Dorm with no A/C - Recommendations?

[Anonymous]

DD is at a college in New England where freshman dorms have no A/C. She and her roomie have bought 6 fans and are still hot despite it only being 75 this week. Any suggestions for a great fan or portable A/C that doesn’t go in the window? Thanks!

[Anonymous]

The Dyson fans do a great job of blowing cold air, but they are also crazy over priced. Are they hot sleeping or hot just being in the room? If it’s when sleeping what about the bed jet?

[Anonymous]

Create cross-breezes with the fans. Opposite sides of the room pointing at each other. Drape wet (thin) clothes across the front of the fans. Keep lights off when possible.

[Anonymous]

My kid had no a/c at UMD for a year, fans and room darkening drapes to keep out the sun worked. He kept the door open into the hall when he was in it and not sleeping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DD is at a college in New England where freshman dorms have no A/C. She and her roomie have bought 6 fans and are still hot despite it only being 75 this week. Any suggestions for a great fan or portable A/C that doesn’t go in the window? Thanks!

Those fan motors are all giving off heat as are any other appliances that they have; six seems counter productive. One or two fans and opening the windows at night worked when I was in school. During the day, just avoid your room if it's too hot. The gym, cafeteria, library, and academic buildings will all have ac. It's a good time to poke around and find somewhere out of the way to study

[Anonymous]

It won't last forever, before you know it they will complain about the cold. It will also be too hot in the room because of the heat. Fans, open doors while in the room for air movement, pulled drapes to keep temperature in room down. Do they have mattress topper? Those retain a lot of body heat at night. Growing up in New England summers without A/c and high humidity were tough. But we often used frozen water bottles, ice packs or frozen towels/shirts to help sleep at night. On really hot days finding a "chilling" station on campus can help as well. For me the worst was actually in the winter when they cranked the heat and it was so cold outside - you were constantly taking on/off layers going into buildings. The rooms had to have humidifiers to keep down the dry hot air.

[Anonymous]

Most houses in New England don’t even need AC. Pop a window and face 1-2 fans in the correct cross breeze. 6 fans is absurd. It significantly cools down at night so make sure they keep the window open all night. They’re college kids, they’ll survive.

[Anonymous]

They’re fine. Tell them to go to the library.

[Anonymous]

6 fans?? That's absolutely crazy. Do they have a mini refrigerator too? They are probably generating more heat inside by themselves.

[Anonymous]

They should count their lucky stars the temp is so low. When my DC was a freshman they had 90’s and it sucked.

They mostly went to a building that had AC and did not go back to the dorm until after 10pm when the temps were a bit lower. Then they used fans.

[Anonymous]

Aren’t there ways to make homemade AC with fan blowing over ice?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Aren’t there ways to make homemade AC with fan blowing over ice?

The lows are in the 50s, just open a window at night. There is no reason for a student to be spending much time in their room this time of year. They can easily find somewhere with AC to spend their time

[Anonymous]

Please don’t listen to the posters saying they’re/you’re overreacting. Not only is the humidity insane up here, but the temps are going to be in the 90s all next week.

My daughter and her roommate have a black and decker portable A/c that works great as long as they keep their door closed (blinds closed helps, too). She bought it so I don’t know how much it was but I do know it was much less than the Dyson.

[Anonymous]

Wait until the fall.

[Anonymous]

Six fans? Are they tiny? How does a dorm room fit six fans?

The best practice is to put them in the windows with one facing in and one facing out.

And for anyone with kids about to do this, put this on the list of things to consider. Not saying it should determine the whole decision, especially if you're in a colder area, but something to think about so we don't have multiple threads about people shocked to find out something they could have known early on.