My roommate is too cheap to run the air conditioner, and it takes until 2 a.m. for my bedroom to cool down to a point where I can sleep well. Fans just don't cut it. In winter, people use an electric blanket to keep warm, so why not have one that cools you off? Actually, it would probably be more like a quilt, with a coolant liquid between two layers of fabric. This would help in places where one roommate likes it warm but the other prefers it cooler, or where someone's just too damn cheap to run the a/c.-- arghblah, Sep 14 2000 (?) Hydroweave http://www.hydroweave.com/videos.htmThe fabric designed with cool in mind. Soak it in water, let it dry, and the remaining water inside it keeps you cool. [StarChaser, Sep 14 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004] Thermo-STAT negative pressure rapid warming/cooling device http://www.google.c...ling+athletes&hl=enArm-embracing device designed to rapidly warm patients after surgery. Has been found to also do the reverse and cool athletes quickly. I'd be very cautious about devices that draw body heat away while you're sleeping. You could easily go hypothermic and/or die. [koz]Cold Sleeping Bag http://www.halfbake...old_20Bag#997406367Similar-ish [koz, Sep 14 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004] Cold Sleeping Bag http://www.halfbake...old_20Bag#997406367Similar-ish [bristolz, Dec 15 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004] Personal Aircon http://www.spacedai...pacetravel-03a.htmlPersonal cooling suit for fighter jocks [FloridaManatee, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] I want one...-- StarChaser, Sep 14 2000 Yes, absolutely! Different people like different temperatures. I sweat while my boyfriend freezes...this would help!-- doctorsue, Apr 21 2001 Why don't you just pay for the A/C yourself?-- egnor, Apr 21 2001 Alternatively, rig up some home-made ducts so that it cools your room only and then pay for it. Or remove the air conditioner and beat your roommate with it until they relent. Or wait for them to walk underneath it, if it's one of the units that hang terrifyingly out of third-story windows secured by hope and a single screw in a rotting pane, and give it a shove, hoping that they break its fall enough that it remains operable once you haul it back up and hose it off.-- Monkfish, Apr 22 2001 That may be easier said than done. A self-contained, maintenance-free blanket would have to have a compressor, an expansion valve, an external radiator, and have everything hermetically sealed in a tough, flexible blanket. WHEH! Sounds expensive.
Plus, if the thing leaks refrigerant on someone, it could cause serious damage to human tissue, and the maker would face huge liabilities. It's hard enough to make car AC systems that don't leak, and they don't have to bend!
An alternative would be electronic coolers (inverse thermocouples), but I haven't seen them used much because they gobble so much power.-- seal10, Oct 04 2001 we are so poor, we have cold water bottles, but they tend to warm up over night-- po, Oct 04 2001 <random_idea> Buy a large freezer and reserve one compartment for your duvet. </random_idea>-- st3f, Oct 04 2001 How much of a difference in cost is there to not/run AC?-- thumbwax, Oct 05 2001 how about something like those wine cooling jacket things?-- RobertKidney, Oct 05 2001 I thought I was inventing it. Then I found these:
Aquatherm Cooling Blanket! http://www.bertaut.com/aquatherm2000.html
For surgery... Warming Cooling Blanket http://www.gaymar.com/gaymarwebsite/product.nsf/productspecsweb/DHL520?opendocument
Equipolar Cooling Blanket (for horses) http://www.equitanausa.com/press_releases/1998_0715.html
Cooling Cloth and clothes http://www.advancedtextiles.net/products.html-- pashute, Jun 22 2002 Gotta love someone else who it seems, if they have to put up with extremes, would rather chill than bake (thermally speaking, of course).-- thecat, May 07 2003 P.S. I've seriously thought if I ever made a mint that I would, like st3f said, buy a freezer (and a 2nd dryer) for the bathroom for cooling my quilt (and clothes, etc. or heating them as the weather extremes require)-- thecat, May 07 2003 I sleep better with a cold face and a warm quilt. What I would need for an ideal, but low cost cooling system is a mosquito-net style enclosure and a very small A/C unit of about 0.2HP type (1,900BTU /0.6kW) rating. The small, flow restricted (not sealed) enclosure will ensure efficient use of the cooled air.-- FloridaManatee, May 07 2003 For people who have trouble getting out of bed on a cold morning, you need to have one of these connected to a timer so that it gradually makes the 'warm' bed less attractive. The clever part would be to dump the heat to wherever you'd put out your clothes for the morning so that, once you did get out of bed, you'd immediately be rewarded with the return of some of your lost warmth.-- pertinax, Jul 17 2007 When I had knee surgery they gave me an ice chest with a pump and hoses, to hook up to a flexible wrap with tubes inside. For icing my knee, you know.
It is chilled by ice cubes in water, and if you hooked it up to your blanket it would probably go through a lot of ice cubes. But maybe you would be okay if you wore some sort of astronaut undergarment, itself filled with rubber tubes.-- GutPunchLullabies, Jul 17 2007 I'd rather have an air-conditioned pillow to keep me head cool.
*Gets idea*-- croissantz, Sep 17 2007 random, halfbakery