What To Do If You Don't Have Central Air (2024)

It doesn’t get more convenient than this ih-hoe option when it comes to keeping the cool air coming. As the name intimates, portable room fans can be transported with relative ease among various rooms in your home. If you have a relatively small space and don’t want to shoulder the expense of purchasing and installing several separate fans or air conditioners for the bedroom, living room and kitchen, you can move a portable fan between rooms with relative ease.

Some air fans in this category also come with an added bonus–the ability to clean or filter the air as it cools it, so if your home keeps a significant amount of dust due to carpets, pets or other dust-inducing elements, you may want to accomplish two tasks with one product and select a portable room fan with this feature. Be sure to ask if you need to change out the filter on these fans, which do not require a traditional window to set be set up in.

If the answer is yes, you may want to note down the item number for future reference, or purchase one or two while you can.

Whole fan fans are typically positioned in the attic of house or dwelling (typically onto the ceiling), where warm air is blown out from the windows. Whole house fans can work to effectively cool down your home at a fraction of the cost that comes with using an air conditioner, but there are some considerations if you’re exploring this option.

A good rule of practice for using whole house fans is to run it in the early part of the evening hours, when the time is peak to not only remove all of the warm air that has collected throughout the day, but also create coolness for the entire building that will linger and keep you comfortable into the night. You will need to experiment with which windows to open, and just how far to open them–in order to create maximum cooling.

For example, upstairs spaces will cool off most effectively with the windows halfway opened on this level, and the windows on the ground level completely closed.

Evaporative air coolers work by cooling warm air that passes through it (once the warm air makes contact with the cool water housed within the unit, an evaporative and ultimately cooling effect takes place) and can significantly reduce the air temperature in your home. These units won’t recirculate cooled air like central air conditioners do, so the air in your home will not only be cool, but fresh.

Be sure to give the warm air that you don’t want a place to escape by cracking the window while operating. It’s important to note that evaporative air coolers do require a bit of maintenance to ensure that the unit is operating properly, so be prepared to have your unit serviced at the one-year mark, with maintenance appointments occurring every other year after that. Some evaporative coolers have a feature that allows you select vent-only operation, which allows you to operate the machine as a whole house fan, so if you’re shopping around for a unit that is something to keep in mind.

Experts do advise exploring other cooling methods if you live in areas prone to high humidity, because as the warm air passes through and goes through the evaporative process, humidity is created and can make an uncomfortable situation worse.

Think of this as an air conditioner on wheels (also known as casters), so you can move it from room to room within a small or compact space. These units are relatively easy to install as well, so if you don’t want to commit to the permanency of an air conditioner unit that may need to be taken down from the window during the winter months or covered with a quality AC cover to keep your home’s heating system running effectively, this may be a good option for you.

The newer portable air conditioner models available on the market are even more compact than ever, taking up about as much space as the size of a shoebox. With a little compartment for water collection—or if you really want to amp up the cooling effects, you can place a few cubes of ice in the unit—the hardest part of operating this contraption will be keeping the battery charged up enough that it can run for several hours without conking out on you, as well as replacing the water and/or ice constantly, but that may be a small price to pay to keep your cool.

Window air conditioners work by gathering hot air from a room or space and dispelling the hot through its exhaust vent. Window air conditioners have gained popularity, particularly in recent years, because of their ability to cool a space down at a fraction to the cost that central air does and its availability.

It’s estimated that window ACs use less than one-third the amount of energy that central air does in the same amount of time. You can get an AC unit for a couple hundred dollars at any retail store that electrics and home appliances are sold, and if you time it right your purchase can come at just right time if purchased during a big holiday sale or in the off-season.

Be sure to measure the area that you are seeking to cool off so that you know how many BTUs you need in your AC to get the job done. Also plan on performing maintenance on your window AC at least once a year to keep it performing optimally. If you use your AC frequently or outside of the three to four months that warm weather is peak, you may also want to consider setting up an appointment to have your AC cleaned and serviced.