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Comment by motles | Hacker News Reader

what if they used a fan and didn't sleep under the covers?

Sweat profusely with a warm breeze.

I grew up in the midwest where it's not as hot but just as humid and A/C was a luxury. I never slept with any covers as a kid and a fan in the room sure felt like it was doing nothing.

An amusing oddity is that due to the same childhood experience, the noise of a fan helps me go to sleep.

Grew up in Texas and this is so real. I need white noise to sleep and my go-to is a ceiling fan.

Even in the winter, it’s not uncommon for me to have the fan on high while it’s 65-68 inside. I compensate with an extra blanket.

Living in the north, the two nights when I get the worst sleep are: The first night in the spring when we open the windows, and the first night in the fall when we close them. Likewise, my first night on any camping trip, and the first night back at home. It takes at least one night for my brain to settle on a new noise / silence pattern.

That could work but you’d probably feel too cold, haha. The eco solution would be to get a whole house dehumidifier and a ceiling fan. But for those who already have central air that seems superfluous

Does an air conditioner use that much more power than a dehumidifier?

I think they're actually similar technologies and wattages. So really I think people are comparing using a room unit (being a dehumidifier) versus a central AC systems cooling the entire house.

They can be a lot cheaper. We commonly use them in HK to stop our flats going mouldy when we are out the house and it's 35C (90-95F) at 80% humidity. It's a lot cheaper, possibly an order of magnitude, than running the air-conditioning 24/7.

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