Efficient Summertime Room-Cooling Products

When the summer sun starts beating down, homeowners need to use all the tools available to stay cool. We’ve put together the following list of products to help keep your favorite room cool and comfortable this season, while cutting your energy consumption and saving some money in the process.

Frigidaire FAA055P7A Window Air Conditioner

Frigidaire FAA055P7A Window Air Conditioner

Whether or not your home has central air conditioning, a window AC unit can be a good option for keeping an area like a bedroom cool when you need it. Smaller units are energy-efficient, and work well in combination with other approaches to room cooling. They are also great for evening use with just the fan setting, to bring cooler outside air into the room.

Why It Was Chosen:
The Frigidaire FAA055P7A Window Air Conditioner is Energy Star rated, and has an EER (energy efficiency ratio) of 11.0. The compact 5,200 BTU design works well for rooms up to 165 square feet. It features a variable-speed fan, an auto-cool option, and a timer/sleep function, as well as a remote control. “Ionizer/Electrostatic Clean Air Filtration” helps remove allergens, and Low Voltage Compensation helps ensure smooth operation despite power fluctuations.

You can find the Frigidaire FAA055P7A Window Air Conditioner at Amazon for $134.79.

Unistar 4-in-1 Swamp Cooler

Unistar 4-in-1 Swamp Cooler

Portable evaporative coolers use much less electricity than air conditioners, yet they can substantially reduce the temperature in a room. Important note: certain parts of the country are better suited for evaporative coolers since the coolers work best in dry climates, and their effectiveness is reduced when ambient humidity is high.

Why It Was Chosen:
According to the manufacturer, the Unistar can reduce a room’s temperature by up to 12 degrees under optimal conditions. It features three fan speed settings and a shut-off timer, as well as a built-in ionizer to improve air quality. The Unistar is a fairly compact design (13”x 10”x 28”) with caster wheels to move it from room to room, and the unit also includes two ice packs for the water reservoir to increase cooling.

The Unistar 4-In-1 Swamp Cooler is available from Amazon for $89.99.

Hunter Bayview 5-Blade Ceiling Fan

Hunter Bayview 5-Blade Ceiling Fan

A ceiling fan improves air circulation, which makes a warmer room feel much more comfortable. In fact, “wind chill” from a ceiling fan can make an 82-degree room feel like a much-more-reasonable 76 degrees. It will also help distribute cool air if used in conjunction with an air conditioner, allowing the AC to be set at a reduced level while achieving the same results.

Why It Was Chosen:
The Hunter Bayview 54-inch, 5-blade ceiling fan features a quiet, durable motor, and the wide palm-style blades move more air than narrower straight blades. The wobble-free mounting can be attached on level or angled ceilings. It’s also UL damp-rated for settings where moisture can be a problem.

The Hunter Bayview 5-blade ceiling fan is available from Amazon for $159.99.

Seabreeze Turbo-Aire Room Fan

Seabreeze Turbo-Aire Room Fan

Even in settings where a ceiling fan isn’t practical, a room fan will still help circulate air within a room, or it can be positioned to bring cooler fresh air in through an open window.

Why It Was Chosen:
The Seabreeze Turbo-Aire Room Fan has gotten excellent marks from a MetaEfficient editor, as well as Amazon customers. It’s quiet, and it offers three speed settings capable of moving up to 11,000 cubic feet of air per minute. The fan head rotates 90 degrees, and the 15-inch diameter design is compact enough for floor or tabletop usage.

The Seabreeze Turbo-Aire Room Fan is available for $79.95 at Amazon.

Hunter Douglas Duette Architella Honeycomb Window Shades

Hunter Douglas Duette Architella Honeycomb Window Shades

Keeping hot sunlight from streaming through the windows means you can reduce (or maybe even eliminate) AC usage. Plus, window shades with a honeycomb cross-section provide insulation as well as light-blocking.

Why It Was Chosen:
Hunter Douglas Duette Architella shades are some of the most energy-efficient blinds on the market. For summertime cooling, the 1.25” opaque style with a light-blocking metalized core offers maximum efficiency, and blocks 87% of solar heat (a shading coefficient of 0.13). Extra bonus: when the weather cools off again next winter, these blinds provide an insulating R-value of over 7, which is a huge improvement over a double-paned window alone. Finally, these blinds are Greenguard-certified for indoor air quality, and they can qualify homeowners for a federal tax credit of up to $1,500.

Learn more at the Hunter Douglas website.

You might also be interested in our tips for helping your entire home stay efficiently cool in the hot weather.

Electric fans are the most efficient cooling devices. Fans use far less power than air conditioners (see our recent review of the most efficient portable fan). But in hot and humid weather, air conditioning is a great relief. Cooling an entire house uses a lot of energy — it’s much more efficient to only cool the areas where you are sleeping or working, by using a portable air conditioner.

The one of most efficient portable air conditioner we seen is the Newair AC-12000E (pictured above). It has an EER of 14.4. An EER (Energy Efficiency Ratio) of 12 or above is considered very efficient. You can read a detailed explanation of EER ratings here. The Newair AC-12000E is available from Amazon for $389.95

The 7000 BTU Haier HPE07XC6 is one of the least expensive portable air conditioners available.

Reviewers say it does a fine job in very small rooms of about 150-square-feet or less. Since most of the condensed water removed from the air is expelled through the main exhaust hose, you don’t have to empty the water-collection cup too often. The only complaint about this AC unit is that it’s a bit loud, one buyer on Amazon says:

This air conditioner is excellent for the heat of living in the valley near Los Angeles. But it gets really loud, especially when changing over from cool to fan mode ( when it reaches the desired temperature). However, it is not much louder than the multiple fans I had to use before, so I would rate this as excellent.

This air conditioner has an EER of 8.2. It measures just 21″ x 17″ x 34″.

Available from Amazon for $353.

This portable fan, the Seabreeze Turbo Aire, has an aerodynamic design inspired by a jet engine. It produces a high velocity airstream through an optimized blade shape and orientation.

The manufacturer claims it moves three times as much air as a comparable fan, while operating quietly. On a low setting, the Turbo Aire consumes just 65 watts, and on a high setting it uses about 110 watts. They say “at 20 feet, Turbo-Aire delivers over 11,000 cubic feet of air per minute”.

The Turbo Aire is available from Amazon for $65. The fan’s homepage is here.

These “Vari-Cyclone” ceiling fans from FanWorks are perhaps the most efficient ceiling fans available. The fans utilize what Fanworks calls “Gossamer Wind” blade design technology, which is said to deliver 40% more air flow without any increase in power use. They also run on DC power, which also adds to their efficiency when off-grid power is used.

On the advantages of running under DC power, Fanworks says:

The average AC-powered ceiling fan draws between 0.5 and 1 amp. When an inverter is used to run the AC ceiling fan, you are pulling 5 to 10 amps DC to run the fan. This does not include the power consumed by the inverter to produce the AC power required by the ceiling fan.

The Vari-Cyclone, DC-powered ceiling fan, runs directly from your battery bank, no inverter required, and draws only 0.5 amp @ 12 VDC, making the Vari-Cyclone 10 times more energy efficient than an AC-powered ceiling fan.

Here are some stats:

Power Consumption: (with 3-blade configuration):
At 12 volt: 60 rpm, 7 watts, 2500 cfm.
At 24 volt: 120 rpm, 27 watts, 3400 cfm.

You can see a very in-depth analysis of the performance of these fans here.

Homepage: FanWorks

Available from: Survival Unlimited ($175-$195)

A fine example of biomimicry, the PaxFan is an innovative, spiral fan created by Jay Harman, an Australian inventor. His domestic exhaust fan is half as noisy and three-quarters more efficient than the average fan. Sierra Magazine reports:

Harman spent a lot of his life watching water flow, both as a diver and as a sailor, one of those principles fairly leaped out at him. Liquids flow in a consistent pattern, a three-dimensional centripetal spiral. “You pull the plug in a bathtub, and you get a whirlpool,” he explains. “The shape of that movement is common throughout everything, from the spiraling galaxies to the shape of your eyelash. And so what we did is reverse-engineer the whirlpool.”

Harman’s company, Pax Scientific, applied the spiraling geometric pattern of the whirlpool to the design of a domestic exhaust fan. What he calls the “Pax streamlining principle” also applies to industrial mixers, automotive cooling systems, water pumps, even devices for circulating blood in the body. His company now leases its technology to the producers of a wide variety of industrial, commercial, and residential applications. His team of engineers is working on methods for applying spiraling geometry to wind turbines, aircraft fuselages, and marine propellers.

Increasing the efficiency of everyday technology is a huge boon for the environment, Harman points out. “If you use three-quarters less energy, then you have three-quarters less pollutants going into the atmosphere.” He hopes that designs like his are also changing the way the world looks at nature. “Nature has already solved every problem humans face and have ever faced,” he says. “If you see nature as our university, you’re not going to burn down the university; you’re going to protect it.”

Via Sierra Magazine

These Endless Breeze fans are powerful,
portable, high volume 12 volt fans with a twelve inch blade that operates
at three speeds. Air movement of up to 1000 CMF (cubic feet per minute)
is a major breakthrough in 12 volt portable fans. Standing
only fourteen inches high on retractable legs and less than three inches
thick it travels and stores easily. It weights under five pounds.

Power Consumption:
Low: 1.18 Amps
Medium: 1.62 Amps
High: 2.58 Amps

Available from: Amazon ($60)
or Pplmotorhomes.com ($62.95)