Keeping Your Dwelling Cool in the Summer

Hi Ariel

Can’t afford central air or even a window-mounted unit? Maybe you do have AC, but are frugal and want to save your hard-earned dollars so that you can sport some more ink. Or maybe you are a tree-hugger and want to save the planet. Whatever your motivations are, below are some suggestions that will help you stay cool during the hot summer months.

Whether you get a house, a mobile home, or an apartment, look for one shaded by trees. I’m not going to get into the differences in conductive, convective, or radiant heat, but know that a shaded dwelling makes a huge difference. If you have a camper, park it in full sun one day and check the inside temperature. Then another day that is the same temperature, park it in the full shade of a tree, and, again, check the inside temperature. You won’t need a thermometer. This will give you ample evidence of how much a difference shade makes.

Another option is to get a basement apartment. Those are awesome! For the same cost (free!), you will not be able to recreate the cool, quiet comfort a basement apartment provides.

If you can’t find any of those, try for a place with a North East exposure. A South West exposure will be the hottest apartment by far because it gets the most sun. If you are stuck with a South West exposure, try to get one where the bedroom is not on the South West corner.

Using fans to circulate hot air should be the last option. The correct way to use the fan is to italexhaust hot air from your house. If you step outside your apartment and put your face in front of the fan, it will feel like an oven.

Some say to directly pull cold air in rather than exhaust hot air, but I’ve not been able to equally cool all the rooms in the house this way. Inevitably, some rooms will remain warmer than others. Exhausting hot air cools all of my room equally.

Place your fan in an open window. Take out the screen if necessary. (Be aware of bugs and animals that could get in.) Open the other windows. Using a fan that is meant to fit in a window is a convenient style, but a box fan can work just as well. As long as the fan is shrouded, it will work. Like a shrouded automobile fan, a shrouded house fan will be much more effective. In fact, if an automobile fan does not have a shroud, it will not cool your vehicle, causing the engine to overheat. Fans made for windows seal better and are usually more effective despite their often smaller size. Shrouds prevent eddies and the backward flow of air that inhibit the efficiency of the fan; you do not want air flow going any which way through gaps around your fan. The shroud also inhibits critters from infiltrating your home.

If you have a box fan, set it in the window as snugly as you can. Then using cardboard, seal the large gaps so that the only way air can move through the open window is through the fan. (Making stuff out of cardboard is fun!.) If you use tape, you will leave residue that will be hard to clean off, especially duct tape. Even painter’s tape will leave residue if left on for more than a couple of weeks.

If you have a large, stand-up fan, that will work, too, but you will not easily be able to build a shroud. Instead, utilize the cone of air that comes off the fan to seal the air flow. The outside part of the cone will act as a shroud. Instead of using all the movement of the air to exhaust hot air, part of the air is used to seal the edges to prevent any backward flow of air. This isn’t as efficient as a shroud, but still surprisingly effective. A large, strong fan with a properly placed cone of air will provide more air flow (and more noise) than a small, properly shrouded window-fan.

When I volunteered on the ambulance, a fellow volunteer, Mike, told me a story of how he had used a fan like I have described to you. He had exhausted smoke from a house fire by using a cone of air from a gas-powered fan they had on hand specifically for that purpose. The fan was strategically placed a few feet from an open door. It cleared the smoky air from the still smoking house amazingly fast. A short while later the house started getting smoky again and Mike went out to see if the fan had quit running. Turns out it was running fine, but another firefighter had moved the fan into a “better” position. Mike moved the fan back into the correct position and in seconds the house cleared up again.

Later on at the garage he took the fan out and showed me how to do it. Proper placement is crucial and is easy to do. Simply feel for edge of the cone of air by the window. If you get a chance, smoke up the room and experiment with differing fan positions. When you get it right, you will be amazed.

Ideally, the fan should be placed on the side of the house that is leeward of the prevailing winds. Don’t fight the wind if possible; the wind is your friend. At night the wind may die down, or it may change direction depending on where you live. If the wind dies down at night, the prevailing winds will be of little consideration.

Also consider which rooms you want cooled first. The open windows without fans will be drawing in cool air, replacing the hot air being exhausted. I like the bedrooms to cool down first so I can rest more comfortably. My kitchen is the last room to cool down. Also, exhausting the hot air when using the oven beats the pants off of trying to push out that hot air using a fan in another room.

If your apartment or house is by an alley, be aware of where the Dumpsters are located. The smell of your neighbor’s dirty diapers mixed with last weekend’s empty beer bottles on a 90-degree day will give you nightmares.

Noise is a consideration. You may want to operate the fan in a room away from the TV or your bedroom.

Keep the fan running all night. The wind will likely die down and the house will heat up again because of the heat energy (radiant heat) stored in the walls and the attic.

DO NOT use the fan during the heat of the day; that completely defeats the purpose of cooling your residence down!

Using multiple fans to both pull in and exhaust air is fine, but the one measly fan that I use to cool the house down works great. I could use two fans to get a jump on cooling the living room as I’m watching TV in the evening, but any more than that would be overkill.

Heat rises. Trying to suck hot air from the upstairs rooms down through floor level windows lacks efficiency. Work with the rising heat and place fans accordingly.

When you can, exhaust the air in the attic, even if the attic is sealed off from the rest of the house. Attics probably store the most heat energy, so a purpose built attic fan is a superb idea, but that is getting into a few dollars and some construction knowledge, which is getting away from the cheap, simple remedies that I want to offer.

Adjust the fans as necessary. If your bedroom is next to a Dumpster, you won’t want to pull cold air in through that room even if that is the shaded side of the house and the wind wants to blow the air in that way. You may have to suffer your bedroom being the last room to be cooled down.

Different areas have differing environments, so consider that as well. I’m basing my suggestions on the hot, dry days and cool, dry nights of Eastern Montana.

Safety is a big concern. Leaving your windows open at night could invite criminals. I am a man, so that is not as much of a concern for me. Yes, that is discriminatory, but I have a bona fide reason: Criminals prey on what they perceive as weak prey, aka women. Women are often considered weak whether they are actually weak or not. Maybe that is wrong for me to say, but criminals simply don’t jerk men around near as much they do women.

Many, if not most, crimes are committed by people you know, so if you are a woman, are ignorant of how to keep yourself safe, and have no reasonable way to protect yourself, your family and friends will know that and may use that against you. Keeping windows closed and locked, while a hot, muggy move, is also a smart, safe move.

Fortunately, I live in a safe place that allows windows to be left open safely no matter what sex the renter is. I have a dog that not only barks, she bites as well. I also have the ability to ventilate anyone sneaking in through one of my open, unsecured windows. If I didn’t have these things to my advantage (especially the dog), I’d stick with being hot and sticky instead of cool and dry.

Finally, when you get up in the morning, turn off the fan(s), close the windows (except for the one with the fan in it unless you don’t mind taking it in and out darn near every day), and close the curtains. Hopefully, the curtains are insulated. You want to keep the cooler air in as long as possible.

Stay cool, Sweetie!

Love You Oodles and Gobs,

Dad :)