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trying to keep cool


Denise

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Can anyone suggest where to get some kind of cooling apparatus?

We just moved down to Ajijic and are finding it a bit warm, even with the ceiling fans. I am sure we will acclimate to the weather here, but right now we need something.

Any suggestions? Do you know someone who might be selling one?

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Since whole house air conditioning is a real rarity in these parts and would break the budget on electric bills, I've found that having at least one room as a refuge from the heat makes life from April to the rains more comfortable:  If you own the house, you can install a mini-split air conditioner, available from Electro Venta and others.  That store is on the Carreterra on the Lakeside in Riberas.  I think Tio Sams on the Libramento, past the shopping mall, also has cooling units.  I don't know how these units are installed in a rental, but worth checking.  Adding a floor fan to the ceiling fans helps, too.  Walmart has these.

 

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We have a swamp cooler on wheels, which we use in the living room and then move to the bedroom at night. It provides just enough cool air to make us comfortable, and is less expensive than air conditioners, which would be hard in our house anyway, as they would not fit our windows. Bought ours second-hand, but I imagine Costco and/or Home Depot would have them. BTW, ours has small blinking red and green lights and swivels from side to side; our dog is afraid of it.

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Have you noticed that the relative humidity is very low most of the time when it is hot? In fact it is lower than the ideal level. But this means that you can use an evaporative cooler or swamp cooler to lower the temperature of the house. And a swamp cooler uses a small fraction of the electricity that an A/C does. I have a whole house roof top evaporative cooler that when on low uses less than 500 watts per hour and has three vents emptying the cooler air into two different bedrooms and one into the upstairs TV room.

Lately when the outside air was in the high 80s my evaporative cooler brought air into the house some 20 degrees cooler than what was outside. I always bring in the dry outside air that has been cooled. Now once its cooled the inside air is more humid so I find it inefficient to try to cool the inside air more using a swamp cooler.

Now living about as far up the hill in Ajijic as one can drive, my humidity always seems slightly lower than the Chapala weather station which is closer to the lake.

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I bought an evaporative cooler from Home Depot about 9 years ago.  Can't recall the name.  The catch:  the water catcher tray was so small that it ran over, and due to it's location on the cooler, there wasn't room enough to put a larger container there.  Home Depot took it back, fortunately.  So.....check this out before you buy one.

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I purchased a window mounted unit that cooled the dry hot air from the outside and forced the cooled and humidified air inside. for a house some 15 years ago. Sadly I do not remember where the builder architect got the unit. Today in another house the rooftop unit is outside too. In both cases the only thing they send inside is the cooler more humid air.  No worry about anything else

I also had an inside unit of the type others are talking about here, It would work OK when I first turned it on, but as it ran, the room became more humid and the cooler could no longer work because the air inside was too humid.

The best type is one that draws the dry air in from outside and sends the cooler more humid air into the house.

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That's sure better than nothing, hammerhead.  Also if you need to visit the grandchildren up in that part of the north that is cool, you could go north during the hottest period as I have sometimes done

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It really helps to open the windows at night when it is cooler out than in and allow the house to cool and then close them when it is hotter outside than inside. The temperature in my house just reached 79 F and it's time to turn on my evaporative cooler.  I don't really need it today but its about 86 F out and I shall enjoy the cool humidified air as it comes into the house. I just turn it on and the incoming temperature is dropping now to 73 F and soon to  (4 minute pause) Now 69.5 F and I will update this in 10 minutes.

OK it's been 10 minutes and the fast moving cool air coming into the house through three large vents is coming in at about 65 F.

I will leave the unit on for perhaps 40 minutes and cool the house for the evening. Oh the humidity outside according to my cheap wireless meter show it at 18 now 19%

 

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47 minutes ago, Bontekoe said:

The best and list expensive solution

Open the windows

Oh, right.  None of us would have thought of THAT!:rolleyes:

As a matter of fact, it's best for those of us who live in thick walled old houses to CLOSE the windows in the morning, since that's as cool as it's going to get.

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Evaporative air is the way to go, but get a unit that is large enough to do the job. I bought an attractive "tower" fan model from Home Depot and while the fan was nice and pivoted side to side, the evaporative pads weren't large enough to really do much good, even putting ice pacs in the water reservoir didn't resolve the problem . I loved the fan, but it fell short of the expected results.

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We have a 20" box fan. I put it in an upstairs window on exhaust (fan blows out) for about an hour in the evening, between 8 and 9 and again in the morning. Works very well to exhaust the warm air and replace with cool air. I saw Walmart had some of the box fans recently. 

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22 minutes ago, tomgates said:

We have a 20" box fan. I put it in an upstairs window on exhaust (fan blows out) for about an hour in the evening, between 8 and 9 and again in the morning. Works very well to exhaust the warm air and replace with cool air. I saw Walmart had some of the box fans recently. 

OMG!!!!! I grew up in Brooklyn and that was what I thought was A/C for longest time. LOL!!! But, it works, thank you, I forgot about it.

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The problem with MX houses is that they are one big thermal mass, a heat sink. They're brick, concrete, steel and tile with no insulation. When the seasons change the mass slowly cools in the winter and then the heat of your body is being sucked out of you to the cooler walls and the reverse happens this time of year, the mass heats during the day and gives it back all night. Exhausting the air helps and bringing in cool air in the mornings helps as well, but it's a short season. When the rains come in June it will all be lovely and we up here in TX will be cooking big time for the next 4 months.

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My mantra has always been "the air won't come in unless it's got a way to get out". Cross breezes are your friend. Open the house up at night and keep it closed during the day. Drapes drawn over any windows where you might get solar gain. It's only for a couple of months.

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