My A/C is busted, waiting on a new one.
It is not so bad with a fan. As long as I don’t move. And douse myself with water while sitting in front of said fan.
I do not look forward to trying to sleep in a few hours.
Oh, man. I feel your pain. If possible hang a wet sheet between you and the fan. Is the fan in a window?
I sympathize. Our went out earlier this week, and it was an unpleasant two days before a second contractor was able to replace a busted capacitor. I have no idea how the South was settled before air conditioning. Our temp inside only got up to 86, but water wasn’t going to save you with this humidity.
Anyway, I’m sorry you’re going through this.
Meh. 88 isn’t that bad, unless it is Celcius.
I hope you get your new AC soon & meanwhile, thank goodness for the fan.
Finally got someone on the phone. It might be 2-3 weeks. They are blaming it on COVID and not having enough supply of ACs, and well I am sure that is true.
I will not melt.
Yeah, that sounds like BS. Does it have to be a new a/c? Can you fix the existing one? There’s absolutely no one else anywhere that can sell and install one?
Guess it depends on where you are, of course.
I spent a summer in a 3rd floor walk-up with windows that opened onto an alley. I achieved sleep by getting a tank top (the ribbed kind) damp, and putting it on, right after taking a cold shower and leaving my hair damp. Then I turned on two floor fans (my bed was a mattress on the floor), and setting them on low. The shirt took a long time to dry, and I got pretty blissfully to sleep with the cool air and the white noise. It actually felt so good I thought “I’ve got to remember this for if I ever have hot flashes or night sweats during menopause.”
I was a really hot summer, and so in August, when the days were hitting 100’F, so the nights were in the high 80s, I put bags of ice on top of puppy pads around the foot of my bed. I made the ice in my own freezer, didn’t buy it, and I had the puppy pads anyway, for putting under the litterbox, because I had wood floors.
I couldn’t afford a wall unit; they were more expensive in the late 1980s-- cheapest ones were $300 or so, nor the cost to install it, because I would have had to buy screens, and those accordion things that you put next to them, or buy boards and hammer them in place. Which the landlord didn’t care about. As long as he got the rent every month, he didn’t care who lived in the apartment, or what people did there. Anyway, the total cost of installing a unit in my ridiculously large windows would have been about $3-400 for the unit, and another $100 for installation, even as a DIY jerry-rig.
Thank gawd the summer I was pregnant, also a pretty hot one (baby born Oct. 10-- due Oct. 3), we finally had central air. I kept it on 68’F, and also had a floor fan blowing into whatever room I was in. DH wore sweatshirts and did not complain. The delivery room thermostat was at 60, and didn’t go lower.
But I digress. It might be too late. Rent-a-Centers, and other Rent-to-Own places have wall units. I don’t know what the states is of actually renting not to own during Covid-19, but they used to do a lot of Rent-NOT-to-Own with the students where I used to live. Did a thriving business in those 2x2x2 fridges and small microwaves with students in dorms, and wall units with subleasers.
Like I said, I don’t know how they clean a returned unit now, but you could explore renting a wall unit for the interim. They cost so little to run, that people I know with really large houses, and just a couple of people in them since their kids went to college, have wall units in the most used rooms, and use the central AC only when the kids and grandkids are visiting. Claim their power bills go from, $200 or so to cool to whole house, to less than $100 to cool the kitchen, living room, and their bedroom. Since you can now get units for just a little over $100, they pay for themselves in one summer.
If you could rent one for say, $35 for the 3 weeks you need it, and cool off your most used room, which is it isn’t your bedroom, then you possibly could position a fan between the door between the AC room and your bedroom, or just sleep in the AC room temporarily.
OT, but a friend of mine drove a cab, and had two wall units, so had her whole place nice and chilly at night. Most of the other drivers didn’t have AC, so she ran a literal flop house in the summer. She had two futons, one in her bedroom, and one in the living room. She charged other drivers $10 a night to sleep three to the futon, or $8 a night to sleep four, and $3 a piece to crash on the floor in their own sleeping bag. She had a cot she bought from Army/Navy surplus, and slept on it in the kitchen, which was off-limits to guests from midnight to 6am. In July and August, she cleaned up. She also charges $2 per shower, made them bring their own towels and soap, and put the showers on a 5 min. timer.
For breakfast, buttered toast was 25 cents a slice, coffee was 50 cents a cup if you brought you own cup, 75 cents with the cup, a piece of fruit was 50 cents, and a cheese stick was 75 cents.
Later, after the city passed a law that all rental units had to provide AC, her business dwindled. Pretty much, she just had the people who lived in trailer parks.
Still for a couple of years from mid-June through the first week of September, she could make over $100/night. That was more than she made in tips driving. She cut her driving days down to the minimum required to stay employed, which was 2, and just drove on Friday and Saturday, the big drunk tips night.
Proper little scam.
Back to your regular thread.
Try Blue Ice packs on the back of your neck while sitting near the fan.
~VOW
When I worked in a hot restaurant kitchen in the summertime, I would put a block of ice behind a fan and let it blow at me. It helped a lot. I always made sure to keep another block in the freezer ready to go (freezing water in big plastic containers) .
They really were expensive. That was my mental pricing baseline, so I was surprised when I bought one ca. 2010 and it was only $100 or so and worked great.
My AC is working just fine. It’s the damn vent hose I keep having problems with.
The windows in my house are all sliding ones, so I can’t use a window AC. I have a floor model AC that had a vent house that dumps the hot air outside through a window.
I have used several rolls of tape of different varieties, several different types of glue and sealant, two different replacement hoses, and various other add-ons. I think I’ve spent almost as much on the vent hose as I spent on the AC. And I still can’t get the damn vent hose to stay in place and work for more than a day or two without detaching itself and dumping all of the hot air inside the house. The damn thing has no moving parts. It’s just a hollow tube that air moves through. How can it keep breaking down?
I was at my local Lowe’s last week (buying a new vent hose) and they had a whole pallet of AC units on sale. So I don’t think there’s any national shortage going on.
Can you superglue the hose into place, wherever it’s detaching, and then use acetone to remove it? Which is a bit extreme, and will likely nuke your hose as well. Something like Loctite, and use a heat gun to soften the adhesive?
My air conditioner works, but I almost never use it (mostly because I don’t want the expense). When it gets really bad, I lean over the bathtub and pour a glass of water over my head. Instant relief.
It had to do with figuring out how to make the body out of plastic. Apparently temperature differentials cracked plastic until reasons– developing a specific polymer, probably. So AC window units were solid metal until about this century, long after almost everything wasn’t made out of metal anymore.
Also why they were so freaking heavy and hard to install.
Reading this thread with interest because much like the Marvelous M. Mabes my AC is busted. In Nebraska - it’s 92F outside this late afternoon, humid and with a noticeable waft of…shall we say…odoriferous agricultural bi-product. Fun times! I’ve got one window fan pulling fresh air into my office, two other window fans elsewhere in my small home exhausting stale air to the outside and another fan like THIS one on the floor under my desk. I’m just trying to stay cool and comfortable as possible while getting my chores done early in the day.
Unlike the OP, I have not even called the repair tech to look at my AC. I’m using the discomfort as incentive to save money and get my mortgage paid off. With luck, I’ll have the bank paid off by the first of August and I’ll get my AC repaired as reward to myself.
You’re going to regret getting me started on this.
The AC came with a plastic hose that kept tearing. So I bought a flexible metal vent hose to replace it. One problem with that was that it was crazy long - around twenty-five feet when fully extended - when all I need is about six feet. And if I just use the hose as is, it fully extends into a pile of coils which means it’s giving off heat for its full length. So I’ve compressed it down to a shorter length and wrapped it up with duct tape to keep it in this compressed length.
Moving on, there’s a little plastic rim that slides into the back of the AC. It has like a one inch lip on the outside. The sliding part actually works - which makes it unique in this whole set-up. But that one inch rim is not enough to keep the hose on.
The lip of the hose is not even. It’s essentially just a wire coil that stops with some metallic covering over the coil. So I used a whole bunch of duct tape to build up a better lip to the coil so I now have a decent edge to work with. I tried securing the hose to the rim with more tape but it wouldn’t stay attached. So I now have the hose glued to the rim with some plastic epoxy. I’ll see if that holds.
The other end is worse. There’s a panel that goes into the window. It doesn’t exactly fit the window but I’ve duct taped around the edges to get a sealed fit in the window. The bigger problem is that all of the panel has in it is a flat whole. I don’t know how the manufacturer thought you could attach a vent hose to a flat hole and make it stay in place. Was I supposed to put the hose next to the hole and then sprinkle it with magic pixie dust? If so, I lack the necessary supplies. Instead I used more duct tape to form a lip around this end of the hose (which was initially just like the other end) and then I used a bunch more duct tape to attach the lip of the hose to the hole in the panel. Right now, this is the weakest point in the whole assembly. The hose works itself loose from the panel and I have to patch it back together with more duct tape. I am trying to think of a more permanent solution. I am open to any advice people want to offer.
This is the short version only covering what I have in place now. I haven’t gone into some of the other things I’ve tried that turned out to not work at all and I’ve discarded.
I grew up in a house that had central air, but we weren’t allowed to run it because it was too expensive. The house was designed for A/C, so there was basically no cross-breeze anywhere.
To stay cool enough to sleep at night, we used to wet a hand towel and sleep with that on our backs, with a box fan blowing over us. On really hot nights, we would sleep on the front balcony (which was 1 story up, not at street level).
Back when I lived without air conditioning, I could make it bearable by putting box fans in the windows and creating a huge crossbreeze. It helped that I was on the ground floor and there was a covered walkway outside the front door and a lot of greenery providing shade.