Transcription
Heat kills more Americans every year than hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes combined. I had no idea. Did you know? No AC. Wet towels, frozen jugs, foil on the windows, real apartment, [music] real thermometer, and a $200 fan against a $20 fan. By the end, you'll know exactly [music] what to do the next time it's 100° outside and the power company's asking everybody to chill out on the AC.
>> Told you Duct Tape would fix it.
>> Okay, so real quick on my method. I'm going to reheat the apartment every single time with my central air. Then I'm going to shut it off before the test begins. No fudging the numbers. Let's go.
>> So, you're bringing me in on this one?
>> It's a cooling video, Stickum.
>> Duct Tape's cool to the touch. I'm basically a cooling device.
>> You're more like a little tape goblin.
>> But a cool goblin.
>> Okay, so the difference between the cheap fan and the expensive fan was pretty much nothing. But here's the thing. Neither of these are cooling your room. A fan never lowers the temperature in a room. Ever. A fan cools you down by blowing air over your skin and making your sweat evaporate quickly. That's what's actually cooling you down. The room temperature never really changes. So, for the rest of this test, we're just going to rock with your regular old fan.
So, here's something almost nobody knows. The CDC and the EPA both say that when the temperature outside starts getting around the high 90s, a bare fan by itself actually stops helping. It can even make things worse. Hear me out. So, a bare fan by itself just blows air over you, and that can speed up your dehydration instead of cooling you down. That's why the rest of these tests aren't going to be just how do we turn on a fan? It's going to be how do we cool that air before the air from the fan touches you? That's the whole game.
This is probably the one everybody's already tried, right? Bowl of ice straight from the fridge, parked right in the airflow. 88.3°. Simplest move on the list, honestly. But a handful of cubes just isn't enough mass to move a number this big. So, that one little bowl of ice did not cool my whole apartment, but it did feel cooler on my skin. And here's the thing, ice has a whole bunch of stored up energy in just melting. It's called latent of heat fusion, and that's why these little tiny ice cubes can cool a lot more than their size suggests. The problem? A bowl of ice melts really quick, so it peaks quick and then it dies quickly.
All right, same 5-minute window, different setup. Sit down, check the thermometer. 87.8°, 47% humidity when we started. 5 minutes later, 86.9°. Humidity didn't move at all, just temperature. So, that's our best number yet, even if a modest one. But here's the thing, this is going to run a lot longer than your ice bowl. Same physics as the ice bowl, just a lot more mass. So, it's going to take longer to melt and it's going to pull heat out of the air for longer. More ice, longer run time, it's that simple.
All right, now it's time for the upgrade, swamp cooler edition. Dip the towel in ice water, drape it over the back of the fan, let the air pull through. At least that's the plan. 5 minutes in, barely anything moved. I can barely feel anything. So, let's remove a variable. Bigger fan, more airflow, same wet towel, same 5-minute window. Still nothing meaningful at all. Evaporative cooling needs dry air to actually pull moisture in. The more humid it already is in here, the less this trick has to work with. On paper, this should have been the best one today. Here, it was not.
Well, that didn't work, at least not for me. I don't know, maybe my towel was too wet, maybe it was too thick. I could feel some air on the sides, but that was about it. I know this has worked for other people. So, regardless, this is called evaporative cooling, and this is what happens when water takes energy out of the air and turns it into vapor. Kind of like what happens when you step out of the pool and you hit that fresh air. You're not necessarily cooling the room, you're just cooling yourself.
>> Have you ever considered duct taping yourself to the ceiling? Heat rises. I'm pretty sure you'd freeze.
>> I don't think that's how that works, Stickum.
>> Cool Goblin says, "Try it anyway."
>> Okay. This bathroom ceiling fan is not pulling its weight. It's just stirring what's already inside. So, cooling the inside of your place is only half the battle. The other half is what's coming in through the other side of that glass in the first place.
So, one thermometer, bare glass first. Then, we'll stack up different materials, and we'll see which one blocks out the heat best. We're going to do it all within the same hour of sun, so the competition stays fair. This is the number to beat. My building blinds are basically see-through. Definitely ain't built for this.
>> Still hot as balls.
>> So, these built-in curtains that came with my apartment are trash. They don't block out any heat and barely block out any sun. Now, these blackout curtains are actually pretty decent. They block out a decent amount of heat and pretty much all the sun. I wouldn't call it great because you can still feel the heat behind it, but definitely an upgrade. That's proper. Like 3°? Five bucks of foil and some tape. Here's why this one is no joke. Foil has pretty much zero emissivity, meaning it doesn't carry any heat. It pretty much bounces it back.
>> [snorts]
>> All right, before the windows go up, one quick detour. Kind of suits me, don't you think? All right, tin foil hat. That's just a warm up. Here's the real application. No! Come back with me. Cut it down to size, line it up against the glass. Tape the edges so there's no gaps and no sunlight leaking through. Kind of looks like I'm prepping this place for an alien abduction and not a heat wave, but let's just leave that alone.
>> [music]
>> Needs more duct tape. This $5 roll is about to go head-to-head with curtains that cost 10 times that much. Reflective materials like this can easily block 80 to 90% of radiant heat coming into your window. It's kind of the same thinking as a space or emergency blanket or why satellites are wrapped in tin foil.
So, here's the real question. What if I stop picking one trick and I threw everything together all at once in one room? Everything that worked, stacked in one room. Foil over the glass, frozen jugs running behind the fan, a wet towel around my neck instead of on the fan this time, every door is sealed off with a sheet. Same baseline reset as every test today. And guess what? The room held at 87.1. Not the most dramatic number on paper, but honestly better than everything else. I think we can totally say that you can cool your apartment without an AC. Are all of them practical? Maybe not, but definitely doable. And honestly, putting some jugs behind your fan and putting some tin foil or even some drapes across your window can really help. Told you duct tape would fix it.
There's no duct tape in this room, Stickman. Yeah, I know. No knife, no go bag, no gear fixed today. Today, I'm just coming with facts that can help you and the people you love stay alive when it's a hundred freaking degrees outside. Heat doesn't announce itself like a storm. It just sits on you until something breaks. Don't let that be you. Like always, stay sharp, stay steady, and stay ready.