Do any of you use window fans or forced ventilation units?
>be me
>live in small apartment
>central a/c and heat work fine
>need more fresh air in here though
I need something that’s easier to deal with than opening the window and putting a box fan in front of it. I’m looking at a dual fan thing like pic related, but I’m open to other options. I also don’t want to pay more than like $100-150
when i was fan shopping i picked one of those like pic related at big box store.
went to consumer electronics and appliance store and noticed they were selling individual cooling fans for pc building.
got me thinking how hard it would be to wire up a couple pc cooling fans to plug into an outlet.
I used one of those, they work great and usually fit in front of a screen. Now my bedroom windows too narrow to fit one so I use a box fan that just barely fits.
One of those should do pretty well just be aware of the caveats. Whatever the outside air temperature and humidity is, you're directly importing that. If it doesn't match what you want the indoor conditions to be you'll be paying again to condition it back to your liking.
You should also consider where the air is coming into the space and where it has an equal opportunity to exit the space. Any air you bring in has to have an equal amount leaving somewhere. The unit works harder if it's just seeping out at random places.
Lastly if you have allergies, this can aggrevate them without aggressive filtering.
This. As a general use, these operate way better as exhaust than intake unless it's nice out constantly.
>Any air you bring in has to have an equal amount leaving somewhere
When I had one of these, I usually ran it with one fan on intake and the other on exhaust. This solves the problem of unequal pressure making the fans work harder.
OP, I have that exact fan in your picture. It's fairly quiet and moves a lot of air. I've been using it off and on for probably close to 20 years now and it still runs like new. Not a bad purchase for 60 or 70 bucks.
And yes, I know it's filthy, I've been running it in my garage the last few years.
With that setup you're mostly just shuffling air in and then straight back out in a U-shape. Better to have two units at opposite ends of the space, if possible.
Not much can be done with just 1 window. Sometimes if I need a lot of air, I put them both on exhaust and crack open the upper sash on the window for return air. But with just the 2 fans in push/pull it does a decent enough job of circulating the air in and out. It's not like the air coming out the exhaust side does an immediate 180 u-turn and goes in the intake.
You'd be much better off with getting a box fan and putting it back a few feet from the window
These are great when it starts raining and the fans suck water into the window and spray in all directions.
The fans are reversible, dumbass.
you need to create a draft, or have at least one intake and one exhaust.
that window fan cant suck air in if the pressure is equal.
I missed an opportunity to by these fans in bulk on HarborFreight once. One of the biggest non-purchased regrets. Throwing these in the windows from October through March in the Appalachians is heavenly. When it gets cold out, I just reduce the number of units running to regulate inside ambiance.
Does your apartment unit have attic access? Put a fan to exhaust the air there.
just get the costco window ac homosexual. i use window fan, u need christmas fuses to keep it running all day long.
>u need christmas fuses to keep it running all day long
No you don't
I don't have AC since it rarely ever gets hot here. I do however have a PC fan with a filter on the front in the window. I then have some cardboard "sealing" off the other part of the open window to encourage the air to be pulled through the filtered fan. It's not perfect however it works.
I hooked up my box fan to a cheapo smart plug and use IFTTT to automate it so that when the outside temp is cooler than inside it will turn on and cool down the house.
it was probably $50 total and it keeps my house cool with no ac.
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Things like this are so dumb, but people think it's an amazing concept because they don't see past the initial "ice makes air cold" concept.
If you're making the ice yourself in your freezer that freezer is adding heat to your house. And because nothing is 100% energy efficient, the process of making the ice in your freezer adds more heat to the house than the ice will take from the air when it melts back into water. So in the big picture what you're doing is spending money on electricity to make your house slightly hotter.
And if you're buying the ice to do this instead of making it yourself, then it's probably the least efficient cost-to-cooling thing you could possibly do.
Just buy a fricking air conditioner.
you make the ice overnight when you can exhaust the hot air outside and replace it with cool night time air.
then when it is the hottest part of the day, you can bring out the ice and use it to cool off. it is literally a thermal battery and it is extremely low cost/effort. anyone who refutes such a low cost cooling solution is a fricking israelite trying to sell you some expensive a/c product instead.
imagine being so poor that you can't even afford a window unit
I do not have grid power, and my solar setup is very small and only powers essential items.
I'm working towards it but it is a low priority, I could technically run a small one at the moment, but I like having large margins of error
>buy appliances like freezer, air conditioner to make life easier in summer heat
>it just contributes to environment becoming hotter
>have to buy more appliances
The air conditioner moves the heat outside, moron.
take the ice from neighbours refrigrator
This is the most ghetto shit I've ever seen and doesn't even work.
he could make the fan blow towards a wet rag
>vent in cool at night, use extra blankets
>noise drowns out moronic neighbors
>shut windows in morning, close heavy curtains
>house stays nice and cool all day
>repeat
this p much, it gets down to as low as 12c and hot as 35c so trying to get a room as cool as possible all night is critical for later in the day. I need to build an automatic mechanism for timing the fan and shutting off the vent hole though, but as now I just put a box fan in a window and it werks.
Try this on a 3rd floor European commieblock apartment lmao.
tried this but usually what happens is my computer ends up heating the inside up and it ends up baking hot again.
I live in an apartment and I only have casement windows. I just ordered one of those mobile AC units with a hose. (the cheapest one I could find on Amazon with decent reviews) was 220 euro or so + 25 for the window covering. Maybe it's cheaper in USA because they're not as common here, but the cheapest ones I found were maybe around 170, so I think you might have to raise your budget by a little.
I'm currently having 30C° indoor temperatures and it arrives thursday so I'll drop in to say how effective the cheap hose ones are (they get a lot of bad reviews for some reason)
Works great have been using it for a few days. Very noisy though but does the job.
fyi it's better air flow by making the fan blow air out and opening other windows in your home, rather than trying to blow air in.