On Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:59:00 -0600, ART Vanderlay
itscritter[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote:
The landlord won't allow ceiling fans even though the ceilings are a shade underneath ten feet tall.
Perhaps I should get a powerful fan and blast it toward the center of the room.
I'm wondering if a fan that blows up might not do more good. I don't
think we have discussed this here before, but if it forces colder air
up, won't that push the warmer air down. And the fan can sit on the
floor. It might even be 6 feet tall.
But I have had my best results with small fans that I position to blow
right on me. Even now, when I have central air, I rarely use it and
have a fan on the window sill above my bed, another on the file
cabinet next to my desk, another on or next to the tv on the kitchen
table, and a big one on the tv in the living room. I have each of
them controlled with a fan speed control, an external control because
I got all these fans out of the trash or at the Goodwill. If you are
interested in how to get good fan speed controllers, post back or
write me.
The windows all face on way and since they basically open up into the shaft of a 20 foot by 20 foot chimney, there's nothing to look out at and no current of air to speak of.
There is more air than there would be without it. Imagine that the
part of the building 20 feet away was 5 feet away instead. Or that it
was right up against the windows, and you had no windows. 20 feet is
pretty good. As to living on the inside of the building: That's why
it was available. The previous tenants found an apartment with a
view, so they moved.
When I lived in an apartment in Brooklyn, my first one had a view but
not a good one. The next one, a year later, had 4 windows facing
east, 2 facing north, and one facing west. I had to have roommates to
afford it, but we each had our own room.
I will definitely investigate window film kits.
The two windows are 6 feet high and 4 feet across.
There also appears to be some sort of underfloor leak as we had to replace the floorboards last summer when they rose and broke apart even though the landlord insisted that it was incidental and from a kitchen leak.
If he speaks good English, he might have said or meant "incidental to
the kitchen leak". Doesn't a kitchen leak meat your standards? I'm
sure he's fixed it by now, because you live on the 5th floor and the
people downstairs don't have dripping ceilings, do they?
Being that the windows are single paned, I don't know what I can do to better insulate. Upon looking into the air conditioning unit housings, I don't see any daylight or sense any direct temperature input from outside, but is there perhaps a way for me to better insulate that?
Well, I think you could light a cigarette and see if the smoke moves
in or out, or maybe a candle's flame. Other people know more about
this. Of course sometimes the air is calm, even when there is an
opening. Even if you can't see daylight, there might be an S curved
path.
They sell semi-hard clear plastic windows that might be able to be
attached and removed without damaging anything. I just found some of
that at the building we've been stripping, prior to its demolition.
Of course the plastic was never installed.
But others know more
about wther it can be attached and removed without damage.