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Who's in the UK and has caved in and bought air conditioning?

stanto — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 21:21:41 GMT

I picked up something like this about three years ago. No regrets.

Though I can't help but feel like I'm also adding to the climate problem.

RE: Who's in the UK and has caved in and bought air conditioning?

beacon_dave — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 21:54:13 GMT

For a dual 9" that is quite a low flow rate and a lot of noise. The AC Infinity 8" duct fans are rated at 807 CFM and 10" fans at 1201 CFM in comparison. The 32 dBA of the 6" on minimum was attractive for sleep though. 🙂

Visualising what is actually going on with airflow throughout the house is the tricky bit. Not sure if there is a low cost practical sensor solution that could be used to log it alongside multiple temperature sensors.

I recall the cheap 4" duct fans that I was experimenting with twenty years ago in the office, playing all sorts of tunes with the wind loading on them.

RE: Who's in the UK and has caved in and bought air conditioning?

ralphjy — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 20:40:55 GMT

I'm using a generic fan from Amazon Comfort-CZ319WT-Reversible-Auto-Locking-Expanders. Fairly wimpy Air Flow Capacity 272 cfm. Speed 2884 rpm. Noise Level 53.3 db. So, not that quiet. I run the higher speed which is what I think the specs apply to. It is quieter at the lower speed, but I haven't tried measuring the impact to cooldown time. I do run one on the first floor too, but the results seem to superpose - so I imagine having intake and exhaust on the same level provides some degree of isolation. I should do a smoke test to view the airflow 😆. One humorous note, we sleep in a downstairs bedroom with the doors closed and I don't notice the sound of the fans, but one night I realized that I could hear what is apparently the beat frequency of the two fans.

RE: Who's in the UK and has caved in and bought air conditioning?

beacon_dave — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 19:44:35 GMT

A great party trick, just remember your long bag.

I notice though that a number of cooling fans appear to tend to push air out more to the sides rather than directly to the front, in which case the further they are placed back may reduce the amount actually making it through the window opening. In which case they may benefit from some sort of cowling.

RE: Who's in the UK and has caved in and bought air conditioning?

obones — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 19:27:45 GMT

This has all to do with the Bernoulli effect where nearby air is "sucked" along the one blown by the fan.

Look for videos with Bernoulli and bag as keywords for quite graphic display of the principle.

For more practical applications, this same principle is used by "fanless" fans sold by a famous UK vacuum cleaner manufacturer.

RE: Who's in the UK and has caved in and bought air conditioning?

beacon_dave — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 19:21:14 GMT

[quote userid="2238" url="~/members-area/f/forum/57067/who-s-in-the-uk-and-has-caved-in-and-bought-air-conditioning/237861"]I’m not sure I understand the effect of spacing the fan a meter from the window.[/quote]

Is the spacing to prevent the air from being drawn in from the window then pushed straight back out ?
You won't have that issue with the fan fitted into the window though.

[quote userid="2238" url="~/members-area/f/forum/57067/who-s-in-the-uk-and-has-caved-in-and-bought-air-conditioning/237861"]When I lived in California we had high volume whole house fans that drew air from the house through the attic and out the side of the attic.[/quote]

I saw these when looking at 6" - 8" duct fans.

Looks like 10" - 12" in size and 1201 - 1604 CFM

https://acinfinity.com/whole-house-fan-systems/

RE: Who's in the UK and has caved in and bought air conditioning?

ralphjy — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 18:55:45 GMT

I’m not sure I understand the effect of spacing the fan a meter from the window. Do you have a link to this study? Like Dave, I tried exhausting air from the upstairs window (I had the fan physically in the window with the sash down). I think I agree with Dave that this would work if a large volume of air was moving.

When I lived in California we had high volume whole house fans that drew air from the house through the attic and out the side of the attic. Those were very effective. I don’t remember what they were rated, but you definitely knew when they were operating.

RE: Who's in the UK and has caved in and bought air conditioning?

beacon_dave — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 18:37:40 GMT

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly76jlxljlo

"...Placing the fan next to the open window and pointing it inwards, towards the rest of the room, can help.

But pointing the fan towards the window - to try and blow the hot air in your home outwards, as some social media posts advise - isn't particularly useful as you would not get the cooling benefits of having it pointed towards you..."

RE: Who's in the UK and has caved in and bought air conditioning?

beacon_dave — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 18:17:01 GMT

That was my original thought as well but it wasn't working in actual practise.

Lower kitchen window open and mechanical venting out of upstairs bedroom window.

The downstairs kitchen appeared to be benefiting but not the upstairs bedroom.

I think the reason is a large volume of air needs to be moved through the entire house before the exit point starts to get the benefit. At the same time trapped building heat upstairs is heating any cooler air being drawn up through it.

RE: Who's in the UK and has caved in and bought air conditioning?

beacon_dave — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 18:06:40 GMT

Thanks for this, it is really useful info.

To solve the casement window issue, I'm kind of thinking of a rectangular board that fits over the window opening then quarter turn latches to lock it in place (or alternatively hinge it from the ceiling). Then fit fans / duct flanges to the board.

The upper vent windows in the bedroom are around a 19" x 10" opening, so could perhaps take up to two 8" side-by-side, or one 10", or one 12"+ with a round to oblong/rectangular manifold.

What sort of fans are you using and are you running both at full speed ? My 6" duct fan at full speed moves a lot of air (402 CFM) but at the expense of a lot of noise. On minimum setting though it's very quiet.

However I think the bigger issue here is that I'm hitting a plateau long before reaching outside temperature. I'm not getting that same cooling overnight that you are seeing without ventilation. (26°C is around 79°F).

Some mornings this year I've been waking up to 30.0°C (86°F) even though overnight temperature outside has been forecast at around 20°C.

I was wondering if a push-pull arrangement in the one room might work with cooler outside air being pulled in through one window vent and pushing warm air out of the other.

RE: Who's in the UK and has caved in and bought air conditioning?

Jan Cumps — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 17:56:18 GMT

[quote userid="41967" url="~/members-area/f/forum/57067/who-s-in-the-uk-and-has-caved-in-and-bought-air-conditioning/237855"]I found that by pulling the cooler evening outside air into the room lowered the room temperature much quicker than pushing the hot room air out.[/quote]

A university in the Netherlands had the opposite finding during a study:

Putting a fan pointing outward , a meter in front of an open window, while having another window open at the other side of your house, was the post efficient to lower temp.

If you have several floors, put the fan upstairs, and open the opposite window downstairs.

That seems to generate the mos efficient heat exchange draft inside.

RE: Who's in the UK and has caved in and bought air conditioning?

ralphjy — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:53:01 GMT

I really feel for you guys in UK with the difficulty setting up ventilation with your type of windows. The double-hung windows here make it easy to slip in a portable rectangular fan. I use dual 9" fans with expandable wings that fit right into the sash slots and easily pop in and out at night.

Using the fans pretty much mitigates AC usage during the summer except during extended heatwaves when overnight temps don't get below 70 F. I normally put them in when the outdoor temp gets below the AC control temp and then shut off the AC while the house equalizes (AC sensor drops below the control temp). I also found that air intake is the only effective way to cool down the house. I open other windows so that there is airflow through the house.

Recently we've been having air quality issues with wildfire smoke, so I haven't been able to open the windows for multiple days and the AC has been getting a workout.

Here is an interesting plot of the temp in my upstairs computer room over a week - this is the room that is hardest to cool in the summer.

The first few days we had bad air quality, so the windows were always closed. The high temp is maintained by the AC (the control sensor is downstairs set at 76 F). The lows are due to the houses cooling overnight without ventilation. The second half shows the effect of window ventilation at night. During this period the low temperatures achieved were actually sufficient to prevent the AC from running all day. The outdoor temp for this week had a high of 98 F and a low of 58 F.

RE: Who's in the UK and has caved in and bought air conditioning?

beacon_dave — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 12:11:53 GMT

I did a test with the 6" duct fan this week during the most recent heatwave.

I found that by pulling the cooler evening outside air into the room lowered the room temperature much quicker than pushing the hot room air out. Presumably, pushing it out is just replacing it with hot air from elsewhere in the house, so it would perhaps need to run for much longer to move a much larger volume of hot air before seeing any result.

Room temperature started at 31.3°C and after 3hours of running the duct fan at 25% speed, saw the room temperature reduce by 5°C to 26.3°C.

This is the first time I've seen an upstairs room cooler than a downstairs room during hot weather.

Over the same period, the forecast outside temperature went from 29°C to 21°C, so still 5°C above the outside temperature.

However turning the fan off, saw the room temperature increase rapidly up to 26.9°C and then continue to climb more slowly to 27.4°C before I fell asleep. Woke up and the room was still at 27.4°C.

The following day was cooler, but the same setup only managed 25.9°C even though the forecast outside temperature was now down to 16°C.

I appear to have a plateau thing going on at around 26°C which I suspect is the heat stored in the ceiling / walls which will take 7-10 days to cool back down to match the ambient temperature.

Hello and Intro

nimion_art — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 18:20:55 GMT

Hi everyone! My name is Charlie and I am an Aerospace Engineer. For work, I do research in the field of aero/hydroacoustics.

What brought me here is my interest in electronics. As a personal project, I have built and programmed a vertical pen plotter from scratch, and I make artwork with it (check out nimion_art on instagram).

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I am planning to submit a post to the Show and Tell competition about it, and I have some other ideas that I hope to share in the near future. I look forward to learning from you all!

RE: Hello and Intro

colporteur — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 16:23:05 GMT

my buddy working late night cutovers. i wonder is he stored in some box......

Shipping of prizes and parts to Community members and the trials and tribulations of the team

cstanton — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 14:35:21 GMT

Hey everyone!

Whether it is a quiz competition, design challenge, project14 or roadtest (or maybe if you're a top member), the element14 Community team does our very best to make the competition prizes, parts and Community swag available to everyone no matter where you are in the world.

We have dealt with customs invoices, attempted back handers to pass parcels along and sometimes bribery.

Over the past year we have changed our courier, previously we have had to order parts from our own stores, or from external stores (like say, amazon) and we have them delivered to the american office in Chicago. With changes that have happened, that is no longer an option to send them out via UPS, and so we now ship out the majority of items either direct from the warehouse (in the appropriate country) or we order them into our England office in Leeds.

This means, that we have had to switch courier to TNT.

TNT, is also slowly (like glacial slowly, but not global warming glacial melting slowly) merging with FedEx.

This has introduced problems, sometimes when receiving an item, you may have been asked to pay customs taxes or import duty. We send every item "delivery duty paid" and we put on the delivery notes the appropriate codes to make sure that you, as a recipient, should not be charged.

No member should pay any item for receiving a parcel.

If you are attempted to be charged, get in touch with us and we will resolve this for you.

Further, a change of courier and a change of country, has meant that there are some regions and areas that we literally can no longer deliver to, if we do not have a warehouse in that location or if we need to send the item out from the England office. So far this has unfortunately, been areas in India. Despite having previously been able to send to them before (UPS had coverage apparently, but TNT does not).

We have limited options to circumvent this or find alternatives, we as a Community team follow what the rest of the company uses as a courier and we work closely with our freight and shipping teams to be able to provide items to you, our members.

Please be patient and understanding with us as we navigate this as it comes, and we are attempting to make sure that we catch this before getting to the point where we have to let you, as our members, down with disappointment.

We are also investigating options for prizes beyond physical items, we have had no small amount of people signing up for competitions, and then saying "actually... can I just have a voucher?" and while part of me thinks "well, why are you entering a competition if you don't want the prize?" having options that are not simply an Apple Mac or something else technological or fun (that isn't simply from our warehouse) is something that we are also exploring. We feel the option to have something that is of value to you as a prize is important and we as a team want to support that.

Thanks for being a part of the community!

RE: Shipping of prizes and parts to Community members and the trials and tribulations of the team

Jan Cumps — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 09:05:56 GMT

[quote userid="18385" url="~/members-area/f/forum/55637/shipping-of-prizes-and-parts-to-community-members-and-the-trials-and-tribulations-of-the-team/237773"]

donutsorelse said:
I won a giveaway and Fedex has been hounding me to the extent that they hired a collection agency, which is extremely frustrating when it was just supposed to be a free thing for what was supposed to be a fun event.

That's pretty terrible.

element14 Community members have experienced similar issues. I've directly worked with FedEx to handle these previously.

[/quote]

me 🙂. And Fedex wasn't helpful (or kind) while it was happening: no replies to queries, sending final warnings and handing it off to their debt collection service.

RE: Hello and Intro

nimion_art — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:48:39 GMT

ralphjy Thank you very much!

RE: Hello and Intro

nimion_art — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:33:06 GMT

Thanks!

RE: Hello and Intro

nimion_art — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:32:40 GMT

Thank you. Feel free to send me a message on here. I'd love to share some of my work and hear about yours 👍

RE: Hello and Intro

nimion_art — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:30:32 GMT

Thanks. It does look like a bit like super pickle 😂 assuming this is the one:

RE: Hello and Intro

nimion_art — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:22:37 GMT

Thank you for the warm welcome and for embedding my post! I didn't even think to try that, but I'll keep that in mind for the Show and Tell 👍

RE: Hello and Intro

nimion_art — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:06:29 GMT

Thank you dougw !

RE: Hello and Intro

nimion_art — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:05:05 GMT

Thank you, and I agree! It is definitely a work in progress on the electronics side of things, but I have learned a ton. Excited to share!

RE: Hello and Intro

nimion_art — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:59:05 GMT

Thank you and it has been a blast so far. Excited to share!