hi there - embarking on an indoor race series - its super hot where i am and even with 2 x lasko fans it’s crazy hot -
does anyone have any hacks for making the airflow even cooler? any pics or details would be greatly appreciated !!! thank you in advance !
Please note that I am going off your question verbatim, that is, how to make “airflow cooler”. Please understand that that is impossible; a standard electric fan cannot physically cool air in a room, and in a sealed room, it will slightly raise the temperature. The cooling sensation you feel comes from the moving air helping your body lose heat more effectively. You need more fans, bigger fans, or the ability to open a window or a door.
Put a bucket of ice directly below the intake on the side of the fan. It should lower the temp of the intake air, increasing the difference in temp between the moving air and your body, making “the fan cooler.” The trade off is that you will likely increase the overall humidity in your space, especially if it is small.
Q = m c_p (t_hot - t_cold)
Q - heat transfer rate (removed)
m - mass flow rate (or air)
c_p - specific heat transfer coefficient (of air)
t_hot - your skin temp
t_cold - air temp being ingested by the fan (making this colder increases the amount of heat removed from your body)
Portable AC is what you need…
If you are dripping with sweat with 2 fans you need drier not cooler air, for which a portable dehumidifier will work. You’ll need something that can keep up with your sweat rate which could easily be >1litre/hour, and will cost £200+
Drier cooler air is even better but you’ll need to invest even more in an externally vented air conditioning unit.
enthalpy of fusion of ice/water is 333kJ/kg, specific gear capacity of water is only 4.2kJ/kg°C, so can be ignored for these purposes.
human beings are 20-25% efficient
so worst case at only 200W are producing 1kW of heat or enough to melt 3g of ice every second, 180g a minute, 10.8kg/hour.
You’re going to need a lot of ice!
I mean that’s assuming all the heat your producing is going into the ice. You’re not going to be touching the ice at all. Just that the air intake will pull air across the bucket of ice which will cool off slightly before being blown across you. It’s not going to be massive but even a couple degrees cooler air is going to feel a bit better when you’re on your limit. And it’s cheap, like a poor man’s radiator.
Definitely agree that a dehumidifier is a good place to look also. In the place we were renting before my bike was in the basement and it had a dehumidifier. I never measured but it probably did around 700ml/hour (I never measured but based on how fast that bucket filled up). Well it broke toward the end of our lease. And where before the humidity in the room would stay around 50-60% while I was riding before, it now was able to climb up to like 75% over the course of a 1.5-2hr ride. And the difference in perceived (and probably actual) cooling was pretty large.
What cools you off is the evaporation of your sweat.
What helps is:
What does not help so much:
Besides the advice above you might think about making slushy in your blender. I find freezer cold packs down the front or back of your bibs to work but for a short time so have a few ready to go.