11 Quick Fixes To Cool A Room Without AC
The weather in Oregon can be unpredictable. It seems like we get a heat wave every summer or fall, and we don’t know when it will strike. That can be a real problem if you’re waiting on an AC repair and are without a working air conditioner or if you live in a rental and the landlord has not yet invested in a cooling system. So, how can you cool a room without AC?
While there is not much you can do to reduce the temperature in a room once it is already hot without an AC, there are a handful of different fixes you can do that will help keep the temperature in a room from getting too high. Check out the following tips:
Keep Your Blinds and Curtains Closed During The Day
This is one of the easiest solutions that you can do. It’s not a fix-all, but it is highly effective. Consider that 76% of daylight that hits your windows enters your home and converts into heat.
So don’t let that light enter your home! Close your blinds and use dark or black-out curtains to prevent the sunlight from entering your home. This will reduce how much warmer a room gets on a sunny day.
Open Your Windows At Night
On the other hand, to cool down your room at night, you can take advantage of the outdoor temperature. Consider opening your windows and letting the cool air in to combat the accumulated heat from the day.
By reducing the resistance that heats encounters traveling to a cooler environment, you’ll encourage it to leave your home. This will reduce the temperature in any room, given that it’s cooler outside than inside.
Limit Cooking
Your stove and oven produce a ton of radiant heat, which can raise the temperature of an entire home significantly if done for a long period.
Obviously, we need to eat, and cooking at home is more sustainable than ordering out for every meal. But to prevent turning your home into a sauna, look into eating more cold meals, or limit your cooking to the evenings when it’s cooling off and prepare meals that can be stored in the fridge or freezer and require little or no reheating.
Limit Electronic Use
Electronics are great and can be super helpful in our everyday lives, but they also produce heat. To keep the temperature of a room from increasing, you’ll want to limit the hours you have electronics running or limit which ones you use.
A cell phone produces a lot less heat than a home theater system. Similarly, you’re less likely to suffer from the heat from your dishwasher in the early mornings or late evenings than if you run it during the day’s heat.
Upgrade to LED Lightbulbs
This fix may not be as obvious, but it has a few different benefits. LED lightbulbs may cost more than traditional filament bulbs, but they actually produce less heat. Meaning that when you have to run a light in a room for a few hours, it won’t increase the temperature by a few degrees like a traditional bulb would.
Not only that, but LED bulbs are more efficient and require less energy to produce the same amount of light as a traditional lightbulb. They also have a longer lifespan under optimal conditions, so LED bulbs usually earn back their cost in savings and are more sustainable.
Start Using Fans Early
Fans are your best friend if you don’t have an AC. Hot air likes to get trapped in corners and create pockets or will hover in a room and stagnate, making it seem hotter than it is. Using fans to create airflow can break up those hot air pockets and can prevent air from stagnating. The key is to use them early on.
Once the heat is introduced to a room, it’s impossible to actually cool the room without an air conditioner or a lot of venting at night. Get that fan running early in the day before it heats up. This will help to keep a room cool and make it easier to vent at night.
Clean Up Clutter The Can Trap Air
We previously mentioned that heat likes to get trapped and create hot air pockets. Besides running fans, you can also prevent that from happening by cleaning up and reorganizing.
Removing large clutter that can trap airflow will allow that hot air to get pushed out of a room or at least get broken up. Reorganizing large pieces of furniture will have the same effect. Make sure that air can flow from one end of a room to another without getting caught in a pocket.
Create Airflow Around Your Bed
Similarly, ensuring air can flow around your bed will make it much more comfortable when you settle in for the night. Remove any clutter or items that can block airflow under and around your bed to make it easier for airflow to break up any hot air pockets. This will help to keep you cool at night.
A bonus tip: If your bed and sheets like to absorb heat and get hotter throughout the night, you can look into a bamboo sleeping mat to place on your bed. It takes some getting used to, but bamboo does not keep heat as cloth does.
Dampen A Sheet Or Scarf
A quick hack that works at home and on the road is dampening a sheet or scarf. Wearing a damp scarf or laying under a damp sheet might sound uncomfortable, but the relief it offers from the heat is well worth it. As the heat passes over you, the water in the fabric will absorb that heat and evaporate. While this doesn’t keep the entire room cool, this will help keep you cool.
You might not want to completely soak a sheet you’re sleeping under, as that can lead to issues with skin health.
Stay Hydrated
Create A DIY Swamp Cooler
Short of getting an actual home cooling system installed, this option will have the most dramatic effect on the most amount of area. However, it also requires the most amount of work. It shouldn’t take too long if you have the required supplies on hand. It may require a trip to your local hardware store if you do not.
Creating your own evaporative cooler will keep your room cool and can actually lower the temperature after it gets hot. It is a solution for anyone living in Eastern Oregon, but it won’t be as effective if you live in the valley or on the coast.
Don’t think this will serve as a full replacement for a home cooling system, either. An actual air conditioner or heat pump will cool more space more efficiently.
Northwest Public Broadcasting has an excellent guide on how to put one together.
Who Is Advantage Heating & Air Conditioning, LLC?
We are your local HVAC experts out of Salem, Oregon. We hope that this post can help you keep your home cool this summer. If you have other questions about HVAC systems, check out our other blogs. To learn more about who we are and how we can help you, visit our website and follow us on social media—we’re here when you need us!
