Fan, air multiplier, aircon?

Pawnless Endgame

Pawnless Endgame

Pawnless Endgame

Soldato
Joined
10 May 2004
Posts
13,066
Location
Sunny Stafford
After 3 useless years, we finally had a summer in 2010 (alas an early summer), and it's looking that way again this year.

What's cool in groove town this year? I've just got a crusty 10 year old desk fan which generally serves me well. In heat waves however, it merely circulates the same hot air around. My only home experience of aircon (if you really call it aircon), was at a rented house where the landlord had one of those fridge-sized units. It relied on a replacement of icepacks which you had to re-freeze in rotation and you needed an open window or hole to allow its sucker pipe to extract hot hair. We have an awesome one at work though. It's about the size of a full size tower computer, sits high up on the wall and keeps the room ~16C or cooler.

My friend has one of those air multipliers made by Dyson, they're all over Amazon etc. It's 10x the cost of a fan but the friend thinks it's the dog's dangly bits.

Ceiling fans? Not personally experienced one myself.

What do you guys rate? I've not got a budget. Just anything that "works" really. Can probably stretch to £350 for a long term solution.
 
StonedPenguin said:
A lot of them use 2.5-3.5KW an hour.
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Doesn't make sense.

I don't think you'll get a decent air con system for £350 personally. I find a desk fan is normally pretty good. Obviously it doesn't actually cool the air, but it's enough to cool you off a bit.
 
I've got a portable air con unit which cost £129 last summer online. Has the room chilly in about half an hour and is great.
 
I have just bought this fan
Honeywell Oscillating Tower Fan with Remote Control - 1.04m. sku: 425/0454
Its very powerful tower fan at full whack, has a night time setting where it just blows air in chunks, timer and remote.

As for those Dyson fans, what a load of rubbish! They had them in Cost co the other week, and it felt exactly like a standard tower fan. Except it was 3 times the price. As for bladeless, ITS GOT BLADES IN THE BOTTOM! Surely that is false advertising at best? No dust, more hygenic? Some of the reviews are astonishing tbh. Though they do look good!

Thought about the portable aircon myself, but they are noisy, the pipes are usually too short, and tbh, they are expensive to run!
 
Get a nice floor standing fan. The bigger you get the lower you need to have it on, so it makes less noise. 15" or 16" is about right.

PhillyDee said:
As for those Dyson fans, what a load of rubbish!
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This. I still can't believe people are that stupid that they get suckered into buying stuff like this.
 
AC needs to be ducted to the outside. AC actually works by taking the heat out of sucked in air from the hot room and spitting out refrigerated air. From my experience those stand-up portable numbers are not very good, maybe in a small room. But you'll have to live with the noise. A proper AC unit will cost you thousands and it's probably not a feasible install in most UK homes. As the ducting needs to be in the walls/ceilings and you'll need an air handler hidden away in an attic or cupboard and an extractor fan outside.

There's no real easy solution to getting cold air into a hot room. Go for the portable unit, hang the pipe outside of a window, try to seal the gap that'll it create and sit close to it with some earplugs :D
 
thedoc46 said:
A proper AC unit will cost you thousands and it's probably not a feasible install in most UK homes. As the ducting needs to be in the walls/ceilings and you'll need an air handler hidden away in an attic or cupboard and an extractor fan outside.
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You'd be surprised how many homes actually do have air con. There's no need for a hidden "air handler", just need a wall mount and outdoor condenser, and some pipes (not ducting).

But expect to pay around £2,000 for this kind of system, per room.
 
Toaster said:
You'd be surprised how many homes actually do have air con. There's no need for a hidden "air handler", just need a wall mount and outdoor condenser, and some pipes (not ducting).

But expect to pay around £2,000 for this kind of system, per room.
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Not really per room. These units are generally higher than the portable ones can manage. They tend to start at around 15,000 btu and go up to 40,000 btu. a 20,000 btu unit should be able to do the entire upstairs for an average sized semi detached.

Downstairs should remain fairly cool anyway, it's just the upstairs where it'll get rather unbearable.


I bought a 9,000 btu one off ebay last year. £65 collected. It was good but wouldn't cool my giant heat trap of a bedroom (bay window end terrace with sun on the room for the entire day) so i gave that one to my parents and picked up a 12,000 btu unit for me, again off ebay although £75 for this one. It worked a treat and as i didn't use the room during the daytime all i needed to do was switch it on for an hour before bed and the room was lovely to sleep in all night long.

If you go with air con get the highest powered one you can afford, if it can easily cool your room it'll switch onto a thermostat and switch off when not needed. Saving you a fortune. Once the room was cool the unit only clicked on for around 15 minutes every hour so worked out at only 500watts an hour on average. A smaller unit will struggle to cool a room and you'll have it on 24/7 which will cost you a bomb.


Don't get a air condensing unit. They're not worth anything. The water doesn't do much at all and they're almost as noisy as decent aircon unit.

Either get a fan or get and live with it or get an aircon and bask in a little bit of luxury. :p
 
Monserrat said:
Ahhh thanks for the answers guys, especially PhillyDee about Dyson & false marketing.
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To be fair to Dyson it isn't false marketing, it is a bladeless fan, it has no fan blades in it at all, it does have an impeller with blades however but they're completely up front with that in their marketing material.
Granted it's very expensive, price apart they're better than normal fans in every way but for cooling performace AC is unbeatable :)
 
Monserrat said:
My friend has one of those air multipliers made by Dyson, they're all over Amazon etc. It's 10x the cost of a fan but the friend thinks it's the dog's dangly bits.
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that's because it cost so much so he's trying to justify it as an amazing item that was well worth it but in reality that are no different. i've never looked at my fan and thought to myself i wish i could put my hand through this shame it's got a cage and blades.
 
I bought an aircon unit a few years back, its a homebase unbranded one. Think it cost about £100 at the time. It does the job keeps the house at a nice temperature on those uncomfortable summer nights.
 
Buy yourself a cheap fan and a mister bottle. Spray yourself whilst sitting in front of the fan for instant cheap-ass cooling.
 
danza said:
Buy yourself a cheap fan and a mister bottle. Spray yourself whilst sitting in front of the fan for instant cheap-ass cooling.
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This. Will make you freezing if the fan is fast enough lol. Can make you a bit sticky though.
 
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