How to cool a mobile home with no A/C
 

How do I cool a mobile home with no A/C? I have 2 box fans, and the windows are open, but it is terrible in here. I am thinking of blocking off the majority of the house, and start sleeping in the living room with the kids because it is so hot. Any help would be appreciated.

Amanda

I used to have a sprinkler hose (the flat type with holes punched in it) running the full length of the roof. I'm sure it won't do much for the lifespan of the roof, but it did wonders for the inside temperature.

Always draw air through the house from the shaded side. when i was a kid we used to put the fan in the window on the sunny side of the house blowing out. the other thing is close it in the morning after a cool night to keep the cool in longer. hope this helps!

Is it possible to get a small window unit? That would take the edge off.

Anything you can do to shade the mh will help. You'd be amazed the difference if you could move the mobile home under a big tree. I know that isnt probably possible but you could for example make a arbor/trellis over the mobile home and get some vine to cover it or suppose you could put some kind of ag shade material over the arbor instead. Even cheap tarps would work but dont allow for ventilation.

Shade is your best bet, as others have said. But...I did buy a 5000 btu window unit last week for $70. One of those in a bedroom lets everybody in the room sleep in comfort, and you can turn it off during the day.

There's a reason the old folks down here built houses that had rooms with 10 foot ceilings, painted white exteriors, and considered shade as one of the most important factors when choosing a homesite.

Well the only tree of any size I have on my land is a willow in the ditch. I am planning on transplanting some plums and peaches soon. I will see what I can do about shading it. I am planning on borrowing a A/C unit that is not in use from my mom. I figure that will keep the living room cool enough for all of us.

Use your water hose to spray water underneath the trailer. Then sleep underneath it in the cool, wet dirt.

LOL.

Sorry, been there, and it really hurts in this part of the country to live in a trailer house with no A/C, or at least unable to run it much for fear of the bill.
There have been some good suggestions though!
All the trailers I have lived in have ran east to west. When it was hot, I'd try to sleep/stay in the east end of the house, as that it cooled off the first. I now live in a 14x40ft trailer house that has a patio door on the south side, and a bay window on the west... That room is hot! Awnings, shade cloth, anything to can do on the outside of the house to keep the sun out is good. While curtains on the inside do help some, it still allows the heat into the house. (just like it makes more sense to put the sun shade on the outside of the windshield of your car instead of the inside.)

I read this in a magazine somewhere, it will be a longer term solution.

An arbor about 2-3 feet from the house. I don't think it matters what kind of vines you plant, something fast growing. The plants keep the air between the house and arbor cooler, or something on that order. Another plus would be the shade.

In the hot southern climate, it's next to impossible to survive without air conditioning. Even if you can only cool a portion of it with a small A/C, you can close off some doors and that's better than nothing. I hope you can borrow the one from you mom and get it hooked up.

Water on the roof will work some but causes mud can cause mold and cost money. Shade is the only thing that will take some of the edge off the heat. If you are desperate and handy you can take some scrap wood and build a frame to sit on your roof then cover each side with tarps. Leave a space open down the ridge line and as the air under the tarp heats it will flow out the top and pull cooler air in. Doing the same thing to the sunniest side of the trailer will also help. BUT!!!!!!!!!! Make sure the frame(s) is(are) anchored to the ground and not the trailer so if the wind gets a hold of them the trailer won't get damaged.

I used to hang tarps on the side of our old house and it made a REAL difference in the heat coming into the house. The wife won't let me do this here because it looks so 'hillbilly'

Window shades and curtains help. Especially of there isn't any wind you will b eblocking. I have been there too . We lived in a mobile home overlooking a gravel pit. WHEW. We were so hot
We had to have AC ,but money was tight, so we closed off most rooms. Watcher has a good idea too, the cooler the air you have coming in the better. Good luck :)

We lived in a 12x50 for almost ten years, and had to eventually put an A/C unit in the living room AND the bedroom. It was unbearable without it. We had two maple trees, one at the front of the trailer and one at the back. Trailers are actually like Easy Bake Ovens. . . don't take much to heat em until it gets cold outside.

There is also a roof coating for mobile homes that is white - it helps reflect the heat off of the roof. My FIL put it on his renters roof and the renter said that it helped.

I also put aluminum foil on the top halves of our windows. It is darker in the summer but it does help keep it cooler.

i feel your pain. you can also plant shrubs around the outside in front of the skirting to keep the air a bit cooler under the house. i read that somewhere and we're gonna give it a try. even with central a/c the living room is still bloody hot but i think the a/c needs work. we only have one tree that shades the bedroom and it is amazing the temp difference at that end of the place. i'm glad you started this thread cause i was wondering the other day what we could do to cool this oven off.

Go to Walmart, K-mart or some sporting good store.
At walmart in the camping section for about $2 is a silver foiled space blanket.
One blanket cut in half will cover two windows and hold the cool of the night in, and reflect the sun out. You can buy solar curtains, but they are basically this, with a place to run a curtain rod thru.
This will allow you to see outside some when in the daylight, but will have a shady blue interior lighting. At night it will be reverse, and if regular curtains are open then people will be able to see in slightly.

My next door neighbor and I used this last summer and have it up for this summer, it does help.

Angie

I've been thinking about cooling through shading, for my future house... There aren't going to be any trees for many years. I've thought about building some frames (4x4's bolted to the exterior of the home) extending up into the air, crisscrossed with stainless steel cables, and have some of those camouflage cover type tarps the military uses for hiding tanks, on top of the cables... The material is perforated, to simulate leaves... so a rainstorm wouldn't hold water...

My current home stays 20 to 25 degrees cooler inside than outside, in the summertime. I've got huge oak trees shading my house from the sun... makes quite a bit of difference.

I use WHITE exterior house paint on my steep roof, here in LA, with no AC, and it cools down 5 degrees every time I paint it (annually). I have used "Silver Dollar" with is metallic and very expensive, but it washed off in our heavy rains. Now I use a mix of any/all ext. white paint that I mostly find or am given during the year. Doesn't sound like much but helps enormously. Others I know have built frames over their trailers and either used reflective tarps or wood/metal and painted those as reflective as possible. I've also used water on the roof in the hottest weather; here, that's usually up at 98 or more. our humidity is so high, this only helps when it's up around 100. I also have ceiling and box fans to pull in the cooler air from the cooler side of the house. ldc

The cheapest thing you can do is to buy a large fan and have it blowing out and draw the colder air from the outside.You can use this even if you don't have shade. Put it in so that all the air will blow out and not just a little of it blowing out. For about 40 dollars yu can get a large fan that will blow out and have it fixed in a windoe and sealed tight so it omly blows out and crack a few windows on the other side of the MH. This will have a brese and cool the MH more that just a box fan.

Air conditioning is the answer!
 

Go buy yourself an a/c for your comfort and your family. I lived in a mobile home and when I would come home from work it would be hotter than hot!

Putting an A line roof up might help, but that is an expense that I am not sure will cool your home that much.

I feel for you! I remember those awful, unbearable nights. No one knows better than me.

Save up your money (hard thing to do in this day and time) and make plans for a nice small home. You will never regret it.

Joyce

if you own the mobile home go half way down the hall and cut a hole in the ceeling and the roof then install the largest roof ventialtion fan possible .
the larger the cfm the better .
this will draw air from the entire trailer .
to add extra cooling water the grass under the windows in the evening .

you might also consider coating the roof with white elstomere to help reflect solar gain

Another hillbilly solution...

Put a box fan in the window.
Hang a wet sheet over the window with the sheet just barely reaching the bottom of the fan.
Turn the fan on high and enjoy the cool air.

Keep a bottle of water close by to spray the sheet often. The secret is to keep the sheet wet.

Look for an old fashioned water cooler. They cool better than a A/C and for a lot less money.

I spent several years in Alabama living in an unairconditioned mobile home. The summer I was pregnant I spent the hottest part of the day lying on the living room floor with a box fan blowing on me. Between me and the box fan was a big bowl of ice water.

hot
 

Misting your body will help. I've also heard of a large pan of ice in front of a box fan. The fastest growing shade tree in Colorado is a cottonwood...not sure what it would be there.

This works, used an oscillating sprinkler set midway on the roof and let it oscillate from one end of the MH to the other. This was back in the 80's with 10 straight days of 100 degrees plus. The sprinkler dropped the temp inside by 10 degrees.

I am in Arizona and humidity is not a big problem here. I don't know about where you live. But you can buy Evaporative Coolers here and they cool by blowing moisture into the air with a big fan. They work great if it is low humidity. You can buy one to piggyback on the houses duct work, or one that you roll from room to room in the house. They are much cheaper to buy and to run than an airconditioner.

In the old days in Arizona, they built a frame about 8x8 and hung wet blankets on the frame and slept in the center. When electricity came to the area, they would hang wet towels up and blow a fan thru the wet towel.

Put some styrofoam over your windows or if you can't do that, put aluminum foil over the window.

An $80 A/C unit from walmart in one end of the mobile home and a box fan in a window on the other end blowing out as an exhaust fan works best.

Thats how I cooled my 14 by 60 mobile home at the lake for 2 summers and the 5000 btu A/C cost almost $150 then. The price has gone down greatly in the last 10 years.

Consider contacting your local Community Action Agency. Through the Weatherization and LIHEAP funding, you may qualify for help with your air conditioning needs.

http://www.okacaa.org/info/listings.html

Allowing the air from a fan to blow over a large bowl of ice works, dampening your pillow before you go to sleep also helps plus sleeping under a damp sheet. Seen all 3 methods done many times when I was nursing and needed to bring a patients temp down.
I also use the ice method to cool the upstairs of my home, it brings the room temp down nicely.
I have a solar blind [it looks like a normal blind but is silver backed, when it is closed it also works as a black out blind keeping light out]in daughters bedroom which works reasonably well, south facing room sun hits it from 11am onwards.
Someone else has mention putting up the emergency foil blankets on the windows, I'm doing this for the first time, I have friends that say they have had good results.
Though should also point out I live in the UK not Texas, and dont get the high temps.:D

You've had some great suggestions here. My experience is:

1: Put a trellis a little distance from the sunward side of the house. Grow a vine on it (kiwifruit is good, but anything). In the meantime, put shadecloth over it. Shade with air circulation is good, that plus water transpiration (i.e. plants) is best. Shadecloth over an exterior open space (say pergola or veranda) makes an amazing difference.

2. White or silver paint on roof.

3: Built a second roof over the whole thing. Like a carport, but with a few inches between the roof of your home, and this roof. Far enough that radiated heat from the top roof to your home roof won't be significant, and so that you can easily clear out bird's nests in there. This roof should be white or silver. If you can actually make it a carport, then even better - more shaded ventilated space is better. Use that trellis on the sunward side of it.
Shadecloth is pretty-well insect-proof. Allow some overlap where it... uhm, overlaps. You'll want weight (e.g. boards, or heavy dowels) on the bottom to keep them in place, then tie those to to the support poles. You can use this space for an evening barbecue meal, or even outdoor sleeping, if you need to.

Others think we are mad for no longer running an air conditioner, and I do admit that there are some July and August nights where I have little doubts about my insanity concerning this. The difference between with air conditioning and without air conditioning on the electric bill was close to $200/month. I thought - people lived for thousands of years without air condtioning - so it really isn't a health issue. Also, think of all that fuel saved if we would all give up air conditioning.

I know, I know, that's like people being asked to use less gasoline in their cars -- people just don't give up something they are in the habit of using until offer a better (never lessor) alternative.

Anyway, the suggestion Old Vet made along with shade over the trailer are the best. Only thing I wanted to add is something I do when the heat keeps me awake (not as often as you would think after your body readjust to not being kept cold all summer) is to simply get up stand under a cold shower for a minute and go back to bed damp.

Think of it as a challenge to be met and not as something you are being deprived of also helps.

Hugs,
Marlene

Marlene,
It doesn't bother me to bad, but the 6 month old baby is miserable. Last night after he woke up 3 times drenched in sweat, I took him down the road to my mama's so he could stay cool. At 11 pm last night it was still 85* and the humidity was 75%, so it was HOT.

An evaporative cooler is only good on dry days. On a humid one, it just adds more water to the air. Considering that the past few days here it has felt like you could grab an armful of air and wring a glass of water out of it, evaporative cooling isn't an option all the time. (We do have one, but don't use it on humid days.)

PyroDon's suggestion for an attic fan is good, of course when it's 100 degrees outside it's not really cooling as much, but can be wonderful at night.

We also live in a mobile home. It's a doublewide, and we liked it because the entire west side of the house (runs north to south, so the long sides face east and west) was entirely shaded by mature oak trees. However, the front yard was virtually bereft of trees, except for one small live oak. We've been busy planting trees for the future.

What we have done is buy the vinyl slatted roll up shades at Wal-Mart, and install them on the outside over the windows. They allow air circulation but keep most of the sun out of the house. They will last about two summer seasons here, and of course we take them down at the end of autumn. They aren't terribly expensive, plus they don't completely darken a room and you can still see out through them, though admittedly they do obscure the view.

Right now Texas has a tax free shopping weekend on energy star appliances only, for Memorial Day. We went out yesterday and purchased a window unit. The timing was good for us. I don't know if Oklahoma is doing the same or not.

It may also help when you have time sitting down, to place your feet in a pan of cool water, and of course fans and cold water to drink or a glass of ice to munch on.

My neighbor does not run her A/C in her MH by choice and lack of money. She has built awing frames over all of her windows and has stapled shade cloth to the top of each frame. She also bought some "shade screen" and stapled that to the outside of each window. She then framed the windows with cedar slats (or fence board that people had thrown away) to hold the screen in place. She also has a swimming pool. If she can't take the heat any longer, she just jumps in the pool.

Our A/C went out Friday morning (blower motor or capacitor). So we are down to window units. It's only 97 degrees here today, with a good wind, but I just now had to turn the window units on because I couldn't take it any more.

Good Luck!!!

I have always wondered if that would work. My thoughts were to put a block of ice in a wash tub with a fan blowing across it.

replace any heat generating incandescent bulbs with compact florescents, which generate minimal heat.
--sgl

Pergola construction is a aestetic way to make trellaces for climing vegetation also.

Get some 4" diameter pvc pipe...and some elbows. Bury the pipe 3-4' under the ground...running for 15-20'...withthe far end up sucking in fresh, hot air (might cover this to prevent additional humidity from entering the pipes)...and the other end coming up into the corner of your floorspace somewhere. Place a box fan at the entrance and it will pull and distribute earth cooled air into the home. (since at this depth the ground maintains a constant temperature year round...somewhere between 55-65 degrees)

If you ran a large enough complex of pipes underground...this might actually be a decent alternative to air conditioning....though I would then use some sort of ducted blower in order to increase the efficiency of the process.

This along with some of the shading suggestions may serve you well.

There a lot of great suggestions on here, but one basic idea that I haven't seen yet. Is your furnace switched over to the summer setting? Check your manual and switch it over. This will run just the fan, circulating the air throughout the house. It draws in the cool air from under the trailer, and adds it to the house. Also, a dehumidifier in the largest room might help. Humid air is always warmer, that's why we add moisture to the air in the winter time.

If you can't find the switch for this, call and ask any heating repair man. Ours is a little white button. Pushed in, it runs just the fan. Pulled out, it will run the burner too.

Hope this helps.