I need help in cooling my apartment!?

Question

I live on the top floor of my quad-plex building. The morning sun comes in through my bedroom, crosses over the roof about midday, hits the front of the building around 2-ish and pretty much stays there until it sets at night (which ends up being about 8-ish). On top of that, our summers get to be around 90+ degrees. The main area in my apartment gets like 70% of the days sun and as such makes my apartment almost unbearable. Once the sun is on half of the deck, we close the drapes and keep them closed. We keep a fan in our bedroom and two in the main room, along with a swamp cooler fan, but it still stays so hot! I have a feeling my animals are getting miserable with the heat (except for my tropical bird), as I am too! Our deck has no sort of shading whatsoever from the building (the eaves on extend about 4"), so I have been thinking about investing in an umbrella or making an awning-type system to make more shade in hopes that would help.
Anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

Sounds bad. There's not much else you can do besides maybe buying a window air conditioning unit. I would move to a diff apartment.

Answer 2

I like the advice on blinds. They help a lot. You might also try tinting the glass on the side that gets the most sunlight. I'm an HVAC tech by trade, so I'm going to recommend an air conditioning unit. When you buy an air conditioner, you might go by this formula: square footage x 50. However, because you have a deck and most likely a glass door, you are going to have to increase that number to about 54 in order to have a safe estimate. The number that you come out with is going to be the size in btus of the unit you need for the room that you're looking into cooling. Other factors like high ceilings and single wall construction would change that formula as well. Basically, the better the insulation of the room, the smaller the unit has to be. I hope that helps clear things up.

Answer 3

How about a cheap window air conditioning unit. Some can be had for as little as 100 dollars. They are very efficient on electricity compared to central air. If night temperatures are significantly less than daytime you can get a fan to blow in cool night air by propping a box fan in a window or windows then close up during the day if you have good insulation.

Answer 4

Evaporative (swamp) coolers can only knock off a handful of degrees, and the fact that they add humidity doesn't help at all when your living space is 76+* F.

You may consider investing in a window air conditioner (that you can take with you when you move out).

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php?page_id=797&form_keyword=air+conditioner+window&rd=1

Keep in mind, that these require you to completely seal off swamp cooler system from your air. Swamp coolers pump in air from the outside, and air conditioners continuously cycle the internal air. They fight with negative results, if you have both running in the same living space.

Answer 5

My Aadvice would be thicker curtains that cover the whole window, I know how you feel about the heat. Use as much air-conditioning as possible, and maybe for the balcony block the heat by putting over one of those pull out things as a shader on top of your window. It does help a lot! They look like like those ones that go like

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Answer 6

that and buy 1/2 inch slat dark colored blinds....they will block out most of the sun.

Answer 7

try using ur bitchyness. please dont answer my question if u aint gunna take it seriously. u hurt my feelings. i'm trying to watch my diet n u totally disss my questons, yet u r here now crying about a little heat. buy a fan!! duh..