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.

  • ShimitarAEnglish
    3·
    4 hours ago

    You need fans to blow the air OUT not in, and create a chimney effect between opposite sides of the building.

    A small out blowing fan can be enough, if run all night.

    Blowing out will cause air to be sucked in from the opposite side. Having multiple fans will only mess up the air flow and reduce the efficiency. Better two fan on the same outgoing window.

    Of course, that will never cool down more than a few degrees above outside temp because walls thermal cycle will bring inside day heat at night and bring inside night cool in daytime. Specially thick or well insulated walls are designed to do exactly that.

    So yes walls will warm you up at night, that is not avoidable. A well insulated wall will do that instead of bringing heat in during daytime… But heat is there and must be dissipated that’s physics. Night time is the best option.

    Edit: blow out at night. During daytime blow around, best way to keep cool is move that hot layer of air that get stick to your skin with a fan. Same temperatures but so much more bearable.

    • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksOP
      1·
      4 hours ago

      That’s the basic theory I’m going with. Imagine a Y. Each of the top ends are two rooms with one window each. They are connected via a hallway to my bedroom on the bottom, which has two window on the opposite side of the building. The wind has the slightest tendency to blow down that Y so I have the air move in that direction.

      The only wrinkle is that even with two fans in that hallway to bring the air in, there’s still 3 temp difference between the top and the bottom, it gets to 1 if I flip one of those bottom fans to bring air in.

      But I also have windows that open horizontally, so I have plenty of open air above the windows that I occupy with venetian blinds, so I could probably do a better job of sealing that up to improve flow and decrease backwash.

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