High temps are breaking records left and right this summer. And if you don’t have central AC, your house is probably feeling like a sauna these days. Enter your savior: the classic fan. This basic, inexpensive appliance can be the difference between misery and comfort, so don’t just set it down anywhere – maximize its potential! By using a few strategic tricks, your home will drop a few degrees in no time. Don’t thank us, thank your fan. Creating a crosswind is a refreshing one-two punch: you’ll get hot air out while also pulling cooler air in. The first step is to close up your house during the day – close windows, drapes, blinds, everything. You don’t want any sun-warmed heat getting in. Note: This will make your home darker, so if you’re partial to a lot of natural light, you may want to choose being warm over a dark room. When the sun sets, swing open your windows and grab two standard fans. Place one fan facing out of a window in the room you want the coolest.

Then, use a second fan to create a strong flow of air towards that fan. Do this by setting up fan #2 so it’s facing inwards, and is either in front of a second window or pushing air into the room you’re trying to cool. This setup will remove stale, hot air out and bring in fresh, cool air. This trick is all about getting hot air out. If you have tall windows (lucky you!) place your fan as high up as possible, facing out of the window. A shelf, ladder or stool can help with this. Remember, hot air rises, so the goal is to push as much hot air out of the house as possible. If you have a ceiling fan, switch the fan direction so that it moves counterclockwise instead of clockwise. That way, instead of blowing warm air around the room, it will push cold air down where it can be most effective. Be safe and make sure you turn the fan off before adjusting. Ceiling fan a little dirty? Read: Clean Your Ceiling Fans. Don’t have an air conditioner? This quick project will have you reaching for a sweater in no time.

Place a standard fan on the ground (or as low as possible). Put a large bucket of ice directly in front of the fan. The fan will blow air over the ice, cooling it in the process. It may not be pretty, but it’ll keep you cool. If a big bucket of ice sounds like a lot of work, a wet washcloth will do roughly the same time – just place it over the front of the fan. Tip: Keep one window open so hot air can escape. Okay, so maybe mosquitoes don’t make a room hotter, but they certainly make a sticky, sweaty day worse. To stop mosquitoes from bothering you, hang out directly in front of a fan. If you have a patio, bring the fan with you! Mosquitoes can’t land in a crosswind and hate flying against it, so they’ll avoid breezy areas.Can an ice-powered air conditioner take the edge off scorching summer electrical bills? A young company called Ice Energy has developed an energy-storage system that uses a tank of water to cut down on the power required for air conditioning by 30 percent.

Click to see the photo.air conditioner split system cost The company's Ice Bear units, roughly the size and shape of a squat refrigerator, are an adjunct to standard centralized air-conditioning units.central air conditioning units problems Rather than run AC compressors during the hottest time of the day, the Ice Bear cools water during the night, turning it to ice. wall ac unit maintenanceDuring the day, the ice cools the refrigerant as it passes through the tank, lowering the temperature inside. This process of shifting the time that the AC unit works knocks electricity usage and costs down significantly, said Ice Energy CEO Frank Ramirez. That's because the AC unit doesn't have to work as hard at night, making the overall system more energy-efficient, he said.

The company's first products, which have their roots in research conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy, are aimed at businesses, where an Ice Bear could be placed on the roof with other HVAC (heating, ventilating and air-conditioning) systems. A residential system is also being tested. Cutting down on energy demands during the hottest times of day is of great interest to utilities, Ramirez said. Heavy loads on the electrical grid, as the U.S and Europe are seeing right now, cause utilities to ramp up power generation. If generation can't keep up with the demand, then power outages result. "Today we are faced with exploding demand for power in China, and that has fundamentally changed consumption patterns for electricity globally," Ramirez said. "That means that technologies that originally were underwritten by the Department of Energy have an opportunity to be commercialized." Ramirez said that the Ice Bear products have been certified by the California Energy Commission and that Ice Energy is in discussions with utilities over use of its products.

The company began to ship its first product earlier this year and expects to see sales ramp up quickly, from about $5 million this year to $50 million next year.Evaporative coolers, also known as swamp coolers, are cheaper and more cost-effective than air conditioners. They create a lot of cold air using much less energy, so it’s no wonder they’re an appealing choice for anyone who wants to save money while keeping cool. What’s not cool is when your evaporative cooler doesn’t actually make you cooler, when it’s not working or not working well. So, to help avert any “heated crises,” we’ve put together a few secret hints and troubleshooting ideas to help you get more out of your evaporative cooler. When water evaporates, it uses the heat in the air as fuel for its transformation from water to vapor. The heat gets absorbed and suspended in the water vapor, lowering the temperature of the surrounding area. The faster the water evaporates, the more heat gets used up and the faster the temperature drops.

This is exactly what happens in an evaporative cooler. Water is pumped up and poured onto a specialized cooling pad that has warm air blown through it by a high-powered fan. The water absorbs the heat and evaporates and cool air gets blown out the other side. The rate of evaporation is inversely proportional to the humidity of the surrounding area. When humidity is low, the air’s capacity to store water is very high and evaporation happens very quickly. When the humidity is high, though, the air is already saturated with moisture and its ability to absorb more water vapor is very low – evaporation happens slowly. That’s why humid weather is so much more uncomfortable than a dry heat. The sweat your body produces sticks to your skin instead of evaporating and cooling you down. Humid weather is bad for evaporative coolers as well. As humidity rises, the temperature difference between the from he cooler and the air around it falls, until eventually it becomes little more than a fancy looking fan.

Usually, we do not recommend swamp coolers for places that experience a lot of humidity in the summer because evaporative cooling isn’t effective in that sort of environment, unless you know the secret to using your evaporative cooler as a supplement to your central air conditioning. Well, besides cooling the air, air conditioners also dehumidifies it. In fact, dehumidification takes place even if you run your AC at fairly high temperatures. So you can set your central AC at 80°F or higher – which will save you a bundle on whole-house cooling costs – and use a portable evaporative cooler to lower the temperature in the one or two rooms you’re actually using. The dry air will bring your evaporative cooler back to life. With an air conditioner, a room or building needs to be closed up tight for it to be effective. The opposite is true with a swamp cooler, which rely on a consistent stream of fresh air in order to work. If you find your portable evaporative cooler isn’t cooling things down, make sure it’s positioned near an open door or window .

If it already is, open window on the opposite side of the room to create a cross breeze to draw the hot air out. Usually, 1 or 2 square feet per 1,000 CFM of cooling capacity is sufficient to allow hot air and humidity to be pushed outside. Experiment by adjusting your windows to see which create the best breeze and how wide they need to be open in order to control the amount of cooling. A secret technique a lot of homeowners use on their evaporative coolers is adding ice to the water tank in order to increase its cooling capacity. It seems reasonable, ice makes air colder, so adding ice to your cooler should make it colder. In fact, many coolers feature special ice compartments and gel ice packs to help generate this cold air effect. In actual practice, adding ice to your swamp cooler only has a limited effect. Yes, cold air radiating from the ice will be blown out by the fan, so you’ll feel an extra burst of cold air if you’re standing right in front of it, but it won’t improve the rate of evaporation, or remove heat from the air the way evaporation does.