Point your box fan inward and other tips for keeping cool (2024)
It's going to be a scorcher this weekend.
Wikimedia Commons/Project Gutenberg/U.S. public domain
Last summer, the temperature reached 97 degrees in my toddler son’s bedroom.
We live in Seattle, where few homes have air conditioning, and we’re locals, so we were totally freaking out.
We wrapped his window in aluminum foil – our Midwestern neighbors next door were HOWLING – and, surprise! His room turned into a hot box. We heard we should point box fans outward, but that didn’t cool the room either.
Here's what ended up working for us. Now on the hottest days, my son’s room tops out at 79 degrees Fahrenheit on a sweltering afternoon. (Still hot, but 18 degrees cooler than before, without AC.)
Use them! A ceiling fan can reduce the heat in a room by roughly 4 degrees Fahrenheit.
Ceiling fans should rotate COUNTERCLOCKWISE in summer months. This will create a wind chill effect. Fan speed should be set to medium or high.
Turn the fan off when you’re not in the room. It does little good if you’re not there.
In 57 seconds, this guy explains it better than I do:
BOX FANS – FACING IN OR OUT?
TL;DR – If you have just one fan in a room, face it into your room.
I placed the box fan in my son’s doorway, facing out. A smarty-pants coworker swore by this method. Didn't work. The room stayed hot.
It turns out that driving hot air out of the room doesn’t do much good if you’re not pulling in cool air. The box fan is not designed to suck in cooler air – it's supposed to blow air OUT.
In my experience, pointing them inward produced a noticeably cooler room after 10 minutes.
To push out hot air, your intake would have to be cold air (directly from outside, not from other rooms), plus you have to seal vents and door gaps so the tiny amount of air pressure created by the box fan would not be negated. Go with inward-pointing fans.
If you sit in the breeze of the fan, you'll benefit from the cooling effect due to both evaporation of sweat and the increased heat transfer coefficient due to force air flowing past you.
We have since acquired a box fan with a timer. This allows us to keep a light breeze on our kiddo for the first hour of his sleep – the fan then turns off as nighttime temperatures settle in. Although blazing hot during the day, nighttime temps will drop to the mid-60s this weekend.
BLACK-OUT SHADES
My son’s room faces west, which means the afternoon sun bakes his room.
We bought black-out shades, also known as “thermal drapes.” A single shade cost $55, which felt steep, but we noticed the difference immediately – roughly 15 degrees cooler than with just regular curtains.
Keep the shade down during the day – it's harder to cool a room than to maintain its temperature.
KEEP YOUR BODY COOL
King County health officials recommend keeping yourself cool by putting cold packs on the groin and under the arms – they say these are the best spots to target to help lower your core temperature.
On hot nights last year, I rubbed a wet wash cloth on my son's ears and the soles of his feet. I did this to myself when I lived in a stuffy Manhattan apartment back in the day, and it was sweet relief.
One fan should be placed facing inwards on the side of your home that receives the most shade because it will usually be the coolest. Another can be placed facing outwards on the other end of the home. That will bring cool air in and push hot air back outside.
You can cool a room with just one window and one fan. Place a box fan in the window or a pedestal fan within 5 feet of the window. When the air is cooler outside than it is inside, point the air so it blows into the house.
You should place outward-facing fans on the warmer side of your home to blow the hot air out and inward-facing fans on the cooler side to draw cool air in, says Barry Jacobs, vice president of product development at Comfort Zone, a home environment product company.
If you have a standing or table fan, then position it so that it faces towards the door so as to push hot air out of the space. You can also place fans near to sources of cool air, such as windows or air conditioning units, to push the cooler air in to replace the hot air leaving.
However, fan placement matters. Place your fan so that it faces the opposite wall from where most of the activity takes place in your space. This approach will drive the air to the surface, where it will bounce off, mingling with the rest of the air and cooling the space.
Place a box fan on a stable base where the cord won't pose a tripping hazard. Ideally, the fan will create a cross-breeze moving through the room. To maximize airflow, don't set the front or back too close to a wall. Try to leave a gap equal to one fan blade length, or half the fan width.
To cool the entire house, place box fans in the windows on the ground-level floor so that they draw in cool air. Place fans on the upper floor so that they pull air out of your home. This will create a flow of air throughout the entire house. Fill a large bowl with ice cubes and place the bowl in front of the fan.
'First, keep your windows, doors and blinds shut during the day to avoid hot sun beating down into your house. Then, during the evening, open your windows and place one fan facing out of your window, so it pushes the heat out,' they advise. 'Use a second fan, placed inwards, to circulate cool air into the room. '
Open windows in the morning and night to let in cool air. To bring cooler air from outside, place the fan near an open window screen or door. The air should blow into the room. To take hot air out of the room, face the front of the fan towards an open window screen or door.
Dirty air filter—A dirty filter restricts airflow, not letting your home get enough cool air. Closed vents—Closed vents in rooms can cause them to be hotter than other rooms. Open windows—Your conditioned air can flow out of open windows, leaving uneven temperatures in your home.
What does putting ice in front of a fan do? Placing the bowl in front of a fan allows the fan to circulate cold air as the ice cubes melt. The wind power or pressure from the fan on the freezing ice creates a cooling effect.
In the bedroom: An oscillating pedestal fan offers even air circulation throughout a bedroom, keeping the room cool throughout the night. If you want to keep your bedroom cool but don't want to feel air blowing on your face all the time, the TaoTronics oscillating standing fan is a great choice.
Position the fan so that it points towards the opposite wall, unobstructed by large objects. This will push the cooler air towards the wall, where it'll “bounce” off the wall and back into the room, mixing with the hotter air to eventually cool the room.
A ceiling fan doesn't actually cool a room's temperature, but it creates a wind chill effect by pushing air over your body. There are a few tips and tricks for keeping a room cool with a ceiling fan. Plus, a ceiling fan can be used during the winter season once the heatwave has passed.
Fans blow air directionally, and take in air from behind them. The other way of thinking about how a fan can cool off a room, Persily says, is through heat removal. You could presumably place a fan so it blows out a window as a means of removing heat from the room.
Introduction: My name is Msgr. Refugio Daniel, I am a fine, precious, encouraging, calm, glamorous, vivacious, friendly person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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