Charlie: Ron in Missouri City says. “Other than the attic, my garage is the biggest heat trap. Will an electric fan work to pull air through the garage and out through the attic ridge vents?” He just wants to pull the air out of the garage, Tom or should he put it maybe, on the wall and put a fan to pull the hot air out? What’s your solution?
Tom: Trying to force it through a ridge vent is pretty tough because, it’s a smaller opening. You have two ways of cooling your garage and for two reasons. One is just to cool the garage off then you would … And just get rid of the moisture and that’s what attic ventilation is all about. But if you’re in there working and you’re getting really hot and you want some air. You need to move air across your body and that would be in the wall. So, your air moves across the skin. Your body cools itself through natural evaporation and that’s why we put fans on our bodies to cool ourselves off. So, if that’s what you’re trying to achieve, that’s the best way to do it. Putting it in the wall and just having it direct. Remember this though, if you’re taking air out you gotta bring air in and that means you have to have openings to bring in air before it can go out or it goes into a vacuum and then the motors in the fans’ burnout.
Charlie: That’s right. I’m thinking if you suck all the air out of the room, it probably won’t end well for you.
Tom: Yeah. And you know what Charlie, there’s … This is going to be so common. It’s hot this summer-
Charlie: Yeah.
Tom: -I was out yesterday, almost got heat stroke. But, I’m going to get this question all summer. “My garage is so hot, what can I do with it?” Well, do what I did last week with Rick from Absolute Comfort Air. I put an old air conditioner in there so I could cool it off. I mean, that’s the only way you can cool a structure is with air conditioning.
Charlie: Well, it goes back to that question we had earlier even. This is … Now, here’s a good application for one of those mini split ductless systems.
Tom: Sure.
Charlie: You can put one of those out there if you want. Or, find an old used air conditioner if you can. Where would you source something like that? Find a new air conditioner?
Tom: You know how many air conditioning technicians I know?
Charlie: You do.
Tom: They take them all home and they put them in their yard out in the field. And then, you go out … They throw them in the creek. They do all kinds of stuff. So, there’s always some lying around.
Charlie: Throw them in creek?
Tom: They’re called ‘hoarders’.
Charlie: Alright. Well … But here’s my question on that. That’s good for you Tom, you can find it that way. But what about us mortals? Where would we find one like that?
Tom: Well, what happens is, is air conditioning contractors don’t want to sell you all the equipment, because they can’t warranty it. And even on mine, I was sitting there. “Hey, there’s no warranty on this. And I understand that.” But, all you can do is just snoop around and find a friend that has a friend of a friend that has an air conditioning company. They’ve got warehouses of that stuff sitting around, that they don’t want to throw away and they’ll use for parts and do all kinds of things. So, you just gotta kinda get lucky and be a scrounger.
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