I have a ground floor brick apartment so I’m pretty well insulated from the summer heat for most of the day. If I can get the apartment cold enough at night by running fans (ventilation), I can often make it through the day without turning on the A/C.
That small room is the best case scenario because it has the box fan blowing in directly opposite the door which has a fan at it to pull the air out of that room.
The closest I get to the coldest night temperature is 4 degrees farenheit in that room. I’m guessing the walls are retaining some heat.
Is 4 degrees a respectable delta for $20 Lasko box fans or could I do better?
I’m cross ventilating as much as I can, but I have a weirdly shaped, weirdly windowed apartment and think I need about 3 more fans to circulate the air completely, but I don’t think I do better than what I have for that one room.
Since fans don’t cool the air at all, simply move it, your goal should be to take air from the coolest part of the house to where you are. Your 4* difference would exist with or without the fans. Rather than worry about that metric, I would concentrate on getting the moving air to where you’re at so it will give you the sensation of being cooled via the moving air.
https://airdogusa.com/blogs/article/how-do-fans-cool-air
Yup, fans are on me during the day time when it heats up. But at night, I just went to get things as cold as possible without running the a/c.
Remember to move as much of the warm air as possible at night — this means opening all your cupboards and drawers, which retain a LOT of heat. Cooling those down means they’ll help retain ambient temperature during the day instead of continuously leaking heat into the main airspace.