Air Conditioning Boosters and Alternatives
We are all familiar with fans. They move air, which in turn help bring in fresh air and improve our own human cooling system through sweat. My favorite fans are from Dyson, with the desktop AM06 being my favorite all-purpose general fan. It has every feature you’d want in a desktop fan, and I have not found a better general all purpose desktop fan. Dyson makes a bunch of other fans too, they are all just variations with some additional features, but often times adding significantly to the cost.
When I’m sitting in front of my laptop, my favorite USB fan is this one by OPolar. Its quiet, efficient, and runs off of USB power, with decent features. No oscillation though, and its really only good for personal use.
Window Fans for When Its Cooler Outside the House
Window fans are great ways to circulate air inside and outside. Fresh, cool air from outside is the most cost efficient way to cool down after sunset. The best one I’ve ever used, and that is still in production is the Bionaire Twin Window fan featured below. The best price I’ve seen for this is from Costco from time to time, but failing that, Amazon often sells for a reasonable $60.
Air Coolers, the Next Best Thing
Air coolers take in air, adds some moisture and then blow it out. This is also known as direct evaporative cooling: “Direct evaporative cooling (open circuit) is used to lower the temperature and increase the humidity of air by using latent heat of evaporation, changing liquid water to water vapor. In this process, the energy in the air does not change. Warm dry air is changed to cool moist air. The heat of the outside air is used to evaporate water. The RH increases to 70 to 90% which reduces the cooling effect of human perspiration. The moist air has to be continually released to outside or else the air becomes saturated and evaporation stops.” – wiki
Moist, cool breeze can cool you down & be used as humidification during winter months. NOT an Air Conditioner & NOT just a Fan – Environmentally friendly Evaporative Cooler reduces temperature through water evaporation.
A More Powerful Room Air Cooler
I had a favorite one that I used for many, many years. When I left town, I gave it to my parents to use and now I can’t find anyone selling it anymore. So I tried out the Honeywell Air Cooler featured below, and can recommend it. It is relatively loud, as most powerful air coolers are. But wow does it have a powerful fan and cooling capability.
Your best results are always going to be in a dry environment. So pairing this with an Air Conditioner unit (which has a side effect of drying the air), and maybe a window fan to circulate in dry air, will increase its cooling capability.
