Heatwave Survival w Computer Fan Over Water In Metal Dog Food Bowl for Evaporative Cooling Bandana

The heat of the summer of 2023 was so disorienting and crazy making, I really don't remember exactly how I arrived at the curiosity to hack together this micro scale water cooling experiment, but somehow it happened and somehow it worked. I had already been religiously dunking a bandana head wrap and similar neck wrap in water to create spot treatments to cool the head and blood flowing through the neck. It did have a cooling effect that it was barely perceptible. It made life more comfortable about 85 degrees F , but didn't feel at all cool. Some how I decided to use one of my extra computer tower fans to see if there was a way to push or pull some of the heat out of the water. It just so happened that by piecing together a system whereby a thin stainless steel dog bowl, with about 3/4 of an inch of water in the bottom was the perfect platform for the fan to rest within without touching the water. What I quickly discovered is that while the air coming out of the fan was not cooler, the water below it did cool significantly, and the very bottom of the metal bowl got quite cool. This was all quite a pleasant surprise as I was able to continue my, many times a day, practice of soaking and ringing out rags to place on the skin, but now I could actually feel the coolness and it's cooling effect was much better. They dried out a bit slower, and lower temperature of the water and fabric really made life a lot more livable.

I'd say it was the game changer of a life time. I was still laid up and had to be bed ridden for about 20 hours a day for 3 to 4 months, but at least it was a lot less miserable. It didn't make sleeping a lot better, but it did help some. Compared to the two previous summers without this system, it a very nice life hack, although the fact that there were record breaking high temperatures might rounded out the advantage. In other words, it may have been even better in cooler years, and it might have been just enough to keep me alive in 2023. I can only expect temperatures to keep rising, I don't know if this method will keep me alive through the worst yet to come, but at least I have more hope now. The fact that I've proven to myself that it's possible to generate any kind of temperature decrease with a minimal amount of electrical energy, it have the option to simply repeat the cycle more often. If the heat gets to be even less bearable in the future, I can do my best to just cool my rags more frequently, and also add more rags and include the groin and the arms as additional areas of highly concentrated, high volume blood flow to increase the cooling effect on the blood. This may be a very sensible, sustainable, and scalable solution to deadly desert high temperatures. Wish me luck!