Here is the situation. I live in a city in BC Canada which is classified as “semiarid”. Our average temperature in the sumer is around the low thirties to high twenties (celsius, I have no idea what that is in fahrenheit). And it is not uncommon to have a week of temperatures at a time in the high thirties.
Anyway, I do not have air conditioning in the half-duplex that I own. I am basically orientated exactly north and south, with my bedroom on the northern facing wall. I have a 4x4 foot sliding window (covered with cheap vinel blinds) in that wall and a standard size ceiling fan in the ceiling. I also have a in-ground basement where my furnace is located. The basement stays nice and cool during the summer.
I have been leaving the blinds closed and window open 24 hours a day, with the fan going counter-clockwise at medium speed. I have also been running my furnace fan 24/7. I find at night when it cools down, my room stays 5-7 degrees warmer than outside.
Here are some questions:
During the day, do I keep the window open or closed?
Should I keep the ceiling fan going 24/7?
Should the ceiling fan spin clockwise, or counter clockwise?
Dude put up like…some posters and some blacklights…then burn some incense…that’d make your bedroom REALLY cool…whoa.
In all seriousness, I’ve got my fan going counterclockwise, and it makes it nice and cool in here. Best thing to do is experiment with what works best for you.
I had an old boyfriend that used to put a bag of ice (in an aluminum or stainless steel bowl) in front of a floor fan. He positioned it toward his bed.
Living in Alabama (the Humidity Capital of the USA) this seemed to help immensely.
Oh yes…and my mother (back in the the 20’s and 30’s) used to wet her sheets with water before bedtime. Not drenched, but lightly sprinkled, and left a couple of windows open.
I’d freaking die down here without air conditioning. You completely have my sympathies, as I know these are really prehistoric remedies. But they do help.
Back when I was a kid, my mom never ran the A/C in the summer unless it was around 100 F. (Being Ohio, we didn’t run into that too much.) What I would do during the summer time in an attempt to keep myself cool was to open all the windows in my room at night, and then close them and the door during the daytime. That seemed to work.
alot of body heat passes through the back of the neck, the groin and the armpits. When you feel hot, just put an ice pack on 1-4 of these areas, probably the back of your neck for convenience reasons. that should help make you colder.
How well ventilated is your attic, and how well insulated is your ceiling ? Attics can get very hot in the summertime, and if you don’t have enough venting and insulation, your ceiling is heating up and acting like a radiator all night long. The ceiling fan is just distributing that heat into the rest of your room. An attic fan could virtually eliminate this problem for you within a few hours of sundown.
A window fan set to blow in cool night air would also help.
Insulate your ceiling with thermocol and tin. It worked rather nicely for me.
Another thing we used to do at the hostel (not sure if it’s feasible in your situation) was to pour water on the floor above us and on our floor. Water would evaporate in a short while leaving the room cool.
You want to exchange air between your bedroom and the outside only when it’s not warmer outside, so you probably want to leave your window and blinds open at night, closed during the day.
Ignoring the use of ice, the ceiling fan alone doesn’t remove heat from the room. It just circulates air. (In fact, the motor generates heat.) The two effects of the circulating air are (1) the pleasant breeze, and (2) incorporating that very warm air that’s risen to the ceiling into the air that goes outside, out the door into the hall, or drawn down to the basement. Both fan directions bring the warm air down (equally effectively at the same speed, I don’t know) but counter-clockwise creates the noticeable downward breeze in the centre of the room.
You should leave the furnace fan running as long as the air coming through the duct feels cool when you’re in the room. I would think that at night you’re getting lots of air exchange already and the effort would be mostly wasted. If the rest of your house doesn’t get as much air exchange at night then you might consider leaving it on 24/7 and maybe closing your bedroom vents to maximize the effect where it’s useful.
My advice is to install an attic fan and put a window fan in your br that you put on intake once the outside temperature goes below the temperature in the room. If possible, open the attic during the night so that it draws air from the whole house. I grew up in Philadelphia which is a lot worse than BC and we had a 40" attic fan (that’s 1 m) that cooled the whole house all night, every night. Trouble is that the ubiquity of A/C makes it hard to find these fans any more. For ecample, I have been unable to find a decent window fan and am still using a 24" fan that I bought at JC Penney more than 35 years ago. I try to take very good care of it (rarely run it at other than low speed, keep it clean and oiled) because it appears unreplaceable. I put it in a window not in the br and run it on exhaust all night, while we have what passes for a window fan these days on intake in our br. It works. I am not a fan (no pun intended) of ceiling fans since, as noted above, they only circulate the hot air, while generating their own heat.
If you are willing to drop some bling (about $450 USD), take a look at portable air conditioners. They run off of 120v, no cutting holes or anything, fairly efficient.
I have a goofy layout in my place. Most areas will stay cool throughout the summer using just the ceiling fan. My computer nook, however, gets hot. Really hot. Portable AC unit (also acts as a dehumidifier) did the trick nicely, with suprisingly little impact on my electric bill.