Cheapest Ways to Cool your Home - You Won't Believe #3

this video is brought to you by us check out  twitch.com our website for full in-depth write-ups   and analysis of all the topics we talk about and  in the future we'll have solar calculators and ev   calculators all kinds of cool stuff all coming  soon tuba davinci.com hi i'm ricky and i'm on a   mission to build a net zero house which means  making electricity ditch your natural gas and   eventually making our own water so today we're  talking about electricity and staying cool this   summer and saving some money so in san diego it's  officially summer time and all of a sudden after   a very cool spring it's getting really hot so i  thought how about we make a video talking about   some of the interesting ways we're gonna try to  stay cool and save money this summer let's go   all right so one of the first things you should  always be thinking about in terms of staying cool   is a ceiling fan here is an example of what  we have in our studio without that fan it   would be too hot in here for me to record and  the reason why a fan is so great is because   it works no matter where you live in fact most  of the world doesn't have air conditioning and   they opt for ceiling fans so right now even if  the room was 85 degrees which is really hot if   there was a fan running and moving air over your  skin you'd feel okay whereas you turn that fan off   and you'll start sweating because the air right  by your skin starts warming up and you'll start   sweating and feeling uncomfortable so to stay  cool this summer the first thing you probably   want to invest in is some stuff to measure heat  so let's start with the cheapest thing this is   a company called switchbot i got these because  they tell you the humidity and the temperature   and a four pack of these was only about 35 dollars  next up you can get one of these this is an ir   kind of laser temperature gauge so it'll tell you  how hot things are so it's about 80 degrees in   this room which is not particularly cold but this  is pretty cool you can kind of get an idea of how   hot things are just from a distance and that can  come in handy and if you want to take your game to   the next level then you can get a infrared camera  like this this is a flir pro and this attaches to   your phone and gives you really cool images  that you can record and take a look at here's   something really cool by the way you want to be a  little mini detective if i step on this floor i'm   going to be heating it and if i step away you can  still see my footprint next up is windows i have   double pane windows but if you see here they're  really old they're like first generation double   pane windows so as a result the heat comes right  through here especially this window when the sun   rises it feels like you're in like a tanning bed  or something it's really bad so i got this this   is a window film it says it has like a titanium  layer and it's supposed to block the sun's heat   says it rejects 72 percent of the sun's heat and  99 of uv rays so here's what it looks like by the   way can you see that it has a very reflective  kind of look step one we'll clean the window this is like a soap solution  to help with the installation   i'm horrible at this this is  going to turn out very poorly i think my dreams of starting a window tinting  service or shattering before my eyes you got it we need new windows at some point but for  a house like this it's about twenty four   thousand dollars and we're not going to do that  anytime soon so for now we thought for 50 bucks   how well does this perform so this piece here  has it installed this piece doesn't and i want   to show you how this looks on the flare camera the  window is much hotter it's 108 degrees compared to   93 so about 15 degrees hotter on the window on  the floor it's 96 degrees where there's no film   and 87 degrees about 9 degrees cooler and you can  actually really tell if you stand here compared to   stand here big difference about 10 degrees so  you might be thinking how does this work well   this film gets hot and prevents that heat from  coming forward but this is hot and so now it's   going to radiate heat as well this would only work  if that means that the outside of the window was   also hotter let's go take a look at that okay on  the outside of the window it's the same story it's   about 109 on this class that has the film and 96  so about 13 degrees hotter on the outside of the   glass yeah this window is way hotter so that  heat is transferring back through through the   the gap in between the panes of glass to the  outside and then back out so that as the wind   hits it it'll take that heat out this stuff works  really well but would i recommend it it depends on   how good you are with installing this film it's a  little bit finicky right you have to have a clean   room and clean it and hold it up and cut and  all that kind of stuff so if that's the kind   of thing that you're willing to do for 50 bucks  you could really keep the heat rejection out of   your house from all your windows and honestly  if you want to make it easier just do the part   facing the sun so here this is the south part  of our of our house so we're just going to put   the film on the south facing windows pretty easy  way to keep some of that heat out in the summer   so you ever wondered why homes are hot even at  night when it's cooled off well your entire attic   is hot and it stays hot for quite a while so as a  result that heat radiates down into the main house   and that's why you want blown insulation  and whatever else you can to prevent that   so speaking of hot addicts there's two things  you can do to tackle that and both are fairly   cheap the first is gable fans so if you look  around your house you probably have gable   attic ports and if you get a fan on one of them  you can blow in fresh air and blow all that hot   air out of the attic keeping your attic cooler  if you do that the wood and all the other parts   in the attic will be cooler and radiate less  heat down into your house the second thing i   mentioned obviously is insulation and the third is  a whole house fan so this is something i had on my   previous house and i loved it i use it all the  time so what a whole house fan does is it takes   all the air in your house and blows it up into  your attic then the attic gets pressurized and   it pushes all that hot air out through the vents  and cools your attic as well our current house   we don't have a whole house fan just yet but  i think as the summer has officially kicked in   we need to start to do that next up  let's talk about an evaporative cooler   not that heavy liftable evaporative coolers  come in all kinds of sizes they even make   little tiny ones that are kind of for your face  but this is a massive 2000 square foot house size   fan so if you look up close here if you get in  here you'll see these are the little grills that   the water will trickle down and so the idea is to  have a lot of surface area and as the water goes   over these coils some of it will evaporate cool in  the air and giving you nice cold air on the inside   so this is the outside of the unit and this is the  inside this was about one was about 660 dollars at   home depot and uh let's try to get installed  in this window right here a little lower all the way over right i just want to see how strong this fan is so this is not exactly how you're supposed  to install this because you're supposed   to have a vertical window but we just put two  pieces of wood offset a little bit so there's   a lip on this side to catch this and this lip  should go into the window let's see how we did cool so we're not out of the woods yet cool idea right one and the beautiful look very shabby chic  my wife is all about that i think oh it   feels cool i'm freezing and the water  parts not even running yet all right   let's go do that brim so with this piece  it'll hold this ledge from collapsing here we go and that's perfect wait wait wait wait that just happened now there's more suction all right so here's  an anemometer it actually has the wind speed   and temperature it's 87 degrees outside which is  pretty warm and it's uh not especially windy so   let's now let's fill this up because after all it  is an evaporative cooler brim water it actually   is supposed to be filled at this port but i don't  have that connection just yet so we'll fill it up   here all right so now we have water let's get  back inside and see how much cooling effect we   actually get so the way an evaporative  cooler works is it cycles water through   those little coils you saw back there to slowly  evaporate some of that water and as a result   taking water from liquid to gaseous form absorbs  energy and as a result the air in that area   cools off really quickly as it comes through but  to put all that to practice let's figure this out   we have 85 degree temperatures in here right now  and about 47 humidity relative humidity and the   reason i'm checking the humidity is because this  is going to make the room more humid but let's go   ahead and let's try this out and here's a flir  camera recording you can see we're looking at   about 82 degrees in the fan area so now let's see  if i can turn it on remotely i can okay so this   is just fan mode uh the wind speed is about three  meters per second even out here it's kind of cool   right but you can see that the air is not  any colder and that's because while we're   just moving the air that's outside and bring  it in here but it still feels good to the   skin for the reason any fan does now let's  go to cool mode you see the turning blue   the fan area is turning blue so if  you look here now we're at 77 degrees   and you can see that the the surrounding  room is warmer than the the fan area   and the motor is right there in the middle  and that's why that's a little bit warmer   and should i go to high speed let's get crazy  yeah hey look at that 74. we'll go to high speed 73. the ambient air was 80 i think we started 81 so  we've dropped 8 degrees brim check it out look   at how blue look at how dark that area is it is  9 degrees colder right now all right we'll come   back in 10 minutes let's say the reason why this  is popular is because it's way less electricity   than air conditioning so my air conditioning  runs on about 4 500 watts 4.5 kilowatts right   this runs on 400 watts one tenth of the power but  now this requires water as well how much well on   low about two gallons an hour and on high  about four gallons an hour four gallons of   water you have to supply it'll evaporate  and that moisture comes into the house   let me show you something here all right  using this little switchbot thermostat and   uh moisture meter humidity meter i have  some data that i want to show you real quick   so yesterday around 11 o'clock the house  right here in this section got to 84.5 degrees   and once we turned the evaporative cooler on it  sank to 73 degrees in about in about 30 minutes   which is pretty amazing but the problem is  in that same period the humidity went from   30 percent to 60 percent you can think of the air  as a big sponge and as there's more water in the   air its potential for holding more water decreases  and as a result it can't evaporate as much and   once that happens it becomes very humid indoors  and the cooling effect is largely neutralized also   i touched the floors and the carpets and rugs it  was kind of damp which is the scary part here in   san diego we don't have mold issues because it's  pretty dry but the minute you introduce that kind   of humidity you've got that miami problem where  mold can start to grow so that's the one reason   why i'm on the fence about this thing it does work  really well and depending on where you live if you   live in the high desert it might work for you also  if you want to mitigate some of those problems you   can turn the cooling on and off turn it on cool  the temperatures and then as soon as it's colder   outside turn the water element off and just run  it as a fan and that fan will push air back in and   kind of bring the humidity back down so there's a  very clear picture here you're basically trading   temperature for humidity that's what you're doing  so if you live in miami you live in hawaii humid   areas this won't work because there's no more  capacity in the air for extra water so as a result   nothing will evaporate and it won't work very  well but if you live in las vegas or san diego   somewhere arid and dry one of these can save you  a ton of money like i said it's about one-tenth   the electricity to run also if you wanted you  could run on one of these for a couple of hours   and then turn on your air conditioning which will  take the humidity back out of the air and kind of   cycle back and forth between the two so if that  makes sense for you it makes sense which is cool   but in san diego with our water shortages and our  droughts do we really want to be spending four   gallons an hour to run one of these i don't know  i think once we have solar panels i would just run   my air conditioning and run it on solar and and  not do one of these but this is something that's   interesting and i'll put more of a write-up  in locations of where it makes sense for you   but you can factor that the effect of  this is going to be a function of how much   humidity you have where you live if you live in  a place where there's a lot of humidity and it's   really hot most of the time and there's nothing  you can do but air conditioning there are some   choices so here in the office we have a window air  conditioner that we just put in in fact we haven't   finished sealing it all up but this is a great  option too this runs on about a thousand watts   right so the evaporative cooler is 400 a big whole  house ac is about 4 500. this is about 1 000 watts   and it'll cool a room like this pretty well it  keeps this whole entire office pretty cool so   even if you want to save money and still run air  conditioning think about putting one of these in   rooms where you're sitting in more often like an  office during the day or your bedroom at night   because if you live upstairs the heat rises and  our bedroom is uninhabitable without one of these   so we just run this around seven o'clock at night  that way it cools off by the time we go to bed   and it's way cheaper than running the whole  house ac and if you have to run your whole   house ac that's totally fine too there are still  things you can do if you have time of use billing   where electricity is cheaper at certain times  of the day what you could do is you could charge   your house up by running air conditioning when  it's cheapest so for us from midnight to 6 a.m   electricity is way cheaper and so what you could  do is you can program your thermostat to get crazy   cold around that time so when you wake up your  house is like freezing which means your house   stays comfortable longer into the day it'll take  longer for that heat to find its way in and maybe   you might find that you don't have to run air  conditioning again until after your peak hours   in fact this entire office is running on solar  and batteries thanks to our smart home panel from   ecoflow so we have 14 kilowatt hours of storage  and about 2 000 watts of solar that's coming in   now this is temporary it's just on the ground  for now but until we get up on the roof   i had solar panels laying around i thought  let's just hook them up and start making energy   so this house hasn't been on the grid in days  so we're going to air conditioning all we want   without any worry which gets to one other point  which is if you want to stay cool and save money   get solar right solar panels will keep your attic  and your roof cooler and it'll make so much energy   that you can just run your ac and not worry about  it i can't wait for that because here in san diego   our bills are so high and i've been paying 500 a  month without air conditioning while it was cool   so i don't want to think about how much money it  will be when i have to run air conditioning so i   got to get solar as quickly as possible all right  so in conclusion air conditioning is always going   to make sense for you depending where you live a  evaporative cooler might make sense if you live   in a dry desert kind of climate the window film  is pretty awesome i think almost everybody could   benefit from it depending on how comfortable  you are installing it and then a whole house   fan makes sense if you have cool evenings if after  the sun goes down it's cool outside where you live   a whole house fan can save you a ton of money  alright i'm ricky with two davinci thank   you so much for watching oh and i just remembered  give a pool just jump in easy way to stay cool i am cool i'll tell you that

Channel: Two Bit da Vinci

Views: 181,215

Keywords: two bit da vinci, how to keep your house cool, how to cool down a room, air conditioning, life hacks, house hot in the summer, staying cool, swamp cooler vs air conditioner, evaporative air cooler, evaporative cooling, evaporative cooling system, whole house fan review, whole house fan vs attic fan, whole house fan installation, solar, saving money cooling, staying cool without ac, staying cool in the summer, staying cool off grid, 5 Tips to Stay COOL & Save $$ This Summer

Id: eblL0Qw37lg

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 05 2022