Many parts of the US are sizzling right now, unable to escape the extreme heat alerts constantly flashing on the news and our phones. I regularly experienced triple-digit temperatures while living near the desert for ten years. But there’s a big difference between that and the 100+ temperatures with humidity levels above 60% many of us are currently experiencing on the East Coast.
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Like many unlucky Americans, one of the two overworked air conditioner units left us hanging during the latest heat wave. HVAC repair companies are swamped with service requests, and we were struggling, so I pulled out the EcoFlow Wave 3
I’ve been testing the EcoFlow Wave 3 sporadically for a few weeks, but began using it more religiously after the summer heat rolled around.
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My husband’s home office is well-insulated and soundproof, but it’s an addition that wasn’t properly incorporated into the home’s existing HVAC system and doesn’t have any windows. As a result, it gets very hot in summer and very cold in the winter.
Whether that convenience is worth the price hinges mainly on the individual use case.
Once our upstairs A/C quit in the middle of a heat wave, I had to repurpose the Wave 3 from a testing unit to cool down my kids’ playroom during the day and a bedroom at night. The top floor, where the heat concentrates during summer, reached up to 93 degrees, with the outdoor temperature at 102 degrees.
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My kids are home for summer break, and they love spending time in their playroom, which has all their toys, craft supplies, and a TV, but they couldn’t do it when it was 90 degrees there. I decided to set up the Wave 3 on a table in the playroom and cut out a piece of foam for the window using the stencil included with the unit.
I then routed the inlet and exhaust ducts through the piece of foam and ran the Wave 3 to bring the room’s temperature from 86 to 75 degrees. The inlet duct pulls the fresh outside air, while the exhaust vents the hot air from the cooling process. I also ran the drain line out the window to release the water collected during condensation.
It’s a practical device, with improved performance over the Wave 2 and the ability to charge it using solar energy, but it is also pretty expensive. It’s effective in up to around 175 square feet but can struggle in larger areas.