wrote:

Even better are the cool vests. I decided to buy one this year
because of the excessive heat we had last summer. While they don't
prevent sweating or being hot, they do prevent overheating...
They are expensive...

EBIce makes a more expensive (~$250 vs $175) cooler with a 2'x2' flat
flexible gadget filled with tubing for medical purposes. Wrap the gadget
around some body part, eg a shoulder, put ice and water into the cooler,
and a 22 W pump moves cold water out one hose to the gadget and back into
the cooler through another, but it's hard to get a good thermal connection
between the gadget and the body part without impeding blood circulation,
and the pump has a cycle timer vs a temp control on the gadget, and you
have to unplug yourself whenever you get up to walk around the room, and
the cooler is only 6"x6"x10" inside.

We might improve this with a larger cooler and a $10 10W 1 gpm fountain
pump and a 12" flat spiral of 1/4" tubing on top of some foamboard that
sits on a chair under a person or on top of the cooler, under a person.
It might have frozen 1-liter soda bottles floating in water instead of
1-pound $25 Cool Vest ice/gel packs, like the frugal fan in Toronto, but
less wasteful of energy, since 32 F water is never discarded, and
we are only cooling a person vs a whole room.

Then again, we have concrete chairs. And a B12 (12 ga 2x3 U-shape) Unistrut
armchair with webs of closely-spaced struts touching a body and flanges
facing away might be a good heat sink. We might use 150' of strut (about
400 pounds) with lots of 1/2" bolts and right-angle connectors.

Nick