but.... bbut..... i always position it so it blows air straight onto my face!

Um....I've been doing this for years..... that's why they make those square window box fans, no? In a pinch, running your bathroom exhaust will do the same thing.

They used to make huge metal fans that were permanently attached in lots of kitchen windows in Baltimore (I'm sure lots of other places, too) back in the olden days. My grandparents had one...the blades of that thing could take an arm off!!

Yes, I grew up with this (a boomer) - but there's a whole generation of folks who grew up with central air on all the time and never learned how fans work, who may need to learn now.

Another great trick; get your feet cold. Stick them in a pan of very cold water for a minute or so. It makes your whole body feel cool!

My trick is to keep a window or oscillating fan on most of the time when it is hot. The common advice is to not waste electricity on a fan in an unoccupied room, but my experience runs counter to that. The still air and heat seem to get "stuck" in rooms that don't have excellent cross ventilation and they take a LONNNGGG time to cool down after a few hours of heating up. If the air has been kept moving all along the rooms feel comfortable pretty quickly once the sun is down.

Also, beef up your window coverings on the side that gets afternoon sun. Since we don't stay hot for long in my area, I just drape a doubled sheet over the curtain rod where normally we have sheer curtains. If you have a long hot summer you might like to do something more attractive.

The house I grew up in had an attic fan, and I don't have the words to say how much I miss it. It was insanely loud, but with it running and the windows open the air flow was amazing. As a kid I had so much fun playing with the air pressure, getting doors to slam shut all on their own. Why don't new houses have these anymore?

During the day, when you're not home, have a fan in the window blowing outwards. When you return home in the late afternoon or evening, turn the fan to blow inwards. It's an old trick. I've heard it called Cajun or hillbilly air conditioning, depending on what part of the south you're in.

We usually have one on the shady side of the house sucking in cooler air and another hanging in a window blowing out the hot air and it really makes a difference!

Ummmmm, so I thought this would be something helpful. That's just common sense :| ?

Doesn't work if you live in a 434 sq foot apartment that has only three windows on one wall. There is no cool air to draw in from anywhere else, you're just circulating the hot air already in the apartment.

@mkhey

It was helpful to me :), I didn´t know.

Emilyryz, a few ideas. Can you use two fans in the two windows farthest apart, one blowing in and one blowing out? If you don't have a ceiling fan, it works pretty well to use the kind of fan headlinging this article and pointing it straight up to create a cycle of moving air. Any bathroom venting or window that would help? Also, make full use of blinds to shade the rooms.

I used to have a roomie in the days of third floor under a flat roof and no air conditioning who would run a tub of cool water, take a short soak, pat dryish and then sit in the air current. It really did help.

You might also experiment with solar film or shades if a small AC is not an option.

Good luck surviving the summer!

True, this is "only common sense," but it's necessary to counteract industry programming that most people are subject to. I believe it was in the late 50's or early 60's, GE (mainly) convinced people that anything other than A/C was not only ineffective but laughable, even shameful. Hence terms like "hillbilly A/C."

A boyfriend of mine in the 70's, an artist, lived in a converted workshop in LA, just a big rectangle. He put a sprinkler hose along the roof's ridgeline and would turn it on for a few minutes, several times a day when it got really hot. Cooling the roof with water made an unbelievable difference in the indoor temperature.

Since I now live in Portland where there are not that many very hot days, I've always just gone out and sprayed the roof from the ground, when necessary. It works undeniably well. But what I noticed was, not only did well-meaning neighbors laugh and call it "poor man's air conditioning," but virtually every man who talked to me about it said it wouldn't work. AND, the tone of voice they used was always exactly the same, very dismissive, like "boy, is that ever a dumb idea." Asked if they'd ever TRIED it, the answer was always no. That's what clued me in to the fact that it was industry propaganda. Sure enough, Popular Mechanics (a Hearst publication, i.e. corporate-controlled yellow journalism) had run more than one article brainwashing people to feel ashamed of using something that was inexpensive and cost-effective. Hence the disappearance of attic and kitchen-window fans.

There's one room that sticks out from the front of my house. Its west-facing windows would turn that room into an oven on hot days. I installed a simple vent (no fan, just a $7 vent) on its roof, and one of those octagonal vent-things on its front wall near the crest of the roof. There were structural studs I couldn't change, so the opening behind the vent is only a few square inches. Yet, with the new airflow these two things provided, that room now barely heats up at all.

We're just now coming off a two-week period of very high temps (for here), in the mid to high 90's. Before that weather hit, I went up on the roof (mine isn't very steep) and concocted a system using 2x4's and vinyl corrugated roofing panels. So now, most of my roof is shaded. That saves me having to remember to hose down the roof every few hours, and has worked unbelievably well. A/C just cools down air that's heated by unshaded roofs (and, to a lesser extent, uncurtained windows.) The SMART way to go (ahem, GE) is not to pay to run A/C all day, but to keep the air from heating up in the first place. Of course this includes airing the house out at night, and shutting it up before the outside air begins to get warmer than that inside the house.

* meant to say inexpensive and effective, not cost-effective.

Attic fans are great! Old victorian homes have them built in in the attic, and many really old ones still work. We used to put a pretty strong heavy metal box fan in an attic window when when I was kid, leave the door to the attic ajar, and we got the same strong air currents and cooling. If I built a house now, I'd design onebuilt in up top. I wonder if green house designs are including them, even with AC being included in most places. Because they will cool when it isn't so hot that you really need to have AC.

Unfortunately I live in 650 sq ft of Brooklyn railroad apartment with NOTHING as tall as my building for hundreds of yards in either direction. The cross breeze is dreamy.

I live in SF and we are having our 2nd winter. I've been wearing my winter coat at night with the howling wind and fog. This would be a dream to have hot weather, even for a few days.

That works if you don't live someplace like Texas where it's so freakin' hot outside that you don't dare open your windows. Period.
Instead ya turn the fan to blow right on ya pulling the lovely air conditioned air to you faster. Yep. Texas. It's a great place to live.
:)

Agreed. Texas is so hot that AC is on all year round, and attic fan may not be a good idea in this case because you are sucking the AC air out.

can't say i ever thought of blowing air OUT of the window... sure wish i'd had this tip on saturday when the heat had me hiding in my hall (the only room in our flat without windows)... one to try this weekend.

I do this often! I live in a townhouse with an A/C unit on each floor instead of central air. Heat rises; so, a fan in the bedroom window at the end of the upstairs hall works wonders at sweeping stagnant air & heat outside. On hot nights, I run my first floor A/C unit on energy saver set at 78-80 degrees & my second-floor master bedroom A/C unit with my bedroom door almost closed at night. In the morning, stagnant heat trapped at the top of the stairs is fierce! Upstairs is like a loft with two bedrooms & a full bath beneath a steep roof slant with a hallway that dead-ends into a balcony over a two-story living room. There isn't any way to create a cross breeze upstairs since there only two windows upstairs facing south & east ... love the fan for tossing that air out.

One trick for getting air to circulate in spaces with 2 double sash windows is to open the lower portion that is getting the wind and allow air to blow in, and open the upper portion of the other window. Fresh air blowing in causes a rise in air pressure lower down and pushes hotter air near the ceiling to flow out the other window. I tried simulating that with a fan pulling in air in the lower portion. It works.

I mentioned my cleverness to my sweetie in an attempt to impress him. He let me know that is how they clear bad air out of confined spaces in industrial settings: blow fresh air in at the bottom and pull bad air out the top. :P Doesn't seem to work well in the room where we have windows side by side. Might be worth experimenting with.

recycleg hope you are surviving the "winter". It's a great time to go on vacation to warmer areas of the country that have these heat issues. I lived in SF for 15 years and now in LA. The warmth is nice, and I need to catch up on all of these tips for cooling that I didn't need in in the past;)

In my apartment I have got two windows in my room one on north and next on west. If I open north window, there is all the ac outdoor units n bad smell comes from there. N west one I always keep it open n curtains closed o otherwise I guess I have to b with a vacuum n mop. So much of dust. so I keep the fan position to our bed.

Ohhhh how i miss my attic fan! Sadly, they've gone the way of the dinosaur :(
One would think, with the green construction of late, they'd be making a comeback.

I didn't know about this and I am totally trying it this evening. 7 months pregnant and ROASTING in the Midwest, but it's finally cooled down just enough these past few weeks that we can open some windows once the sun has gone down.

@textiles @discerning - they still make them. We just put one into our new construction two years ago.
@Annie-O - my dad does the same thing you do. Consider this a big thumbs up from a guy. If he ever saw you doing this, he might stop and congratulate you for being such a smart person :-)
We also have shades with reflective backing that we close during the day and they make a huge difference. They are honeycomb shades that insulate a little bit too.

Get rid of wall to wall carpeting. Put in ceramic tile floors. Super cool on the feet & don't absorb heat. Anyone who lives in a humid climate like Florida & has wall to wall carpeting with AC is craaaazy. (I lived in Florida for a several years & was stunned to see so many people with wall to wall carpet & running their AC all day!) In the winter just put down some area rugs. Easier to keep clean, too. Box attic fans. Oh yes! We unfortunately do not have an attic & we live in an adobe (with a flat roof). So we have a big box fan, set on reverse, in the window on the west side of the house (which happens to be the kitchen). With the windows open throughout the house we get an amazing cool breeze blowing through here all day- despite living in a desert! Best cool air comes from the north side windows. We also put up awnings on the south & west windows. Add the tile floors & green indoor plants & we have a cool, energy efficient home. Everyone around here talks about how much their electric bills are- hundred + dollars a month! Yikes!! Then again, they're running their "swamp coolers" all day long. Our electric bill for July- $17. Yes. Seventeen Dollars. Three adults live in this house. Let's see... 17 divided by 3 =.....

@Annie-O: Totally agree with everything you said. Especially this:

"The SMART way to go (ahem, GE) is not to pay to run A/C all day, but to keep the air from heating up in the first place. Of course this includes airing the house out at night, and shutting it up before the outside air begins to get warmer than that inside the house."

It irks me no end that so many people in hot climates do not know this simple fact. We have very dry, hot summers. The hum of airconditioning starts at dawn in my suburb, and goes on until about 10 pm. It's insane. I figured out how to maximise natural airflow by using the right combination of window coverings and fans, and just plain old opening and closing of exterior doors/windows. I think I used my airconditioning about 10 days last summer (and I do NOT have good tolerance for heat).

Wow! I certainly need to get a fan to have on hand for this technique!

I have central A/C but I use it very sparingly, both because I'm cheap about some practical things and partly because some of the expensively cooled air would escape through the "flapped" cat door that I keep open during the day for my indoor/outdoor cats.

I definitely air out my condo at night -- IF we're lucky enough to get cool night-time temps after a hot day. I keep the patio door wide open from the time I get home from work til I go to bed (or until my cats' "curfew" hour, whichever comes first). The night breezes are a real lifesaver.

A few weeks ago, though, it just would NOT cool down enough at night, because the daytime temps were 100 degrees or more -- so even when it cooled down by 20 degrees or more at night, it was still hot, and the condo took forever to cool down. (I'm located in the eastern SF Bay Area, in Walnut Creek, which is far enough inland that it doesn't always get SF's "natural air conditioning," which I fervently miss. Apparently, Walnut Creek was getting masses of hot air from Arizona recently??)

Because I'm also at hot-flash/night sweats age, I resorted some nights during that heatwave to doing the following, if I wanted to avoid running the A/C all night:

--put pillowcase in ziplock bag in freezer for a few hours before bedtime

--when really hot, did the same with bedsheets

--bought a gel pillow insert that gives a cooling effect

--kept a metal water bottle in the fridge and took that back to bed with me to lay against me after I'd wake up in the middle of the night

--I even resorted to running an icecube down my arms and putting an icecube in a paper towel and putting it on my head after I laid back down - LOL. Sounds absurd, but it helped -- along with all the other things I did.

Hhri ha ha in a pinch

I'm from the south, and no longer live there, but live in the midAtlantic, and it AMAZES me the number of people who cannot live without running their a/c 24/7. My neighbor exports his clanky central a/c noise into my apartment, and even if it's 60, which it was last night, that thing is still going. He uses earth's resources in order to block out street traffic noise which one gets used to, but I guess he won't accept that.

Melissa, I try to use my a/c sparingly too, mostly because it's very difficult to get it at a temperature that feels ok on a constant basis, and because it's pretty bad for the sinuses. I find that if you let yourself, you can acclimatize. I'm also amazed at the number of ENVIRONMENTALISTS who cannot live without air conditioning.

What I do is I keep rags in the water in the refrigerator and tie them around my head from time to time. But the go-to method, the fail-safe, is a quick spray down with cool water, and not really toweling off. Lasts about 2 hours.

My only question on the article is: where does that fan come from??

"Unfortunately I live in 650 sq ft of Brooklyn railroad apartment with NOTHING as tall as my building for hundreds of yards in either direction. The cross breeze is dreamy."

I live in even less than that! Not having anything next to your building is a good thing. The reason I say that is that that way, night time heat is release faster and a bit more easily, not as trapped by being next to another tall object.

If you can't get a cross breeze to work for you, try a swamp cooler.

Growing up poor in the south teaches proper use of a fan. It still amazes me how little my Michigander inlaws get about cross breezes and fans. They think they're a waste of electricity. That said, I doubt my much younger sister has any idea how to position fans properly because she's part of the ac generation.

Being a Texan I definetly know it is hot here in the summers, but honestly hot like most places (aside from San Francisco/love it! etc.) get in the summer.

BUT; we definetly do not have to run our AC's year round! lol...
Around October (here in Houston and most of Texas) it cools down, and we def. get a winter, sometimes even snow (not Houston/but Dallas often and the panhandle every year and A LOT), freezing temps. etc.

Sorry you know us Texans like to talk. :)
BUT fans / used in this manner are def. effective.