How can I better circulate air in my apartment?

May 25, 2012 5:26 PM

How can I better circulate air in my apartment?

Here's my apartment floor plan, with A my living room, B my bedroom and X the ac unit. The ac machine works great in the living room and pretty well for the kitchen and living room but doesn't do well in the bedroom. I feel like the air eddies in the hallway. I have a box fan in my room which I usually use for the white noise so I can use that to circulate air if I have to, but I'm worried about making things worse/hotter if I do it wrong.

Anyone know how to cool my bedroom?

 _____________
|             |
|______    ___|
|             |
|_____     |__|
|     |       |
|  B  |   A   |
|     |       |
|     |       |
 ------\_____X 

posted by Carillon to home & garden (7 answers total)

Where is the door to B?
posted by BlahLaLa at 5:28 PM on May 25, 2012

Sorry, it's opens out onto the hallway that connects A and B.
posted by Carillon at 5:30 PM on May 25, 2012

Try running the box fan in the doorway between bedroom and rest of the space (blowing into the bedroom, since cool air close to the floor). This will bring cool air into the bedroom, and hot air should exit the room above the fan and into the main living space. But you might find the AC is not effective at cooling the additional space if it doesn't have enough additional capacity. Worth a try, at least.

Another AC in the bedroom will be the most effective solution.
posted by 6550 at 5:32 PM on May 25, 2012

Seconding another AC unit, if you have the window for it. We use one in an above-garage spare room for guests during the summer months. I don't keep it in the year round; something about having that the AC unit perched directly over the hood of my car gives me the willies. We pull it out of the window and store it in a closet during the rest of the year.

Another option: ceiling fan if you have an existing light fixture in the center of B. Fairly simple to install, short downrods are available if the ceiling's not too high (you can flush-mount them, too), and many come with a light kit if you want to keep some overhead lighting. Get a good one, and it'll be dead silent.
posted by jquinby at 6:04 PM on May 25, 2012

I had a similar setup, although with a wider hallway, and I used an oscillating tower fan in the hallway pointed toward my bedroom. It worked pretty well for me, and probably would for you too if you live alone and can sleep with your bedroom door open.

(A frozen bag of ice on your bag held in place by a sports bra also does wonders.)
posted by shortyJBot at 6:14 PM on May 25, 2012

For the last few years, I used a standing fan in the living room lined up with the AC air current direction, blowing out to the hallway, all other hallway doors closed except living room and bedroom, and another standing fan at the doorway to the bedroom blowing into the bedroom. It made things minimally bearable. In my layout the bedroom is at the end of the hallway, an "L" shape instead of your "U" shape, so in your case, I might use a three-fan set-up: LR > Hall > BR. You want each fan pointed toward the back of the next fan.

But the level at which I had to run the AC to make it just okay was crazy; the living room was frigid, and so much energy totally wasted... so I would mostly only do it when the heat was utterly insane, like over 100F, and suffer the rest of the time. Where I live, that's a whole lot of suffering.

But, we just had a small split system unit installed for the bedroom this very day, omg, and this summer will be luxurious bliss in comparison (and we did the easiest thing and got a number for an AC-guy, friend-of-a-friend, and he came and looked, picked out the AC for us based on our price range and needs, had it delivered yesterday, showed up today and installed, all for a whole lot less – 250 euros, altogether, though we tipped extra – than what we were expecting to pay). I don't know your situation with housing restrictions and budget, but if installing a small AC is out of the question, and you could afford it at all, I might think about something like this portable unit (though it does still need some sort of outlet for the hose to exhaust the hot air).
posted by taz at 4:59 AM on May 26, 2012

Can you install a room-to-room fan from A to B? It would be more efficient than fans in the hallway, and you wouldn't need to crank your AC as much. I would probably add (or even start with) a small window exhaust fan in the bedroom to get air to circulate- you can try pushing air into a room all you like, but if it has nowhere to go not much happens. What's nice about a window fan with a thermostat is that once the AC makes it cool enough in your room, it will shut off (if you want it to). (Ideally, you'd have a high exhaust fan out of the room you are trying to cool, and a low inlet from the AC room, but I know that may not be feasible unless you have the right sort of window, like a double-hung.)

Having the cool air pass through many spaces before it gets to you warms it, as does running multiple little electric motors in your space. You want to aim for as few machines as possible. Try experimenting with your box fan pointing out your window one day, into your bedroom, or from the space on the right end of your hall in the drawing, so that it's blowing cool air moving toward the kitchen down toward your bedroom as well. Crack your window, too.
posted by oneirodynia at 11:07 AM on May 26, 2012