Want the Best Fan to Cool a Room? Here’s How to Pick
We’re looking at the best fans to cool a room on those hot, sticky days, and how to position them (especially since most are doing it wrong). Cool down here.
Want the best fan to cool a room on hot summer days?
In lots of places around the country, those without central air conditioning get really tired of summer, and it sometimes seems like fall is never going to arrive.
Air-conditioning systems help take heat and humidity out of the air – but they’re expensive.
These systems are energy hogs — they eat up kilowatt hours and generate massive energy bills for households.
So a lot of people try to get by with fans — but that can be difficult. You just don’t get the same blast of cooling – and you have to work a lot harder to get a house cooled down.
How do you set up your house to stay cool without central air?
Here are some tips on the right kinds of fans to buy, and how to use them to your advantage on those hot, sticky days.
Types of Fans: Choosing the Best Fan
When you’re looking at fans for home cooling, you can choose from a large number of designs.
One choice is the shape and style of a fan — do you want a box fan or a floor-standing oscillating fan?
The general idea is that box fans are good for windows, because of their shape and even fit. They also stay in one place. Oscillating fans, on the other hand, are good for wafting air around a room.
Another choice is a small, circular power fan. These fans have a small footprint, so they are portable and easily carried anywhere. You can set them up in a corner of the room and blast cool air anywhere – which obviously includes directly at yourself!
The most comfortable cooling people get from fans is actually a direct blast that dries sweat from the surface of the skin?
You sit right in front of the fan and you get that “ahhh moment” (you know the one – the immediate effect of cooling).
Tower Fans
In addition to all of those traditional fan models that you’re used to, new tower fan models give you a middle ground between relying on box fans and using expensive centralized systems.
Tower fans have specific cooling and air circulation properties that help to really get the temperature lower in any enclosed space.
Some of them even have air ionization which means they’re cleaning the air at the same time they are cooling.
Maybe you’ve seen some of these fancy designs in a home or commercial space.
Here’s more about how these innovative fans work and how you can use them to cool any kind of building:
Using Humidifiers
When you’re trying to make a home more comfortable, you also have the choice to use a dehumidifier.
Dehumidifiers essentially take moisture out of the air, which can make it seem cooler and more comfortable in a room.
They’re also handy for places where moisture tends to accumulate, such as a basement.
Lots of people keep dehumidifiers around in the summer for these purposes.
Positioning Fans
So you have your favorite fan in a box — you’ve brought it home from the store.
What about setting it up?
There are a lot of factors that go into setting up box fans and other fans the right way.
One of the first general principles is to keep incoming air low and push it upward. That’s because, as any heating and cooling technician will tell you, heat rises. So you’re going to want to direct the cooler air upward and expel the hot air at the top.
This is why a lot of people talk about a set of intake/output fans and matching air flows to generally cool down living spaces. Basically, the idea is that you are pulling in cooler air and pushing hotter air out.
Use Outdoor Shade
On hot days, it’s many degrees cooler in the shade than it is in the sun. That’s because a lot of the heat is coming directly from the sunlight that beats down on surfaces.
You can use this natural difference in heat to your advantage. One key is to bring incoming air in on the shady side of the house and direct the hotter air out the sunny side. Use available natural tree shade or get creative by creating barriers to block the sun.
Using the properties of natural shade is an extremely effective way to use natural principles to keep your home cooler in a very hot summer.
The Corner System
Some also suggest setting up a small box fan or oscillating fan in a particular way at the lower corner of a room.
Then blast it from the lower corner to the opposite upper corner to start air flow moving. This idea is similar in many ways to other natural systems such as the water belts in oceans that keep circulating water from one place to another. By circulating the air, you’re keeping it from stagnating, and you’re also increasing the comfort of the interior space.
Before you set up your fan, take a detailed look around the house. Where is it the hottest? Where are the places that cool air doesn’t seem to get to?
By intake and cool air and delivering it to those places, you’re managing your home on your own without the aid of expensive central air duct work.
One trick is to position a fan at the bottom of a stairway to drive air up to the upper floor.
This simple “home hack” has helped many homeowners with excessive heat on second or third floors to get relief without spending a boatload of money.
Final Words
With this knowledge in mind, you can go confidently to your department store or hardware store and get additional fans for your house and get the best fan to cool a room.
It’s not always how many fans you have – it’s how you use them and how you position your fans for cooling.
Try any of these tricks to stay cooler as summer keeps on going – and going!
What are some of your favorite ways to stay cool at home? Let us know in the comments.