Howdy, friends and neighbors all over the globe. Up here in Seattle, we have a prosaic little heat wave. Last data from SeaTac says 93F.
So, how do your neighbors up in the Pacific Northwest keep cool? Make the jump with me and find out...
Not with the a/c, as most of us don't have it. In fact, a talking head on the radio this morning said only 15% of Seattle residences have air conditioning. That sounded a little high to your faithful reporter, but we're supposed to believe everything the talking heads on the radio say, so let's go with that. What to do if you're not in the lucky 15%, and perhaps there's a resident feline that needs to stay cool, too?
So, you're woken up at 5:30 a.m. by the dawn, and the place is down in the high 70's. Yeah! But you can see the devil sun emerging from the haze over the Cascades and the talking heads on the radio are going a little foamy around the mouth about the possiblility of a three digit high. What to do?
Keep The Cool You Have
Shut in the cool, shut out the heat.
Insulate, insulate, insulate. The windows in your faithful reporter's apartment face east, so the morning solar heating is the worst. As soon as the sun came out in full force, all the shades were closed, blinds drawn, and windows shut. Since it was so hot today, I added extra insulation and man did it make a difference. This doesn't have to cost anything, as you can see...
The first is an old sheet hung from the edge of the overhang on the balcony. This shaded the sliding doors into the apartment, and created a sort of vestibule on the balcony of moderately cooler air. It also kept direct sun from hitting most of the blinds behind the slider, so those didn't heat up as much as they could have. I used existing hooks in the ceiling, and attached safety pins to the corners of the sheet to hang on the hooks.
The second photo is a sheet hung to a set of blinds. Yes, those are blinder clips and safety pins. Don't knock it; it works! I could feel the difference if I slid my hand between the sheet and the blinds.
Additionally, and I urge caution with this if you want to try it at home 'cause there are lots of things you might not want to get wet, I sprayed the sheets with a fine mist of water. This cooled them down significantly, and seemed to increase the insulating properties. Until the water evaporated, that is. It probably increased the humidity in the house a bit, but it wasn't that humid to start with, so that didn't bother me. Also, keeping the sheets damp may put a cramp in the hand used to squirt the misting bottle.
Be warned, the resident pets may not respect your awesome heat sheilding efforts...
Don't Be Uncool
So, now that you've got a cool pad, how to keep it that way? Don't produce more heat!
Turn the lights off. Need to do laundry? Can it wait another day? The dryer can toast up a cool pad real quick. I know the computer is your secret lover, but that puppy can put out some heat! Grab the laptop and head to the library if you can. And for heaven's sake, don't turn on the stove or oven. Today is a good day for a cold sandwich, a salad, some cool mellon!
Personal Air Conditioning
First of all, be aware of the signs and symptoms of heat stroke. It is no fun, I tell you what.
Second, stay hydrated. This doesn't mean drinking six gallons of water. In fact, too much water too fast can be bad for you. Rather, keep water with you and remember to sip, but also consider other good sources of hydration. Eat wet stuff. Soup is the classic, and there are plenty of nice cold ones. However, if you don't want to cook, fruit can be great for this. Cherries, cantaloupe, and the classic-for-a-reason, watermellon. Just don't overdo it on the last one there, or you'll find out why watermellon is also sometimes called 'nature's tastiest laxative'.
Third, use your natural evaporative cooling. Look, people. We sweat for a reason. Get a fan, aim it at yourself, and let nature do the work. I've been able to stay totally comfortable in a room up to about 98F by sitting still with a fan on me. I usually read, work on the computer, knit, whatever while doing this, so it isn't just laying around, though you can do that too.
Fourth, take a cool shower. I don't advise cranking the water to cold and staying in for a couple of unbearable seconds. That won't cool you off. Adjust the temp to just cool enough that you can handle standing under the shower. Don't be a masochist here. Stay there for a little bit. Soon you'll find that you can inch the knob toward cold a little more. Repeat. After about five minutes you'll be much cooler.
And, well, I got a little crazy and desperate, so I resorted to primitive swamp cooling.
Yep, that's a fan blowing over a tray of ice. This one comes with serious warning: Electricity and water are a bad mix!!! Trying this at home is not advised!
Nighttime Is For Chilling Out
Okay, you made it through the heat of the day and the sweet, sweet cool of evening is upon you. How do you get the hot out of your house and the cool in?
Ventilate, ventilate, ventilate.
The heat of the day hasn't just warmed up the air in your pad, it has warmed up your stuff. It takes a while for cool air to absorb that heat and carry it away, and the air needs to circulate in order to do that.
So as soon as the outside temp is cooler than the inside one, open up and get the fans going. I find it most efficient to try to create a river of air through my place...it flows in one window and out the other. This works best if you have a couple of rooms to work with, bringing outside air into one room and venting it out the other.
How Cool Is Your Author?
So, how did my own techniques work out for me? Pretty well, considering that your faithful reporter lives on the top floor of an east facing building, and it is often warmer inside by 10 a.m. than outside.
Here's the iPhone weather report and internal thermostat (to a heater, alas!) at 1:34 p.m.
And at 5:40 p.m.
The actual outside temperature in my neighborhood was slightly higher than 103F, according to a neighbor's outside thermomoter. It read just over 105F at about 4 p.m.
Overall, the experiment was a success. Tomorrow I plan to extend the sheet on the balcony all the way to the wall, as the part of the slider the sun hit was very hot.
Also, I'm taking great pains to air out the place tonight, so I start with a cooler baseline than this morning. Today I started at just over 80F. My apartment is like a long rectangle, with windows/balcony only at one of the short ends. This evening I opened up the front door (at the far end from the windows, which opens into an internal hallway), and the hallway doors up to the roof. This has created a river of air from the cooler outside that flows through my apartment and flushes out the heat.
I'm not comfortable leaving the front door open while I sleep, so this is only going to work for a couple of hours. We'll see if I can get the place below 80F before another 100+ day tomorrow!
Best of luck to any other folks in the area dealing with the same, and any further tips and tricks welcomed!!!