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If your air conditioner is not cooling your space—or it just broke down completely—it is hard to stay comfortable. Whether you’re waiting for a repair technician, comparing different replacement estimates, or trying to grin and bear it to save some money, you’ll want to know all the tricks for keeping cool without air conditioning.
Perhaps you have a fan, but it simply isn’t cutting it, don’t give up on it just yet. You simply may not be using it properly. Once you learn how to make a fan blow cold air, you can get by without that AC a bit more easily—and more comfortably. Ahead, we’ll share three ways to cool down a room using a fan.
1. Switch the ceiling fan direction to push air downward.
Do you know there is a right and a wrong fan direction for cooling? Well, there is. And even the best ceiling fans won’t be able to do much of anything to help keep a room cool if they’re spinning in the wrong direction. “Ceiling fans don’t cool the air itself, but they move it around in a way that can make you feel cooler,” explains T.J. Laury, president of Ben’s ProServ in Vineland, New Jersey. He notes the importance of making sure that your fan is set to spin counterclockwise if you want it to effectively cool your room.
According to Laury, counterclockwise is the right fan rotation for summer cooling because it “pushes air down and creates a wind-chill effect on your skin, which helps your body cool off more efficiently.” He notes that the room temperature itself likely won’t change, but the fans that blow cold air by spinning counterclockwise can make the room feel much more comfortable.
2. Place fans on the floor and angle them to direct airflow.
Where and how you position a fan can have a big impact on how effective it is at cooling a space. “Heat rises, so the coolest air in a room is usually closer to the floor. By placing a fan low and angling it slightly upward, you can circulate that cooler air and push it around the room,” Laury explains.
However, Danny Pen, president of New Era Plumbing & HVAC in Dracut, Massachusetts, notes that effectively using fans for room cooling will involve more than just putting them anywhere on the floor. “It has to be near the coolest part of the room, like by a shaded wall, open window, or an AC vent, and the head has to be angled upward at about a 45-degree angle,” he explains. Moreover, Pen notes that if you want to get cold air from fans, you also must start with the best fan. For this setup, he recommends choosing a pedestal fan with an adjustable head that will make it possible to direct the airflow.
3. Pair ice with a fan to create a cooling breeze.
If your heat pump is not cooling and you want to find fans that blow cold air like AC, there is a simple trick that might help. Try placing some ice (either a bowl of ice or a frozen water bottle) in front of a box fan or a smaller fan on an elevated surface. “The air blowing across it picks up some of that cold moisture and creates a chilled breeze. It’s kind of like a DIY evaporative cooler,” Laury explains.
While this can help some, Laury cautions that you shouldn’t expect this trick to fully take the place of a functioning air conditioner. However, if you have no working AC at the moment, it can help you feel cooler, particularly if you try it in a smaller room instead of one that is more open. Pen offers one additional tip for learning how to cool down a room using a fan and some ice. “Between a bowl of ice and a frozen water bottle, the bowl of ice usually works a bit better because it gives off more surface-area cold and melts faster,” he says.
