Air Conditioning For Turbo Training

I have a spare room in the house which I just use for turbo training. I’m considering getting an air conditioning system installed.
I train 4-5 nights a week for between 2-3 hours year round on the turbo and even in peak winter i’m still too hot with the bifold doors and windows fully open with two fans blowing at me.
I will probably still use a couple of fans for airflow/breeze but i cant find much on the web about people using air conditioning.

Any Thoughts?

As someone who has used a turbo for training, it sounds a heck of a lot easier to just go and ride outside for at least 3 of those nights a week.

Explains the username!

Makes sense if not a little extreme. Although you’re probably benefiting from some sort of heat adaptation.

Reminds me of winter training following by a week training abroad somewhere warm. It takes a few days to adapt to the heat!

I suspect you would struggle to cool and dehumidify the room with the windows open, assuming a session averaged 250W, the AC would need to be doing about 1KW of work, plus condensing 2-3l of water an hour.

The solution to your problem is bigger fans. This time of year its 5C outside, no portable domestic AC unit is going to get anywhere near that.

My turbo is setup in the conservatory, with a big 18″ floor fan and the door open it’s comfortable (but still sweaty). Might try seting the fan up at the door end (tv and turbo is at the other) and set it up blowing a tailwind of cool air into the room rather than as a headwind just stirring it up.

What fans are you using? I managed to get a decent deal on a Wahoo Headwind and the only time I really suffer is in high summer. Bear in mind that when you’re working on the bike, for every 250 watts you produce in power, around 750 watts is generated in heat, so you’re dealing with a fair bit of warming.

I can see air con working up to a point, but you’re still the equivalent of a small heater in the room, so it’s going to be working hard. You can still get pretty hot and sweaty even in a fully air-conditioned, commercial gym of course.

I’d look at extracting air as much as pushing it in. If you had large fans fed by trunking at the wall away from the doors and they were pulling air out you’d get a lot more airflow through the room and a better cooling effect.

You need a near sealed room for aircon to be effective and a big unit to cool the space you’ll exercising in – look at the size of most Gym air con units, people push out a lot of heat when exercsing.

You don’t need to get anything installed, you just buy a standalone unit and plug it in.

But as above – bigger fans. What are you using? I have a big one from Machine Mart, moves a lot of air. Two or three of those would be like riding outside. Put the fans by the windows if you need to get more fresh air in.

One of my fans is set up at head/shoulder hight. It’s a lot more effective than my floor mounted one. I’m thinking of ditching the floor one and going for another controllable head/body hight fan. Also have a window in the roof. Without some form of external air the humidity would be a killer.

Outside training in winter just isn’t specific enough. I have tried intervals in the dark and rain and i just don’t get the same training effect. My fitness declines and not just specific to winter i find it pretty dangerous doing proper sick inducing intervals on the road.
My current fans are 2x honeywell turbos and one big industrial jobbie from clarke or screwfix i think. I have tried different locations with the fans but the best is the big one on the floor in front. a honeywell at face level and the other honeywell in the open door behind blowing at my back.

I had air conditioning in my room in Angola which would turn the room into a fridge. Even sat under it with it blowing directly on me it was no match at all for 2 big fans and air flow across my skin. The AC couldn’t do it. .

I used to train in my garage, no heating, insulation, anything. It was freezing in winter but 5 minutes into a turbo session and i’d be sweating like a pig!

Save your money!

saw something along these lines being talked about for zwift recently, none of your poxy blade gently swirling round…
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0752T6VY7/ref=dp_cerb_2

I wonder if turning one of the fans around so that one sucks and one blows (no sniggering). Maybe it might create better airflow???

I was looking at those air movers earlier. I’m going to order one as it looks like it could be a good addition.
I wanted and tried a wahoo headwind and didn’t think much of it. No more powerful than my one standalone fan. A bit more focused but it didn’t really help.
I have tried the fans in the suck blow configuration mentioned above. It wasn’t as effective as having the fan blowing the cold air in from outside.
I’m going to borrow a portable air conditioner from a friend and give that a try. I might get a few more fans as well. Mount some above me pointing downwards.

Daft

I train 4-5 nights a week for between 2-3 hours

🤪

What’s daft?

Build yourself a wind tunnel.

Slightly bigger version of this one should do it.

https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/WindTunnel/windtunnel.html

I don’t think air con would make any difference. I can train outside on the turbo in sub zero conditions and still sweat, like others have also suggested, like a pig.

It’s air flow you need to move the sweat off your skin, I wouldn’t think aircon could do that

I’ve used a portable aircon for Zwifting.

Bloody noisy… But worst is that it simply didn’t cool me down as much as the 3 big fans I have blowing on me…. 2 on the floor either side of front wheel..one on wall above the tv in front of me blowing air down and back over my head and chest.

I’d be trying a couple of big fans and a dehumidifier, like the others have pointed out even in a decent gym with the industrial aircon on full you’ll still sweat loads.

I started off using an old stand ~18″ fan to turbo indoors, but after seeing several forum posts about the Honeywell HT900e fans and seeing them for ~£25, I bought one last winter. I thought I’d use both fans together, but soon discovered that the Honeywell was fine by itself outside of a rare “heatwave” day where I had chosen to turbo instead of riding outside in 28C+ temps.