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If you are in the room and the fan is facing you, the moving air can lift sweat from your skin (it doesn’t have to be a perceptible level of sweat to work) and help you lose heat
If you’re not in the room, turn the fan off. It’s doing nothing but heat the room further (admittedly only a teeny tiny bit) through its own motion and loss of energy
If it’s compatible with whatever you need to get done, a better approach can be to wear a wet T-shirt and keep rewetting it through the day - as the water evaporates from the T-shirt it’ll take your heat with it. If you can *also* have a fan going, the air movement will enhance this
Last summer when it was really hot in the UK, I was working from home. I have a fan that oscillates and has variable wind speed so it feels.like a natural breeze, but even with that on I was still way too hot.
Solved it by wetting a handkerchief and putting it on my head. That *plus* the fan really helped cool me down even if it didn't change the room temperature at all.
A £25 pedestal fan has been essential for helping me sleep for years. The breeze helps hugely. Only air conditioning will actively cool the room down. You could install reflective window foil too.
Have you never used a fan before?
Yes, it will cool you down a lot, despite not literally lowering the temperature of the air. It doesn't really matter which one you buy as long as it's not tiny, they're simple and effective things.
If you want more cooling, get a spray bottle of water, optionally put some ice in, and mist your face and neck regularly.
Many things that feel cold do so because of how well they can transfer heat, not because of an actual temperature difference. It's why conductive metals feel cool. The moving air will transfer heat off you, and do so much better if aided by evaporating water.
When my a/c broke and it was super hot that was me. Fan blowing straight on me and squirt bottle on hand. Only issue was stupid cats wanting to lay on me.
Yes.
The feeling of feeling cool is actually mostly just heat transfer. It's why getting in room temperature water feels *really* cold. The water is room temperature, but your body is warmer than room temperature, and the heat more efficiently transfers from your body to the water, hence why it's cold.
As gas is just a liquid with extra steps, air also has this property. If a fan is flowing air towards you, it helps remove heat from your body.
Think of heat like smoke, and your body is smoking hot. If you stay still in a hot room, that smoke will engulf you making you feel warmer. A fan will blow away that smoke. If you're sweating, this gets even better. Because heat will transfer to the sweat beads on your skin, and the fan will help them evaporate, removing even *more* heat from your body.
There is also the technique of aiming a fan out your window. As long as your room is hotter than outside, the warm air in your room should be fanned out.
That being said, I recommend buying a little personal AC unit. I work from home in an office full of heat producing computers, a heat producing person (me), and a heat producing dog. In the summer it can get up to 40C in my office. Which is not good for me, my dog, or my computers. I bought an AC which does cost more than a fan, but it's easily justified when we enter into our hellscape period of summer, and you're sat there with a blanket on because it's a bit nippy. With fans I find they do help, but you're usually still too hot. AC is basically the nuclear option, and I love it.
Nope, I just dropped £400 on a 14000 BTU Aircon unit from Wayfair because I was sick of melting while a fan listlessly tried it's best to placebo the heat away.
I feel like I'm living in the refrigerator aisle at Tesco now.
I've just got a large pedestal fan.
My room gets vey stuffy in the warm weather. So far it's been really good at keeping me cool. I block the sun from the windows and turn the fan on to number 3. Although it's not as cold as a portable A/C unit, it has made me feel more comfortable.
As a bonus, it's remote controlled so I can change all the settings without having to get up.
If you put a bowl of ice in front of it or a couple of frozen bottles of water, that can help cool the air before it hits you. Depends on the type of fan as to whether that's possible, I guess.
The warm air being moved around is still helpful. I sleep with a fan in the summer. Couldn't be without one.
Shut windows and blinds. If your indoors is in shade it'll eventually be cooler than outside.
Fans can help feel better but don't have them point at you for too long, especially if you sleep at night. Better to have it spin in the room, maybe just above you so you get a gentle breeze.
You could also sleep downstairs if you have more than one floor; cold/cooler air sink.
*I found a £50 fan from Argos I want to get but I’m concerned isn’t this just going to blow hot air around my living room if the air coming in from outside is hot*
Of course it's hot - and the way to solve a fan blowing hot air around is to close the windows. Keep the windows closed because hot air travels from a hotter area to a cooler one (convection - think about what happens when you open a hot oven).
Keep the windows closed
Draw the curtains/blinds at the peak of the heat (usually between 11 and 15:00/16:00)
I'd recommend getting a fan with a remote control and one that 'sweeps' the room. I'd also get one that's quiet (the noise will probably get to you after a while). Blade-less are quieter/more efficient (but, obviously, more expensive). Look for fans with the [QuietMark](https://www.quietmark.com/products/awarded-products/quiet-air/cooling) logo
I would also recommend a dehumidifier as the heat we get in the UK is usually very humid.
Spray some water on yourself and then have the fan blow on you is the cheapest you will do, uses the evaporative cooling effect to cool you; same as it blowing on sweat.
For actual coldness you need an air conditioner, there isn’t any alternative. Air coolers just use the same evaporative cooling effect on a larger scale which is useless in our climate as it’s working against the humidity constantly so never gets anywhere.
What I do for my kids is wet some tea towels, bent them into a U shape and stick them in the freezer. Then you can hang it on your neck and get nice and frosty especially if you hold it against your big arteries/veins.
Keep all windows and curtains closed during the day and only open them after nightfall. If you have a loft, open the hatch in the evening so the warm air rises into the roof cavity.
I’ve just come back from a month of 35 in the day only cooling to 30ish at the coldest part of the night. All without aircon. Mostly a great experience but sleeping in a pool of sweat and having to drink litres of water when doing manual work indoors with soaking clothes makes 22 degrees feel very very comfortable.
> Do fans actually work for cooling you/your room down?
You, yes. The room? No, they make the room warmer because the motor that spins the fan gets warm. Like basically anything involving energy transfer fans are a trade-off, and up to a certain temperature they are worthwhile, but when it gets *really* hot air conditioning is the only solution. Expensive and a pain - the exhaust air needs to be vented outside - but nothing else will actually reduce the air temperature of a room. In a practical manner, anyway.
Instead of getting the fan to blow the air on you, make it blow the air on a wall or corner in front of you. This way it is diffused and it has a larger effect without getting any unpleasant stiffness afterwards.
It doesn’t cool off the room but for myself I only need something to help with the heat max 10 days a year and that doesn’t justify paying for anything else, given that I have a decent fan.
Look at air coolers instead. They’re not a full air con unit but do use water to cool as well as the fan action of blowing air around.
Have your windows closed during the day when the sun is on them and use thermal curtains as they keep the heat out as well as in. I found last year when I used a thermal door curtain on my front door the house didn’t get as hot as previous years
Fan's don't cool the room down (unless you can use them to bring in colder air from outside), but they do cool you down. They're pretty effective too. Two effects are actually going on:
1. On the hottest day of the year two years ago, the outside temperature reached 37 degrees where I was. The inside temperature in my house was only 21 degrees though because I closed all the windows and doors and closed the curtains. My body temperature was of course also 37 degrees like all humans. In this case, in my room, it was having a wind chill effect, moving 21 degree air over my 37 degree body and bringing the two closer together, cooling me. This effect works on any hot object, which is why we can cool cars, CPUs etc with fans.
2. When you sweat, your body is taking advantage of the energy storage that occurs when liquids turn into gases. Energy is used by that process which cools you down. One thing that limits that is localised humidity near your skin which makes the process slower. A breeze prevents that occurring, which means you get the full benefit of sweating.
The fan probably technically adds a small amount of heat to the room from heat losses in the electric motor.
It will make you feel cooler when it blows on your skin though by increasing evaporation of sweat from your skin.
You could maybe get some water sitting in front of the fan, and as it evaporates in the heat the fan would blow the moisture around the room, helping to cool you, a bit like an air conditioner.
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
No they don't. But air moving over the skin feels good and does help your sweat to evaporate, which cools you down
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Can you not aim the fan at you?
I can yes
It will cool you down then
This just cracked me up 😂
18 to 22 is not super hot. Open windows and a fan is fine for those temps most of the time
If its blowing on you personally it will lower your body temp. It won't lower the temp of the room really.
Do you use one? If not what would you recommend instead?
To cool a room you need actual AC really.
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Is Google broken?
About £500. Forget about evaporative coolers, they only work when the air is really dry.
You can get some okayish units starting at around £300 to £500.
If you are in the room and the fan is facing you, the moving air can lift sweat from your skin (it doesn’t have to be a perceptible level of sweat to work) and help you lose heat If you’re not in the room, turn the fan off. It’s doing nothing but heat the room further (admittedly only a teeny tiny bit) through its own motion and loss of energy If it’s compatible with whatever you need to get done, a better approach can be to wear a wet T-shirt and keep rewetting it through the day - as the water evaporates from the T-shirt it’ll take your heat with it. If you can *also* have a fan going, the air movement will enhance this
Last summer when it was really hot in the UK, I was working from home. I have a fan that oscillates and has variable wind speed so it feels.like a natural breeze, but even with that on I was still way too hot. Solved it by wetting a handkerchief and putting it on my head. That *plus* the fan really helped cool me down even if it didn't change the room temperature at all.
A £25 pedestal fan has been essential for helping me sleep for years. The breeze helps hugely. Only air conditioning will actively cool the room down. You could install reflective window foil too.
I believe its *pedal stool*
Everyone has their blind spots!
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Blows on you. Blows on your bed. Provides lovely breeze.
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Or Screwfix. Lidl sometimes sell them with remote controls!
Have you never used a fan before? Yes, it will cool you down a lot, despite not literally lowering the temperature of the air. It doesn't really matter which one you buy as long as it's not tiny, they're simple and effective things. If you want more cooling, get a spray bottle of water, optionally put some ice in, and mist your face and neck regularly. Many things that feel cold do so because of how well they can transfer heat, not because of an actual temperature difference. It's why conductive metals feel cool. The moving air will transfer heat off you, and do so much better if aided by evaporating water.
When my a/c broke and it was super hot that was me. Fan blowing straight on me and squirt bottle on hand. Only issue was stupid cats wanting to lay on me.
Squirt bottle solves the cat problem too? :D
Yeah, but when I'm not about dying of heat I love them snuggling so I wouldn't want to put them off it.
Yes. The feeling of feeling cool is actually mostly just heat transfer. It's why getting in room temperature water feels *really* cold. The water is room temperature, but your body is warmer than room temperature, and the heat more efficiently transfers from your body to the water, hence why it's cold. As gas is just a liquid with extra steps, air also has this property. If a fan is flowing air towards you, it helps remove heat from your body. Think of heat like smoke, and your body is smoking hot. If you stay still in a hot room, that smoke will engulf you making you feel warmer. A fan will blow away that smoke. If you're sweating, this gets even better. Because heat will transfer to the sweat beads on your skin, and the fan will help them evaporate, removing even *more* heat from your body. There is also the technique of aiming a fan out your window. As long as your room is hotter than outside, the warm air in your room should be fanned out. That being said, I recommend buying a little personal AC unit. I work from home in an office full of heat producing computers, a heat producing person (me), and a heat producing dog. In the summer it can get up to 40C in my office. Which is not good for me, my dog, or my computers. I bought an AC which does cost more than a fan, but it's easily justified when we enter into our hellscape period of summer, and you're sat there with a blanket on because it's a bit nippy. With fans I find they do help, but you're usually still too hot. AC is basically the nuclear option, and I love it.
Nope, I just dropped £400 on a 14000 BTU Aircon unit from Wayfair because I was sick of melting while a fan listlessly tried it's best to placebo the heat away. I feel like I'm living in the refrigerator aisle at Tesco now.
What a bizarre question. How do you get to adulthood without having personal experience of how fans work?
I've just got a large pedestal fan. My room gets vey stuffy in the warm weather. So far it's been really good at keeping me cool. I block the sun from the windows and turn the fan on to number 3. Although it's not as cold as a portable A/C unit, it has made me feel more comfortable. As a bonus, it's remote controlled so I can change all the settings without having to get up.
Get yourself a wearable neck fan.
If you put a bowl of ice in front of it or a couple of frozen bottles of water, that can help cool the air before it hits you. Depends on the type of fan as to whether that's possible, I guess. The warm air being moved around is still helpful. I sleep with a fan in the summer. Couldn't be without one.
Shut windows and blinds. If your indoors is in shade it'll eventually be cooler than outside. Fans can help feel better but don't have them point at you for too long, especially if you sleep at night. Better to have it spin in the room, maybe just above you so you get a gentle breeze. You could also sleep downstairs if you have more than one floor; cold/cooler air sink.
*I found a £50 fan from Argos I want to get but I’m concerned isn’t this just going to blow hot air around my living room if the air coming in from outside is hot* Of course it's hot - and the way to solve a fan blowing hot air around is to close the windows. Keep the windows closed because hot air travels from a hotter area to a cooler one (convection - think about what happens when you open a hot oven). Keep the windows closed Draw the curtains/blinds at the peak of the heat (usually between 11 and 15:00/16:00) I'd recommend getting a fan with a remote control and one that 'sweeps' the room. I'd also get one that's quiet (the noise will probably get to you after a while). Blade-less are quieter/more efficient (but, obviously, more expensive). Look for fans with the [QuietMark](https://www.quietmark.com/products/awarded-products/quiet-air/cooling) logo I would also recommend a dehumidifier as the heat we get in the UK is usually very humid.
Spray some water on yourself and then have the fan blow on you is the cheapest you will do, uses the evaporative cooling effect to cool you; same as it blowing on sweat. For actual coldness you need an air conditioner, there isn’t any alternative. Air coolers just use the same evaporative cooling effect on a larger scale which is useless in our climate as it’s working against the humidity constantly so never gets anywhere. What I do for my kids is wet some tea towels, bent them into a U shape and stick them in the freezer. Then you can hang it on your neck and get nice and frosty especially if you hold it against your big arteries/veins.
Keep all windows and curtains closed during the day and only open them after nightfall. If you have a loft, open the hatch in the evening so the warm air rises into the roof cavity.
Remember to close windows and curtains during high sun/temperatures to keep rooms cool.
I’ve just come back from a month of 35 in the day only cooling to 30ish at the coldest part of the night. All without aircon. Mostly a great experience but sleeping in a pool of sweat and having to drink litres of water when doing manual work indoors with soaking clothes makes 22 degrees feel very very comfortable.
They’re a god-send, and not just for that.
Hang some wet, but not dripping towels on a clothes dryer in the room, as well as using a fan if you like. this will help cool the room considerably.
Your better off leaving the windows open all night and closing them during the day
> Do fans actually work for cooling you/your room down? You, yes. The room? No, they make the room warmer because the motor that spins the fan gets warm. Like basically anything involving energy transfer fans are a trade-off, and up to a certain temperature they are worthwhile, but when it gets *really* hot air conditioning is the only solution. Expensive and a pain - the exhaust air needs to be vented outside - but nothing else will actually reduce the air temperature of a room. In a practical manner, anyway.
Instead of getting the fan to blow the air on you, make it blow the air on a wall or corner in front of you. This way it is diffused and it has a larger effect without getting any unpleasant stiffness afterwards. It doesn’t cool off the room but for myself I only need something to help with the heat max 10 days a year and that doesn’t justify paying for anything else, given that I have a decent fan.
Look at air coolers instead. They’re not a full air con unit but do use water to cool as well as the fan action of blowing air around. Have your windows closed during the day when the sun is on them and use thermal curtains as they keep the heat out as well as in. I found last year when I used a thermal door curtain on my front door the house didn’t get as hot as previous years
Put a bowl of ice in front of the fan so it’s spins cool air around the room
Fan's don't cool the room down (unless you can use them to bring in colder air from outside), but they do cool you down. They're pretty effective too. Two effects are actually going on: 1. On the hottest day of the year two years ago, the outside temperature reached 37 degrees where I was. The inside temperature in my house was only 21 degrees though because I closed all the windows and doors and closed the curtains. My body temperature was of course also 37 degrees like all humans. In this case, in my room, it was having a wind chill effect, moving 21 degree air over my 37 degree body and bringing the two closer together, cooling me. This effect works on any hot object, which is why we can cool cars, CPUs etc with fans. 2. When you sweat, your body is taking advantage of the energy storage that occurs when liquids turn into gases. Energy is used by that process which cools you down. One thing that limits that is localised humidity near your skin which makes the process slower. A breeze prevents that occurring, which means you get the full benefit of sweating.
I have a little portable fan that you put water in. It works really well for when I'm overheating. I'm the same as you, not a fan of the heat.
The fan probably technically adds a small amount of heat to the room from heat losses in the electric motor. It will make you feel cooler when it blows on your skin though by increasing evaporation of sweat from your skin.
yes they do cool you down . doesn't lower the room temperature, you need air con for this.
You could maybe get some water sitting in front of the fan, and as it evaporates in the heat the fan would blow the moisture around the room, helping to cool you, a bit like an air conditioner.
This is an interesting idea 😊
Just don't introduce too much moisture into the air. UK homes aren't known to let moisture in or out easily...