AC Alternatives | Hour 2

It’s a hot weekend! Dean discusses AC units and alternatives. And as usual, he takes calls and answers questions about homes.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharpon demand from kf I AM six forty
kf I AM six forty and LiveEverywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome to
home where every week we help youbetter understand that place where you live.
It's what we've been doing all morning. I am Dean Sharp the house whisper

(00:24):
here with you live like I amevery weekend Saturday mornings six to eight Pacific
time, Sunday mornings nine to noonPacific time. We are talking about air
conditioning alternatives today. Now it's notas good as refrigerated air, but understanding
these things can help you, youknow, round out to the cooling in

(00:45):
your home. Maybe hack a littlebit of the cooling in your home,
maybe not have to run the ACquite so long, quite so hard,
or if you don't have it,help you survive these boiling hot days.
So we're gonna get back to thatin just a couple of minutes, but
right now we're taking calls. Iwant to go back to the phones.

(01:07):
May Welcome home, Hello, Hi, May, Hi, Dean love you.
UM. I have a cousin inSouth Carolina whom she has a rain
barrel and it doesn't drain properly.She has a big host bit on it

(01:30):
and what do you call it?Something to turn the water off and on
and doesn't work properly. She hasbeen the barrel forward it Uh, she
has to lean it forward. Yes, okay, So it sounds like a
couple of things for her. Ifit's not draining properly, then she needs

(01:51):
to make sure that she's got arain barrel that that you know, it
sounds like that there's probably some debrisor something down in the bottom of the
rainbarrel. Rain barrels are super simple. They're just a barrel and at the
bottom there's a spigot, you know, a spout that drains the water out.
So if it's not draining properly,one, two or three things are

(02:13):
happening. Number one, the barrelis sitting too low and there isn't enough
fall from the line away from thebarrel, and other words, it's not
there's no pressure involved in a rainbarrel. It's just literally gravity pulling the water
out of there. So one thingthat could be happening is that if the
barrels just sitting right on the groundand the water is being asked to go,

(02:35):
you know, like in the hoseor if there is a solid line
connected to it. If the wateris being asked to go just perfectly flat
or even a little bit uphill,it's not going to drain well. Number
two, rain barrels are collecting waterout of the gutters, and leaves can
fall into those gutters and end upin the rain barrel, even with the
proper screens and filters on them.So every once in a while should empty

(03:00):
that barrel out, open it up, get down in there and clear out
whatever stuff has collected at the bottom. Little bit sludge and slime and whatever
what have you can get in theway. Even just a simple leaf can
get in the way of the barrelif there's a few of them down in
there, and so best thing todo make sure your rain barrel is sitting

(03:20):
slightly elevated, make sure you cleanit out every once in a while,
and also make sure it's sitting nicein the level so that whatever water is
collecting, or the last bit ofwater that collects inside of it isn't somehow
leaning away from the spigot. Ifanything, if it's going to be a
slightly out of level or out ofplum let it be out of plums slightly

(03:44):
in the direction of the valve onthe front so that all the water can
clear out and drain out. Andthere you go. It's a barrel with
a with a hole in the bottom, so just have them clean it out.
Thanks May for your call. Coulddo I have time for an Yeah,
let's uh, let's go with Pamela. Pamela, welcome home. Oh,

(04:06):
thank you. I have a verylarge dehumidifier. I live in Oklahoma,
and when they give the weather report, they say it's one hundred and
three, but with humidity it's onehundred and ten. So I'm wondering if
I put that in my living room, would it help my air condition Yes,
it will. It will help yourair conditioner, Pamela, because that's

(04:30):
part of what your AC does.Like I was saying earlier in the show,
your air conditioner is a dehumidifier.But the more humidity that you can
pull out of the air, okay, the dryer the air is around your
body. And now then we're goingto dive back into this actually right after
your call. Okay, But theyou know, even with our refrigerated air

(04:56):
conditioning systems, it's still the processof cooling the human body still comes down
to evaporation, okay, and evaporationneeds dry air around it to be most
efficient. Right now, I tellpeople when it comes to their AC systems,
don't be turning it on and offand on and off. Let it

(05:18):
run even at a higher temperature,setting longer period of time throughout the day,
because that way, it's not justabout getting a little bit of cold
air blown out of the vents.It's also about letting the AC dry the
air out. And because the simplefact of the matter is that you can

(05:40):
be far more comfortable at a highertemperature if the evaporative process on your skin
is being allowed to work. Inother words, the more the quicker moisture
evaporates from your skin. So youknow, it's it's the age old thing.
It's like, you know, peoplesay, well, you know,
I don't mind living in Palm Springswhere it's one hundred and fifteen because it's

(06:01):
dry heat. Well, actually,that's ractually really true, okay, because
an eighty degree day here in sunnysouthern California, where the huge relative humidity
is thirty percent is that's a superlovely day. Now an eighty degree day
in the deep South when the relativehumidity outside is ninety five percent. Is

(06:26):
a miserable day even though it's eightydegrees Why because inside you, your body
heat is not getting a chance toescape the way it wants to. Because
there's so much moisture in the airaround your skin that evaporation is not taking
place the way you wanted to,and so it feels muggy and hot,

(06:47):
even though technically the air temperature mightbe relatively low. And so you see,
everybody, evaporation is really really important, the drier there. So,
yes, Pamela, putting a dehumidifierin a room will help with making that
room seem seem then it actually thedehumidifier is not going to cool the air

(07:16):
temperature in the room, but byremoving moisture, it will allow your skin
to actually engage the evaporation process thatit wants to. You will feel more
comfortable there, all right, Ahscience, Okay, pam thank you for
your call. Good luck with that. But yeah, don't hesitate to run

(07:39):
the dehumidifier in your house during aheat wave. It will only assist.
All right. When we return fromthe news break, we're going to dump
dump jump back into evaporative cooling.Some hacks, some tricks, and then
just how to use a fan whatdeem? Yeah, I know how to

(08:00):
use a fan turner? Do you? We'll find out. We'll find out
right after the news. Your homewith Dean Sharp, the house whisper Kfi,
Dean Sharp, the house whisper atyour service. It is a cruel
summer. Actually, it's actually been. Tina and I were talking about this
yesterday, don't you think, Imean, I know, I don't.

(08:22):
I don't want to make light ofanybody's heat experience, as we never do
every year, because it, youknow, the heat is real. But
I gotta say, for southern Californiathus far, knock on wood, we
have had a not a crazy summer. It's kind of norm if anything,
a little on the cool side whenyou consider the number of high heat days

(08:46):
versus you know what, it couldbe anything. Yeah, we've rolled into
August and we're just now hitting nineties. I mean we've had we've had a
few nineties and one hundred degree dayshere in here and there. Yeah.
Yeah, so for the whole summer, and there are still green hills around
strangely enough, so it was agood I do feel sad for all the

(09:07):
states that are really suffering. Yeah, Arizona. Who, yes, Texas,
Arizona. I mean it's been,it's been, it's been not good,
all right, So how do wetake the edge off that all of
that? All right? We've talkedrefrigeration, We've talked evaporation. Evaporation is

(09:30):
the key. Our last caller oftalking about putting a dehumidifier in the house,
really really good idea. Why becauseit aids the evaporative process. It
will make you feel cooler even whenthe house air temperature is a higher air
temperature. So let's just talk aboutportable air conditioners now. Now, Yeah,

(09:50):
you can spend three or four hundreddollars and get a portable room refrigerated
air conditioner. You're going to haveto exhaust it out somewhere. There's going
to be like a little looks likea dryer vent kind of thing that you're
going to have to find a wayof getting that blowing outside the house.
Okay, And you know they costthree, four or five hundred dollars depending

(10:13):
on the size of the unit andso on. I'm talking about the ones
that roll around. I've got onesitting right next to me here in the
studio. So there's that, surethere is and evaporative cooler. Evaporative is
way less. You can pick oneof those up, depending on its size,
a really really big one that canhandle you know, five to six

(10:37):
hundred square feet or so, formaybe two hundred dollars or less. And
there are a little personal sized evaporativecoolers that are down in the you know,
under ninety dollars and personal size meaningyou know, like the size of
a fan that you would set onthe tabletop. What's an evaporative cooler and

(10:58):
has a little res of war.You put water in the colder the water
the better, you can put icedown in it, and then there's a
little pump that runs that water upthrough a mat some kind of a mat
or a filter matrix, and thenthere's a fan that blows air through that
mat and as a result, justlike we've been talking about, the movement

(11:20):
of air and the heat in theroom, causes that water to evaporate from
water form into a water vapor andleaves behind cooler air. Okay, not
as powerful as refrigerated air, butbetter than nothing. And they do work.
And so if you can keep thehumidity in the room down and run

(11:43):
an evaporative cooler, then you're goingto find quite a bit of relief.
Another advantage of the evaporative cooler isthe fact that it's just a fan running,
literally just a fan and that tinylittle pump, and so the energy
cost of an evaporative cooler way waylower than refrigerated central air conditioning. Okay,

(12:05):
the same is true outside the houseas well. And you're thinking,
well, now I'm talking about insidethe house, deem, Yeah, I
get it, but you know thereare some major areas of sun and heat
exposure outside the house that if youknock them down first, you could actually
find some cooling deferential inside the houseas well. Misters, you know,

(12:28):
misters. They're hoses with water tubeswith water running through them being forced out
of a fine missed sprayer head.You can find personal misters down at the
hardware store or kits that you canrun across your patio cover and use a
mister system. You've seen them all. They are at amusement parks when you're

(12:48):
standing in line on a hot day, or out on patios at restaurants.
A mister system uses the evaporative process, and a good set of misters can
lower the air temperature in their proximityby as much as twenty degrees. It's
right, misters are no joke.Okay, cooling the air directly outside of

(13:13):
a window or a big sliding glassdoor and then opening that door up.
Police, do not put misters insideyour house. Okay, they're messy and
they're drippy and you don't want that. But having them right outside and then
opening up that sliding glass door witha fan blowing cool air in, you
could see some significant differences. Again, you just keep in your mind the

(13:37):
process of evaporation cooling bandanas. Imean, it does not get any simpler
and any more basic survival than acooling bandana. These days there are these
a gel neck wraps. But anythingthat you can put around your neck that
is wet is going to help whyevaporation. Okay, it doesn't have to

(14:03):
even be cool water. It willstill feel cooler. You've got a lot
of capillaries, a lot of bloodvessels running right near and right under the
skin, right around your neck,and it's close to your brain, it's
close to your head. Hopefully yourneck is close to your head. Yeah,
most of us, that's true.And it's also very close to your

(14:26):
chest for your lung and your hearts. Your lung and your hearts, I
don't know what is it with meto your heart and your lungs. Yes,
and those of you who have twohearts and one lung, it will
also help you as well. Thepoint is that's a critical area, right,

(14:46):
So well, why cowboys wear bandanas? Okay? Evaporation all right,
Just the fact that moisture is leavingthat bandana leaves that coolness right next to
the skin and will help will youdown if nothing else work. If the
ac shuts down and you find yourselfin a ninety degree home, please grab

(15:07):
a bandana or a towel or adish rag or whatever you've got and wrap
it, drape it over your neck, damp and you're going to stay cooler.
All right. Evaporation all right?Now, when we return, I
want to talk about fans. Fansinside your house and fans up in the

(15:31):
attic and for your house. Notreally talking so much about evaporation when it
comes to whole house fans and atticfans, but fans inside your house.
Yeah. If if one particular conditionis true, what is it, Well,
we'll talk about it on the otherside of the news. You're Home
with Dean Sharp the House Whisper.You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on

(15:56):
demand from KF I am six fortycam if I Steam Sharp the House Whisper
at your service. All right,let's dive back into our conversation about air
conditioning alternatives. The message of theday is essentially this. If we are
stepping beyond refrigerated air conditioning, thenwe have to talk about evaporative processes,

(16:22):
and you know evaporation. If youunderstand it, then you can piece together
the things that you can do orneed to do in order to stay cooler
in your home even when the refrigeratedair conditioning system is not working so great.
The last bit of evaporative cooling thatI want to discuss with you,

(16:44):
specifically evaporative inside your house. Arefans just fans, Okay, room fans,
ceiling fans. What do I needto tell you about these? They're
great. They move the air around, They keep rooms from feeling stuffy.
They redistribute air in the room,and as a result of that, if

(17:06):
there are cooler areas of air ina room, then shares the love,
as it were. But when itcomes to that sense of hey, I
want to turn the fan on becauseI just need to feel a little cooler.
There's one fact that surprisingly, Ithink the majority of people don't realize

(17:27):
about fans inside your house, andthat is simply this, in order for
them to work, you have tofeel them on your skin. That's the
evaporative process. It's the wind chillthat we were talking about before. We
had a listener just a few weeksback send us a note saying, now,

(17:49):
I know having my ceiling fans onand a room oscillating fan. It's
not my regular air conditioner. Butwe figured, okay, we're leaving for
a couple of hours, and itwas during the heat wave, and so
we just turned on all the fansin the house and expecting that it would
at least help cool it down alittle bit. When we got back home,

(18:11):
we were shocked to find out thatthe air temperature hadn't changed at all,
and I had to write a veryvery kind, gentle note back explaining
what it is, exactly what I'mtelling you right now, which is very
simply that moving air around inside aroom does not cool it down, It
just moves it around. Okay,well, then why do we even have

(18:34):
ceiling fans or oscillating fans to coolthings off? Dean, Okay, you
have a fan, not to coolthe room off. You have a fan
to cool you off. Okay,it's because your body uses evaporation to cool
itself, right. It is whatwe were talking about earlier in the show

(18:59):
the Windship. A fan makes youfeel cooler because it adds extra energy to
that process that's happening right at yourskin, where moisture is flashing off and
turning into water vapor and leaving behinda cooler air temperature right next to your
skin that you feel. Okay.So the simple fact is this, if

(19:22):
you're going to be in a warmroom and you want to enhance the cooling
effect, there's a fan blowing overour heads right now, Tina and I
in this room. And one ofthe reasons we have a fan, a
ceiling fan in this space here inthis little broadcast booth, is because when
the AC unit runs, it's toonoisy and it comes up over the microphones.

(19:47):
Okay, So the fan is blowingright now, and guess why it's
working because I can feel it onmy skin. And so the point is
this, The oscillating fan or theceiling fan in a room. If you've
got it blown on the other sideof the room and you're over in a
corner somewhere thinking that just having thatfan on is going to help things cool

(20:07):
down, it's not point it atyou. The fan needs to blow on
your skin. You once you feelthe breeze that that is not an illusion.
That is exactly when you start tofeel better. Okay. Fans are
all about helping your skin kind ofjump start that or boost the evaporative process,

(20:37):
and thereby, with the windshill factorinvolved, you feel cooler. So
point the fan at you have theceiling fan blowing at you. If the
ceiling fan is blowing over your bedin your hot bedroom, don't cover yourself
underneath the comforter thinking well, thefan's going to cool the air down in

(20:59):
the room, and I'll stay underthis blanket. Now, just turn the
fan lower and let it blow downon your skin. That is the point,
all right, Now I made thatpoint. Have I drilled it in
well enough? Fans are to bepointed at human beings. They don't cool
things, and they don't cool air. They cool people. It's really that

(21:21):
simple, Okay, Now there's otherkinds of fans in your house or potentially
that can help with the overall temperatureof the house that is not part of
your air conditioning system. Specifically,I'm talking about attic fans and whole house
fans. Those don't rely on evaporation. Now we're not We're beyond that.

(21:44):
Now we're simply talking about the exchangeof warm air for cooler air. Okay,
warm air for cooler air. Inthe case of an of a attic
fan, we're simply talking about tryingto cool the attic down a bit,
okay, addicts traditionally, and thisis changing some, especially in some high

(22:06):
heat areas. You're going to behearing more and more, and I will
talk to you as this starts totake effect more and more. There's a
new theory of house cooling in whichwe build the house and put the actual
envelope of the insulation up in therafters or along the roofline, and we
actually include your attic space as airconditioned air inside your house. Okay,

(22:29):
no vents pulling into it, noattic vents, no e vents. It's
a ventless situation. But that's awhole specialist thing. And we're not going
to get into that today. I'mthe vast majority of folks who are listening
right now. You have an addictthat is a vented attic. What that
means is that the low vents,this is the most important part. These

(22:55):
little vents around your eaves, rightunder the roof line, right at the
top of your exterioror walls. Thoselittle guys need to be wide open.
They need to be unobstructed from insulationor anything else in your attic because that's
the cooler air that your attic wantsto draw upon. When your attic fan
tries to blow air out of theattic, it needs to have air suck

(23:18):
in somewhere. Otherwise it's blowing againsta vacuum and it doesn't work. All
right, a little more on this, plus the benefit of the practice of
using a whole house fan. Rightwhen we come back from the news your
home with Dean Sharp, the housewas cam Hi, Dean Sharp, the

(23:40):
house whisper. Welcome home, Hey, thanks for joining us on the program
today. We've been talking about airconditioning alternatives, that is, your air
conditioning alternatives, just things you cando, ways of understanding cooling, cooling
the human body in order to headsyour bets when it comes to heat waves

(24:03):
that we experienced during the summer herein southern California. This is my last
coaching session, my last planned one, unless we end up in some kind
of you know, crazy heat wavethat we all weren't anticipating because we've talked
a good about about it. Sowe're going to move on to some other
things. But the last thing I'mgonna leave you with today is the one

(24:25):
fan that I think is probably themost effective, efficient, value based fan
system for a home, regardless ofwhether you do or do not have a
central air conditioning system. Even ifyou've got a fantastic AC system, I

(24:45):
still love Love because they work wholehouse fans. But you have to be
a believer in the whole house fansystem. What does that mean? That
means that you're involved in this processon a daily basis with a whole house
fan, right, it takes alittle bit of effort on your part.

(25:06):
What do they do? Okay,a whole house fan is not an attic
fan. An attic fan simply,you know, evacuates hot air out of
the attic or exchanges hot air fora slightly less hot air. Okay,
a cooler air technically not refrigerating yourattic by any means, but cooler air

(25:26):
so that your attic is not bakingand then radiating heat down into the rest
of your house. A whole housefan is all about nighttime operation. Okay.
It is a fan that, eventhough it will be mounted in the
attic, it draws air from yourhome from the living air space in your

(25:47):
home. Usually, the air ventitself is a louvered vent that is mounted
on like a hallway ceiling. Lookskind of like a return air vent,
except it has louver's that completely closeoff because you don't want the heat going
in the opposite direction. And thenit runs through the attic, but usually
blows the air directly outside the house. Okay. What does the whole house

(26:12):
fan do. It's powerful, andit creates a vacuum inside your house,
okay, of blowing air from theinside of your house to the outside.
It's an exhaust fan, a reallyreally big powerful exhaust fan. Okay.
Now, where does the air comefrom that replaces the air that it's blowing

(26:33):
out. It comes from open doorsand windows. So the idea is this,
I was just looking at my weatherapp here, right, and you
know, we've got a hot weekendahead of us here. But even in
areas in southern California here where youknow we're talking mid nineties, even pushing
a hundred, nighttime temperatures in theworst of those areas are still going to

(26:56):
drop into the sixties sixty degrees.How would you like it if your house
was sixty degrees today, right?We would all be loving it. So
the idea is very simply this.Once the air temperature drops at night,
we turn on the whole house fanand we open up doors windows of course,
screens closed please, and we're notsucking bugs in, but we're opening

(27:19):
up doors and windows, and thewhole house fan will over the course of
the night. You just let itrun. It's just a fan. It's
not sucking up a lot of energy. It's not the AC system. Through
the course of the night, itpulls in the cool air from outside and
replaces the warm air in your housewith the cool outside night evening air.

(27:41):
It gives time for things to cooldown, not just the air, but
the sofas and the cabinets and thefloors and the wall surfaces, all this
thermal mass cooling. Then what happenscome the morning, when you wake up,
before the air outside get it's warmagain, you turn off the whole

(28:02):
house fan. You close all thedoors and windows if need be, close
the drape, pull the blinds,and you lock that cool air in a
like a cooler right that you're tryingto keep cool, and you hold onto
it and you let the house coastfor as long as it can into the
heat of the day before the AChas to kick back on and give it

(28:25):
another run. The point is awhole house fan. It can take three
or four hours a day off ofyour air conditioning bill just by utilizing cool
air at night and getting it intothe house. It is smart. It
is a value, the whole assemblyof a whole house fan. It's just
a few hundred dollars and you willuse it for years and years and decades

(28:48):
to come, and it's well worthit. And it is probably the best
air conditioning alternative out there. Andthat is it for us today. We
will be back here tomorrow morning fromnine to noon tomorrow, We're going to
have some fun. We're going totalk about some luxuries, specifically therapeutic luxuries,

(29:11):
the kind of things that you canbuy for your home, like spas,
saunas, steam rooms, cold plungesthat actually heal your body. We'll
do all of that tomorrow when wereturn. Until then, stay cool today,
but still get out there and getbusy building yourself a beautiful life.
We'll see you tomorrow morning, nineam. This has been Home with Dean

(29:36):
Sharp, the House Whisper. Tuneinto the live broadcast on KFI AM six
forty every Saturday morning from six toeight Pacific time, and every Sunday morning
from nine to noon Pacific time,or anytime on demand on the iHeart Radio app