Tips for keeping an apartment cool

In My Humble Opinion
1

I live on the 10th floor of an old apartment building in Chicago.

Which is fine, except that it is getting to be really hot and humid around here. I have no air conditioner, and don’t want to buy one just for the 2.5 months I’m going to remain in the city. But even with fans blowing out the windows and shades drawn all day, the apartment feels awful and sticky all the time. I can’t get work done here if just being alive entails sweatiness and lethargy!

Does anyone have tips for keeping the apartment (or myself) cooler?

(Yes, I know people have lived without air conditioning for the greater part of the human race’s existence; however, I’m used to it and have never really had to develop coping strategies.)

2

Try hanging wet sheets up, when they dry they cool off the surrounding air or something like that.

When i hang up my laundry outside its the cool place to be according to my kids who hunker down in the middle next to the clothes pole.

3

Here’s what we do:

Use the early morning hours as much as possible for working.

Try to be out during the worst hours. We do a lot of picnic dinners.

Have the window fans facing in during cooler hours.

Sip iced drinks pretty much continuously.

Take a cool bath (not a shower) before bed and any other time it gets to be too much.

Avoid cooking as much as possible. Take advantage of the microwave and crockpot, if you have one.

4

You can get a window fan and close all the doors in the room. The window fan will suck cool outside air in from other windows and give you a nice breeze. That’s how I survived for two years. Now, I’ve broken down and gotten an air conditioner.

5

Been there. The above advice works. In addition, if you are single, date someone who has air conditioning. Also, walk around naked.

6

Sit in front of a fan and spritz yourself with water.

7

I haven’t found any workable solutions myself. Humidity is unbearable. The heat is making me incredibly nauseated. If I had the option of an air conditioner, I’d be all over it, but it’s not feasible. I have crank out windows in my apartment and I do not have permission to replace the glass even temporarily, and a standalone (no window required) unit is about $1000 here. Now, if only I could live somewhere with only the two best seasons - Fall and Spring.

8

How much sunlight do the shades block? I used to hang blankets to keep it really dark, and that seemed to help.

9

I’ve read that you’ll feel as warm or as cool as your hands and feet.
So have you tried putting your feet in a footbath of cold water while you work? Or holding your wrists occasionally under cold running water?

10

The poor mans airco: spritz your face and upper body with water and then drive around with all carwindows open.

11

Well, if I wanted to be in a car all day, I could just use the car’s air conditioner. Unfortunately, I’m going to be writing a thesis all summer and am tied to my computer.

I’ll try the rest of these, though–thanks for the suggestions!

(If only there were a way to kill the humidity. But alas.)

12

How about a dehumidifier? I’ve seen them as cheap as $100. I’ve never tried one so I don’t know if they have some drawback such as warm exhaust air.

13

It might work if I could keep the windows closed, but as it is I’m pretty sure the outdoors would just have more to throw at me.

14

Dehumidifiers are basically air conditioners that don’t have the hot coils outside. The cool coils condense the water from the air, which drips into a reservoir. They use a lot of energy and generate a lot of heat.

I would set up one powerful window fan at one end of the apartment, blowing out (or in, your choice), and open one window on the other end of the apartment. That will set up a draft straight through, rather than have air circulating willy nilly. If you have a bunch of fans all blowing in, where does the air that’s already inside go?

15

Blackout blinds.

Or buy a used AC.

16

It is very hot currently in Western Pennsylvania. As I was tossing and turning last night, trying to fall asleep in my hot apartment, I thought of this thread. I then remembered how much things improved last year when I bought two window fans. The fans that were stored away in my spare room. The fans that I then placed in the windows allowing me to fall asleep.

17

Celing fans do wonders and are not expensive or difficult to install.

18

We bought some black out shades last year, and they’re hung in the south and west windows (we’re part of a semi-detached, so we don’t have east windows). It’s amazing the amount of heat they filter. Until that point, we used alumunium foil on the windows. (Yes, that’s tacky, however, it works, and it was cheap.)

We also use box fans in the windows to pull in the cooler night/early morning air. Once the house has cooled off (it doesn’t take long), we shut the windows/blinds. It’s at least 10-20 degrees cooler in the house than it is outside.

No cooking inside. We eat lots of salads, fruit and food cooked outside on the grill.

If it gets unbearable (and we don’t want to hang out in the basement, which never gets past 75 degrees), then we head out to the lake, or to a movie for the better part of the afternoon. This year, we also have season’s passes to a local amusement park, which has a neat selection of water rides.

19

Zebra: Ceiling fans are great, but I’m not staying in the apartment past the middle of August, so I really don’t want to go to the bother of installing one–especially as my electrical DIY knowledge would fit in a thimble with room to spare.

In general, I’m wary of anything permanent, or even theoretically transportable options like black-out shades–in the first place, on a grad student’s budget almost anything is a lot of money; more importantly, none of this stuff is going to see any use once I move as I’ll have central AC paid for by someone else.

It looks like strategic use of fans and iced beverages is my best bet, and it seems to be working okay.

20

IANAElectrician and I’ve put in plenty of celing fans. They are really easy, especially if it doesn’t have a light.

I only shocked myself off the ladder one time and hey it got a huge laugh. But if you do have windows on either end of the place, two good box fans will help a lot, especially at night when it cools off outside. If it’s really hot outside, I’d go work in a library.