In the UK we’re having regular heatwaves this summer of about a week at a time, a brief respite and then the next one. By heatwave, I mean above 25 Degrees (77) or often the mid 30s. (95)
The UK is not a country used to these sort of temperatures and therefore not setup to cope with this heat.
My daughter and I both work during the day at home in what is effectively a Glass Box (It’s the only place to put our desks) attached to the back of the house.
Our house is really well insulated which has been amazing for the last 27 years we’ve lived here. we’re rarely cold, but it means that the house struggles to shed heat and the evenings recently have been horrible to try and sleep in.
The summer of 1999 (the year we moved in) was very warm and my now wife was pregnant with our oldest daughter and it was tortuous for her.
But the last 3 or 4 years have been very warm in the summer.
The reason for the ramble is that other than shutting the blinds and curtains to keep the heat out, and using fans to cool ourselves down individually, does anyone have any tips on how they keep cool, while I wait for my Air Con unit to be delivered.
I’m with you on this. It’s awful when it’s a recording day, as naturally need the fan turned off when recording any audio so have had to reduce that to a few minutes at a time now only. I’ve got a small freezer on the far side of the office that i keep some small rags in and use those round my neck and forehead occasionally when recording too which definitely helps.
I hate to be that weather guy, but next week is looking more tolerable.
“Refrigerated Air” was something a few movie theaters advertised in the 1950s. I did’t know anyone with AC. A couple of newly constructed buildings at my university had air conditioning in the late 60’s but the rest didn’t, and neither did any of my previous schools.
All I can suggest is loose clothing and air flow. Sorry.
In this situation, you must do physical work to bring the hot inside into equilibrium with the cooler outside. When the outside temperature falls below the inside starting in the evenings or night, open windows along a path to have an air flow. Set up an air-flow path. Put a fan in one window to blow air in. Put a fan in another window to suck air out.
In the morning, pull out the fans, close the windows and close the blinds.
We have a powerful fan we picked up a few years ago when some water got into our basement. (We have AC, but it doesn’t circulate terribly well in this older home.) In the US, you can get these things for $100-200 at a hardware store.
In NYC-in-August terms, 77 is practically a cold snap …
My apartment has AC, but I still pull down the blackout shades when the afternoon sun starts pouring in through my west-facing windows. If the room is cooler than it is outside, it will stay that way for hours, even if the AC has been turned off.
My garden temperature gauge measured 48℃ one day this summer. This week it hit 36℃. We aren’t kitted out for this heat. I had to go to hospital today and walking in the heat was reminiscent of my time in India.
We bought some pretty good berssen fans 5 years ago that are the only thing helping. We close the curtains on the sunny-side of the house and then open windows once the temperature outside is less than inside.
Apart from buying an air conditioning unit there is not much else you can do.
Shades on the outside of the windows. More effective than shades on the inside. Stops the heat before it gets inside the glass. On our motorhome we have a shade for the big front windshield that makes a huge difference in the inside temperature. Depending on sun angle, window awnings can help a lot too.
I am in London which is the hottest in the country, although I am in the suburbs with woods or big parks next to my home. If the temperature is less than 30 degrees, staying in the shade outdoors is still fine but on Tube or buses without AC can be horribly hotter than outside. With more than 30c, I have to choose somewhere with AC like trains or coffee shops but I will have to check out first as their air conditioners can be broken.
I started my own business and am a volunteer in a local workspace (no AC but better than other places) in certain periods of time every week. As many places are still without AC, I have to adjust my lifestyle trying to walk in the early morning when the temperature is still around 20c, finding places with AC in order to work, or even having to rest more because I learn that it’s easier to get exhausted under hot weather because the brain will use more glucose trying to cool down.
My house is better than other places I stayed before, and my room has sunlights coming in only 6-8pm every day, with attics as a buffer to slow down heating up, but going out to shut all my windows during daytime and opening up during dark is necessary in order to keep the temperature inside as low as possible.
Although I have been there almost five years and lived in much hotter places before, this has been the hottest summer ever especially when AC is not so common everywhere. Under this circumstances, I can’t push my productivity too far and I found resting and keeping me cool is so important.
Alvinc is there a window in your attic? Can you install an exhaust fan there to pull hot air out of the house?
I grew up in what in the US is an old house (pre 1800) and there was a tiny window in the attic but too small for modern exhaust or window fans. My father used a computer fan, designed for use in main frames with an external plug for electricity. You can get similar fans now that use USP connections for electricity, if you have a power outlet in the attic.
I have lived in houses both with attic fans and without attic fans, and they really do make a difference. Lowering the attic temperature by even 10F degrees can make a big difference in the rest of the house. There are now roof-mounted exhaust fans, including roof-mounted versions with solar panels. Whole-house fans are even better—they’re specifically designed to pull warm air up and out of the house during the cooler periods of the day and replace it with the cooler outside air.
I’ve lived in really hot places where the built environment was designed for the climate; where I’m living now was designed for the climate of 1826, not 2026.
I grew up in N.H. and am living in a Victorian house in Maine. My landlord wants to retain the 1850 aspects of the house. I’m in coastal Maine, where usually the ocean breezes keep things cool. The last five years have made air con almost mandatory. The temps can be over 90F / 32C fairly often. A day that hot in my long past youth would have been a frontpage item in the paper.
The “real” temperatures outside (allowing for atmospheric and other effects) have been over 100F/ 37C several times this summer.
I’m using fans, ceiling fans, and air conditioners set to 78, and getting up at a little after dawn to do anything strenuous in terms of work. I usually can’t open windows because the upstairs tenants smoke.
I look forward to them moving out at the end of the month, and hope for good neighbors.
Ventilation needs flow, and flow follows the easiest path. If makeup air for the exhaust fan is going from a room below directly up the attic stairs and directly out the attic window, you may as well run a big pipe directly from the downstairs window to the input of the exhaust fan.
An attic is not a heat buffer, in the sense that it does not store some magic “excess” heat to keep the room(s) below from heating up faster. How it works depends on the permeation rate of air flow from the lower rooms to the attic. In the worst case, with zero air flow to the attic, each level acts mostly on its own. In this case, an attic only takes heat from the rooms below it via conduction because the ceiling on the room(s) below it are hotter (than the average over the entire room). In a different case, when some air can flow from rooms below into the attic, the rooms below may actually get hotter faster. Why? Because the air needed to make up for the air flow into the attic is likely arriving from the hotter outside air. Certainly here, the attic is also not a buffer.
Yes! Heat conduction rate is proportional to temperature difference. A 10 oF drop on an otherwise 90 oF attic sitting above a 75 oF room drops the heat conduction rate from attic to room by a factor of (80 - 75)/(90 - 75) = 1/3. Effectively, assuming the attic is the only heat source (which it is not!), an 18000 BTU room AC could be replaced by a 6000 BTU unit with the same SEER rating, simply because the conduction from the attic to the room has been cut by that much (*).
Regardless of which case prevails, having a hot attic remain hot as the outside temperature drops is not a good thing. Hot attics will pass heat back to a cooler room below though conduction paths (e.g. ceiling beam supports). So, whatever the case from above, you want not to ignore a need to ventilate an attic properly.
In summary, seal up all incoming air flow promptly before the air outside is hotter than inside, and keep the attic sealed from air flow from the lower rooms. Finally, ventilate an attic properly as its own volume of space, disconnected from the rooms below it.
(*) edit note: An 18000 BTU can be replaced by a 6000 (not a 12000) only if the attic is the only heat source … which it is not! Estimate that conduction from the attic above is at most 20% of the heating load to a room, and you find the overall benefit is only [0.2 x (1/3)] + 0.8 ~ 87%. The 18000 BTU could be replaced by a 16000 BTU unit (in the most optimistic estimate).
