If you’re fortunate enough to live somewhere with nice warm weather, and to have an air conditioner – it’s easy to take that for granted. When your A/C needs repairing, though, things can get pretty uncomfortable. Not only that, but air conditioners seem to most often break down on the hottest days. Funny how things go sometimes, right?
If you’re a teen living at home, it can feel like you’re at your parents mercy. Maybe you can’t afford a new air conditioner right now (The big whole-house ones can get pretty expensive!), or maybe your parents like to keep the electricity bills down and won’t let you run it. If your bed is upstairs, and hot air rises, you could be dealing with the hottest room out of anyone, but when you crank the AC, everyone else starts to complain about it being too cold. It gets really annoying!
Here are some solutions that can help cool things down, at least a little bit.
4. Keep Your Electronics Cool
If you have a big plasma TV, or a gaming PC that’s running at full speed, that’s going to create a non-zero amount of additional heat in your room. One thing you can do is to tackle the heat right at its source, like blowing a fan at the TV to help cool the air a bit, or making sure that your PC has proper fans and cooling. Even still, that warmer air is just getting blown around more, but it can be better than having a super hot area in the corner of the room. Our next tip with help cool that air a lot more, but be careful using it around your electronics.
3. Master the Elements
Okay, maybe “master the elements” is a pretty dramatic way to say “get a block of ice and put it in front of your fan,” but if you want to think of that like harnessing ice and wind to defeat fire, we’re here for that.
Take a medium or large size bowl, fill it about an inch or two from the top with water, and let it freeze. Now, you can put that in front of your fan, and you’ll get a cool breeze instead of just blowing hot air around.
2. Raise Money to Repair Your Air Conditioner
Air condition repairs can be expensive in some cases, but surprisingly affordable in other cases! There are some disadvantages of after school jobs, but one of the best parts is being able to spend money on things that you want – so if your AC is broken, and your folks aren’t getting it fixed, you could reach out to an air conditioner repair company to get a quote. That means they’ll tell you how much it should cost to fix it.
Need a job, first? Here are some highschool student jobs that won’t interfere with your studies.
1. Other Random Tricks
- Put some clothes in the freezer for the opposite effect of taking warm clothes out of the dryer on a cold day.
- Get a window-unit AC.
- Make friends with someone that has AC and spend all your time with them.
- If your window gets direct sunlight, use a couple layers of fabric or blinds to do a better job of blocking it, it’s like creating shade for yourself.
