a bag of ice on a towel behind a fan, it works oddly well but I’m just wondering if there are any other clever ideas out there, or methods that actually work too.
Putting a fan in front of a freezer will only work in the very short term. The fan generates heat as does the freezer heat exchanger. There is an old schoolboy riddle that asks how long a fridge left open would take to cool a room down.
The same applies to the ice - fine until the ice melts, which I am sure you have found, happens quite fast. It used to be possible to buy large blocks of ice, but now everyone has a freezer, I suspect that doesn’t happen these days.
You will feel cooler if you put a wet towel or similar round your neck. I also find that if I get very hot and sweaty, running cold water over my wrists has a big impact,
Nothing is going to work as well as air conditioning does to cool your space. The trick is to keep the cool inside. Lined curtains that cover the windows with 2 or 3 inches overlap on all sides. Keep your vents clean (won’t make it cooler, but keeps cooling cheaper). Using non-heat producing lights. Eat food that doesn’t require a lot of heating. A crock pot doesn’t heat up your space like a frying pan does.
Fans don’t cool the air. Fans cool what they blow on. Sitting with a refrigerator open isn’'t good for your fridge or your bill.
How is your humidity? If it is low enough, a mist of water in the air will evaporate and suck a lot of heat out the atmosphere. They use this technique a lot in places like Arizona.
The key is that you don’t actually want to cool down the apartment; you want to cool down you. So you could, for instance, make ice in your freezer, wrap the ice in a towel, and wrap the towel around your neck or stuff it down your shirt. On net, the extra work the freezer needs to do to make the extra ice will heat up your apartment, but you needn’t care about that, since it’s still cooling you down.
And for a very simple solution, on very hot days, I just pour a cup of water over my head (leaning over the bathtub when I do this, so I don’t make a mess). When it dries, if necessary, repeat. Yes, I’ll drip a bit, but who cares? It’s just water.
DIY air conditioner with stuff from your home store.
With a big enough air conditioner, your apartment will be frozen solid. Is that enough?
Go to a dark and heavily air conditioned bar and drink until the sun goes down.
I have to ask
If you AC cant bring the temp below 78 degrees, is something wrong with it?
Now for a simple trick:
Foil (shiny side out) on windows - esp South-facing ones in N. America
Also great for we nocturnals.
Thanks for the ideas! I should’ve worded it better, but I was hot when writing it and had to get out to the car (a/c in there is great lol) The A/C works fine, it just has to play catch up sometimes with the heat if I leave it off too long, and was looking for quick boosting ideas to help it cool off my place faster. I would’ve gotten a bigger A/C if the windows permitted the size, the size of them and performance are linked so I’m S.O.L. and those in-unit (portable) air conditioners just suck. I retrotfitted this apartment if that makes sense, in an older building(house) without central HVAC so that’s out too. I’m probably going to go with the window foil and towels to cool myself off. I do have a south facing window. The cold water on the wrists makes great sense, I’m an idiot for not thinking of that, cool off the blood.
Thanks again, any other cooling off tips are welcome, like that D.I.Y. a/c unit out of a cooler, thats awesome.
At some Point, it’s not just a question of “bigger AC = cooler air”. You Need insulation so that the cool air is not simply replaced by new hot air from outside - but usually renters in Appartements can’t do anything about that.
You also Need dry air if you want to use Evaporation, so Arizona works better than NY to start with. (Unless you put a de-humidifier first, then use normal AC. But then you have two big Units, with engines which produce waste heat… And you Need to seal all your Windows so new humid air doesn’t enter).
If your place is facing south, the sun shining inside will heat up the air anyway, so that’s why reflective substances (foil, jalousies) on the Windows are helpful - but again, as renter, you might not be allowed to Change anything.
You also can’t Change the walls of the building itself, so you can’t use the really innovative technical Solutions. I assume you also can’t plant a tree to use the shade.
Take a vacation to elsewhere?