Hi I discovered this a long time ago and it works rather well.

There are a few tricks to keeping cool on a budget as many do not want to buy a AC unit and those in apartments who do not want to pay the land lord a large monthly fee.

Now main thing that a ceiling fan does is eliminate dead air or rather it keeps the air in the house moving. Dead air in your house can cause you to bead and sweat. Now you do not need expensive fans but they should be able to keep the air moving. Your main focus is the areas that you spend most of your time. Where you watch tv, sit and read, etc. Now the ceiling fans do two things. They keep the air moving in the rooms which will keep you cooler. The second is it will eliminate layers which will eliminate a very hot layer up higher in the room.

Now the biggest thing to help you sleep during a hot wave is a ceiling fan over your bed. I found this is even more comfortable than having air conditioning in the bedroom.

Now one of the aspects of this is that the moving air will keep you cooler than say air that is not moving.

Another aspect of this is during the winter months as the fans on a slow speed will keep the air moving and even out the temperature in the room where the air near the ceiling is hotter than the air at the floor. This is worse with baseboard heating. This can also save a bit of money but more so make you more comfortable.

There is on other trick consisting of window fans that go into you windows. You can have it either blowing in or blowing out. You should also have a window open to allow for free flow or have two window fans. One blowing in and the other blowing out.

Ha, yeah thats pretty interesting, today to use your AC cost so much money i can barley afford it. I just try to keep the use of it down unless i absolutely need it so thats one way to save by not using it all the time when you don't have to. Yeah the ceiling fan keeps pretty good circulation also if you have box fans to place in the window that will help keep a constant circulation and cool down the house.

I totally agree with you technobot I do not like an Ac at all. It is not healthy also As we all know we shed a lot of dead skin, hair, dirt in a day. The same fragments are floating around in your room. If you have pets then you have kitty and doggie dander, drool with stuff in it attached, feathers etc

Having a personal Ac is fine to a limit. I mean by limit when it is only your family involved. When you have a lot of people coming in and out then it might cause you to breathe in bad air for quite some time. One of my friends used to attend classes for studies, they had an Ac over there resulting in this chappie sneezing every time she entered the class. It was terrible to watch for her eyes would go red and start to tear, we realized that it happened because of the pollution in that classroom

One more thing noticeable in people who live with the Ac on all the time is that they cannot adjust properly when the temperature changes. Example:- Specimen A lives with the Ac on all the time Result=> Starts complaining every time he/she is not in an air conditioned place. Starts yelling when the fan is switched off It is irritating for you cannot even draft designs for your clothes with that person in the same room

I have a pedestal fan that cools the room fairly quickly so I usually leave it on for a few minutes with the window open and then close the window and the fan. It helps conserve energy and keeps me cool

I could not live without the ceiling fan above my bed! I also have a triple stack fan thingy next to my computer desk for those long sessions of programming... Even with the fans I still have to run the A/C during the day. It's just so dang hot and humid here. Damn you global warming! I keep my ceiling fan running 24/7 though. Even in the winter months I usually keep it running. Although last winter the lowest temperatures were only in the 40's (F) so it's not really that cold. I want to move to Alaska or something.