What are your advices to cool homes without AC ?
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This seems like a really bad idea and a great way to get someone to pass out and die in the hot water
Sheesh there is literally no thing so harmless that some internet rando won't claim its deadly
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Hi there, time to share ways to keep your home cool during hot times
So ok, usual ways I use:
- open everything during night
- close everything during day
- external sheets on windows without shutters
- some curtains to prevent heat from going upstairs
I was also wondering if plants could also help inside, any ideas ?
Share your advices !
There kind of.. isn't. I've been battling heat with extreme prejudice my entire life. MAYBE the closest thing to a solution is to drink lots of ice water and then hopefully you're not one of those people who can't sleep if its hot (i am).
Try to "store" as much "cold" as possible. i.e. if you have a half working a/c unit, run it at 100% at night and once the temperatures get as low as they're going to get, close all the windows, cover the windows, unplug fridge or whatever is producing heat you can afford to shut down and maybe if you're lucky it will be around 1 or 2 pm before it heats up to utter bullshit temperatures.
If you have a way to get unlimited free ice (IMPORTANT: and NOT from the fridge in the living space you are trying to cool), you can use that to cool things down in the evening when everything is the hottest. If you have to buy the ice, just buy a ac unit because it will pay for itself in no time. And if you're doing this because you can't afford the electricity, maybe see about wiring up a solar panel and battery which, again, will pay for itself if you could've afforded to literally buy bags of ice every day. And if you're doing this to protect the environment, get a ac unit that doesn't contain ozone-layer destroying coolant (i.e. most of them). Buying ice for cooling is incredibly inefficient.
You can also take the ice-based cooling strategy further. Get a bucket. A fan. A big radiator (you need quantity(sq area) not quality, get a shitty heater core one and not a pc watercooling one). A pc watercooling pump. Some tubing, along with whatever barb fittings and pipe clamps you need. Make it so that the radiator is sitting in front of a fan while having water from the bucket being pumped through it. Add your ice to the bucket. This system will dump the "cold" from the ice into the room as quickly as possible, MUCH quicker than just setting the ice in front of a fan to melt by itself. If you actually have a truly unlimited source of ice this will provide nearly the same amount of cooling (while the ice is fresh at least) as an actual window ac unit. I do this irl sometimes and usually keep one mostly set up and ready to go just in case my a/c stops working.
It's going to take time to find a cheap or free radiator if you're living like this for financial reasons but bending some copper tubing around the fan also works decently. If you buy it at the hardware store its likely going to come coiled up in a box and already in the perfect shape for this.
At a certain point, obtaining the amount of ice you need to maintain this becomes a problem. If you REALLY don't want to buy an ac unit at this point as maybe some kind of personal challenge or whatever, its time to science the shit out of it. Get a refrigerator. Put it outside, as leaving it inside will dump heat into the room defeating the purpose. Mod a bucket into the fridge and run 2 tubes out of it: an input and an output. Run this tubing into your living space somehow and into the radiator and the fan. You could alternatively put the fridge inside and find a way to attach a duct to the back of it to vent air outside which is may be more convenient depending on your living situation. Congratulations. You've built an a/c unit without technically actually building an a/c unit. Maybe in some countries this helps for tax purposes. I've never tried going this far with it before saying fuck it and getting an a/c unit so post pics if you do.
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Hi there, time to share ways to keep your home cool during hot times
So ok, usual ways I use:
- open everything during night
- close everything during day
- external sheets on windows without shutters
- some curtains to prevent heat from going upstairs
I was also wondering if plants could also help inside, any ideas ?
Share your advices !
I am fortunate to have moved to a climate where the heat is less severe and when it is hot it tends to be dry-ish. My house does not have AC so we put a big exhaust fan on the top floor and crack a window downstairs. Works so far, but we have some small portable AC units for the bedrooms just in case we need them.
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I mean, sure, if you want to look like you live in a meth lab. Or you could spend a little bit and have something 100x better and actually functional and not be miserable. This is like that whole boot problem: you can only afford $20 boots so you buy them and they wear out in 6 months. Over 5 years you spend $200 when a nice pair that would've lasted as long or longer would cost you $100.
You can get an ac for like $60 new, like $20 on Facebook. Walmart has Artic Kings on sale every year for that much. But yeah, spend hours of your time Macgyvering a makeshift solution that maybe drops you 10°. You know what "10° degrees cooler" is where I am? 100°. You'd still be plenty miserable.
yeah sure. the costs stop after you buy it. not like you have to pay to run it or anything.
I think you underestimate how poor some families are.
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Just keep in mind this only works if the humidity where you live is on the lower side. If you deal with high humidity where you live you won't experience nearly as much cooling from those wet curtains or the old wet towel over a box fan trick.
The towel on your head still works though because it's on a much smaller scale unless you're dealing with near 100% relative humidity. Double that with a fan of some type and you're in business.
Thanks for adding that info - something I'm less aware of, luckily I live in a dry climate where water helps.
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Thanks for adding that info - something I'm less aware of, luckily I live in a dry climate where water helps.
No problem! Excessive humidity just sucks in general for us since our main cooling system (sweating) relies on the sweat being able to evaporate. Higher humidity means the air is already full of moisture, so evaporation slows way down and is significantly less effective.
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Not disagreeing but none of my kids are at all fat and one is so hot-natured, it's not always just insulation. One of their cousins, too, she was just never cold and always hot.
I did always joke with my ex that I was built spare because I am from the hot part of the world, and he was padded because he was from Michigan.
Interesting anecdotes! There's actually a bit of truth in the last one, I believe. Bodily fat is more evenly distributed in Inuits and even Europeans than it is in, say, west Africans.
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Sheesh there is literally no thing so harmless that some internet rando won't claim its deadly
Your body is overheating so you heat it more?
This is not a solution to a problem, it is a problem itself
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another on back of the neck, and for the ladies, small ones under the boobs
I wish I had enough boob to know about that last one lmao
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yeah sure. the costs stop after you buy it. not like you have to pay to run it or anything.
I think you underestimate how poor some families are.
Energy star sticker on mine says $46 a year to run it. $3.84 a month. If you can't plan for that then you have bigger issues than AC.
Look, I've been poor. What do you think happens when something major like your car breaks down? You figure it out. You don't really have a choice so you do whatever you can to make it happen. You have to take that same determined energy and go "this is what's important right now, how do I make this a priority?". Is it easy, no. But it's not gonna happen if you just throw your hands up and give up. And sure, if you want to get stuck in that boot paradox of constantly replacing lesser solutions and eventually spending more than the right one in the first place, be my guest.
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Hot showers at night or when you’re feeling extremely overheated. Trust me, that’s way better than cold showers. First shower warm, then get soapy, and then shower as hot as you feel comfortable. I do this for over 10 years now and it’s amazing. My theory is that it heats up the body and due to the outside being cooler, it actually cools your body down - albeit 35°C. By the way I shower with ~42°C regular lol
You know what's funny? I have experienced the inverse of this. I run pretty cool so always take warm or hot showers, but one time there was a cold snap and my water heater broke. We had well water so it was very cold, and down here we do not really have heaters designed to handle actual cold so the house was freezing too. So I had what was probably the most uncomfortable shower of my entire life, shivering and teeth chattering so fucking cold, thought I would die, but when I got out? The air felt almost warm, it was so pleasant not just because it was over, but because it somehow blunted the feeling of cold. I don't understand how chilling my core somehow warmed me (it usually works the other way) but it sure did.
At night here I do shower hot, I think the theory is that then when you lay down, your body temperature is dropping and that makes it easier to fall asleep.
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Hi there, time to share ways to keep your home cool during hot times
So ok, usual ways I use:
- open everything during night
- close everything during day
- external sheets on windows without shutters
- some curtains to prevent heat from going upstairs
I was also wondering if plants could also help inside, any ideas ?
Share your advices !
Having lots of trees around the house will keep it cool but cause lots of other problems. Solar panels and AC is the way to go.
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Energy star sticker on mine says $46 a year to run it. $3.84 a month. If you can't plan for that then you have bigger issues than AC.
Look, I've been poor. What do you think happens when something major like your car breaks down? You figure it out. You don't really have a choice so you do whatever you can to make it happen. You have to take that same determined energy and go "this is what's important right now, how do I make this a priority?". Is it easy, no. But it's not gonna happen if you just throw your hands up and give up. And sure, if you want to get stuck in that boot paradox of constantly replacing lesser solutions and eventually spending more than the right one in the first place, be my guest.
ok guy, you're right. you're way better at being poor than I could ever be.
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ok guy, you're right. you're way better at being poor than I could ever be.
If you mean "better at thinking long term rather than short term to prevent you from staying at your current situation", then yeah
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I wish I had enough boob to know about that last one lmao
Ah but if you did, you'd have more insulation and the effects would negate
Plus big ones reduce your cornering speed at full sprint
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Your body is overheating so you heat it more?
This is not a solution to a problem, it is a problem itself
You'd be surprised how good the human body is at dissipating heat. We spent a good chunk of our evolution being savanna dwellers
Most overheating comes from dehydration causing surface capillaries to contract limiting how much heat the body can expel, drinking a small amount of hot liquid will not raise the core to dangerous levels but it will provide hydration and the signal to the capillaries to expand allowing more heat to be radiated out
Cold water does the opposite, closing the capillaries as the body thinks it needs to retain heat as now the core is rapidly cooling.
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Lose weight. I'm totally serious. Thin people have much higher natural tolerance for heat.
It's no coincidence that so many developed countries have become addicted to AC. The fact is that most people there are now overweight and in many (USA most obviously) over 40% are literally obese. Conversely, AC is much less common in places like France and Japan, and it's not just because they're too cheap.
If you want to stay cool in a heatwave, it helps not to be wearing a blubber overcoat that you can't remove.
Conversely, AC is much less common in places like France and Japan, and it's not just because they're too cheap.
This is completely wrong. Like 95% of all households in Japan have ACs. Even on the countryside. I was living in Japan for a year and the only time I visited a house without an AC was on an island with 1000 inhabitants.
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Conversely, AC is much less common in places like France and Japan, and it's not just because they're too cheap.
This is completely wrong. Like 95% of all households in Japan have ACs. Even on the countryside. I was living in Japan for a year and the only time I visited a house without an AC was on an island with 1000 inhabitants.
in places like France and Japan
This is completely wrong.
You talk exclusively about Japan, so even if your anecdata is representative, then my point is not "completely" wrong. Let's begin by using language correctly.
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in places like France and Japan
This is completely wrong.
You talk exclusively about Japan, so even if your anecdata is representative, then my point is not "completely" wrong. Let's begin by using language correctly.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]If youre making a point and part of it is a lie, it is completely wrong.
Lets begin by growing a pair of balls and owning up to your mistakes instead of hiding behind condescension.
