Use a Fan - low tech, high effectiveness

Another way to stay cool is to use a fan. Is you employ a fan instead of air conditioning, you save money and stay cool.

Fans were very common long before air conditioning, and they represent a low tech solution that works as well today as they ever did.

There are two ways to use fans. One way supports evaporative cooling of you, and the other approach involves cooling the house.

Both are good uses of a fan.

The first approach involves circulating air in the room with a box fan or desk mounted fan that blows on you. You can also use a ceiling fan to accomplish the same thing. Either way, moving air feels cooler because it helps make use of natural evaporative cooling of your skin.

A fan uses less energy than an air conditioning unit, so it's an energy saver. Fans are also something that you can use selectively. Run them when you are in the room, and turn them off when you go somewhere else in the house for a while.

The second approach is to use a fan to push air out of the house during the evening and night when it is cooler outside, and leave several windows open on the other side of the house to let cooler air be pulled in. Then button up the house in the morning to retain cooler air inside until the next evening when the air cools down again.

Be sure when implementing this energy saving tip that you use the fan to push air out, and pull in other remote windows. This can cool a larger portion of the house much quicker than if you try to push cool air into a room and try to force it through the rest of the house.

Remember, it's easier to pull than it is to push, so pull it through the house by pushing it out a remote window.

If you push air in and try to vent air out through other windows, you'll only cool the room that air is being pushed into. The rest of the house will be largely unaffected.

Following this approach to pushing air out of the house will also allow you to cool a room without having fan noise in that room. Try pushing air out of a distant room and opening up a window in your bedroom. You'll feel the cool air come into your surroundings, while the fan makes noise in a distant part of the house.

To be effective, mount the fan right next to the window screen. Minimize the space between the window screen and the fan. Also, work with prevailing breezes, not against them.

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