Ah, summer in the desert. It never quite hit 3 figures yesterday but didn’t miss it by much, and in the usual pre-monsoon manner never gave us that cooling evening breeze. So at about 10 I gave up, shut off the fans and laid down, not really expecting to sleep. No sooner had I done that second thing than the bedroom got not only hot – it was already all of that – but also quite stuffy so that there seemed at first nothing to do but sweat and wish this damned Corgi didn’t insist on full-contact sleeping.
At last a bit of sense seeped through, and…
…it occurred to me that a) the Lair is equipped with a proper electrical system, not the free sample of one it had when I first occupied the place in 2011, b) that 12-volt ceiling fan doesn’t actually pull all that much juice even at full speed, and c) it has a REMOTE CONTROL, with VARIABLE SPEED, the lowest of which is really quite quiet, hardly seems to pull any juice at all and in such a small room performs admirably in moving air around conducive to SLEEPING.
Old habits die hard, and one of the first habits I developed in several years of inadequate solar power systems was don’t run electrical appliances at night. I’m still trying to free myself of that iron rule. I ran the fan on low virtually throughout the night and it pulls so little juice that the starting voltage was actually a little higher than normal – which makes no logical sense but I only report the news, I don’t interpret it.
ETA: I actually possess a box fan, currently stored in Landlady’s barn, which I’m going to bring home from afternoon chicken chores and put in the bedroom window to pull in some of that much cooler evening air before retiring. Wish I’d thought of that yesterday. Summer has arrived.
Joel, something to consider is the addition of a window fan so you can draw in cooler air at night as you try to sleep. I use a 3 Speed thin window fan that I picked up from Amazon for those nights when it’s hot, but not hot enought to turn on the AC. Yes, I’m cheap. It’s very quiet and draws very little power.
https://www.amazon.com/Bionaire-Energy-Saving-Manual-Window/dp/B00HQ9RDPI/
Along the lines of the above: Have you ever thought of an attic exhaust fan? One that will take the hotter air from the top of the room and exhaust it, allowing cooler nighttime air to enter?
Only a few watts and yet very effective.
Which works faster – pushing outside air in, forcing interior air to blow out the opposite window,
OR
pushing inside air out the window, drawing exterior from opposite side window ?
I’ve found suck in works best. Leave the bedroom door open to exhaust the heat.
From memory of your construction photos, if you cut a vent hole on the flat wall near the peak of your mezzanine storage area and put a vent grating on the outside of the wall, then a nice pair of 8″ computer type fans running on 12V DC up there, I think you could suck out the hottest air and bring in cool simply by having the bedroom window open about 4″
Still need that ceiling fan to move the cooler air about tho’
I can probably scrounge some of the computer fans around here if motivated. 😉
Continuing the theme of exhausting hot air with a fan, is there enough breeze – strong enough, long enough – to make a roof turbine worthwhile? And, is there roof space of one? (IIRC, there’s a lot of solar on your roof). I recently had occasion to research them and discovered while 12″ is the “standard” size, they can be had in 14″ and 16″ and even some in 8″.
I know I responded to Terrapod’s comment earlier but apparently didn’t save it to the blog. I’m getting pretty good chimney circulation out through the loft’s vent windows using the big ceiling fan some neighbors gave me several years ago. It still gets damned hot in the cabin but dust motes in sunbeams tell me air is moving upward fairly briskly.
I’ll bet a radiant barrier paint would go a long way in your situation.