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What are the best ways to stay cool in the summer without an air conditioner?
Easy Answer: Try water, shade and a little cave time.
As the mercury rises this summer, finding ways to stay cool that don't require a power-hungry air conditioner can help you save money and the environment. You could do what New York City officials did last week and threaten to fine people that leave their door open and let the cool out. But police enforcement isn't the only way to save energy during a heat wave.
For some Easy Answers on how to stay cool without an air conditioner, we turned to Stan Cox, a senior scientist with the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, and author of the book Losing Our Cool.
Cox is a guest on today's Marketplace for a segment about summer without AC and provided us with his list of six ways to stay cool without stressing the power grid.
1. Get a breeze going
Your body is constantly generating heat, in amounts comparable to what's put out by a 100-to-300-watt light bulb. You're uncomfortable in hot or humid weather because your body has a harder time ridding itself of that heat. That's when ceiling, window, or floor fans are useful. Why keep 25,000 cubic feet of living space refrigerated in order to keep two or three people cooled off? Air moving across your body is highly effective in helping you shed heat; some of the newer portable fans do an even better job than the traditional box fan. Attic or whole-house fans, when turned on in the evening after the outdoor temperature has dropped, replace hot air that has accumulated inside during the day with fresh, cooler air.
2. Unplug
Any household device that runs on energy in the form of electricity or gas also releases much of that energy as waste heat. The fewer things you have turned on, the less heat you have to deal with. There's a reason that around the world, kitchens traditionally have been separated from the main house. Cut back on boiling and baking especially. Keep any unneeded lights turned off. Energy-efficient light bulbs and refrigerators pump out less heat than conventional ones. Take tepid or cold, not hot, showers, to relieve the house of a big load of humidity (and remove a lot of heat from your own body). And use advanced solar technology--the clothesline--to dry the laundry.
3. Go back to the cave
If you have a basement, take advantage of it. The Flintstones' rock ranch house must have been a furnace in summer; our actual Stone Age ancestors would certainly have appreciated geothermal climate control as they took refuge in their caves. If the humidity gets uncomfortable down there, a fan or room air conditioner can take care of it at very little energy cost. If you don't have a basement, cool a one-room refuge with a small air-conditioner that can be turned on only when needed.
4. Get wet
If it's not feasible to hit the lake or local swimming pool, but if water supplies are sufficient and the garden is getting dry, set the sprinkler to overshoot a little and send the kids (or yourself) out to cool off in it. In drier regions where water may be scarce and air humidity is low, evaporative ("swamp") coolers are a highly effective use of available water.
5. Make shade
Vegetation cools twice, by shading and by evaporation. For the long run, plant trees, especially on the south and west. In the shorter run, or if trees won't work, put other types of tall plants--giant reed, sunflowers, or even corn--along the sunbaked sides of the house.
6. Workers of the world, thaw out!
In the workplace, we often have much less control over the indoor temperature than we do at home. The number-one summer complaint of people working in large offices is that it's too cold. If, instead of blowing on their hands or taking sweaters or space heaters to work, the nation's overchilled employees united to demand a less frigid summer work environment, there is no telling how many power plants could be closed down.
Buy Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer) by Stan Cox on Amazon.com
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At this moment--5 pm in July is a time when powerplants are at near full capacity, keeping all the A/Cs going. Various and numerous electrical power companies are working diligently to get more folks to use less electricity at this time--with a variety of incentives.
This is when they are buying peaker power and are paying dearly for less frequently used and less efficient power plants.
They would love to charge your electric car during the 9 pm to 5 am time window, as they now dial back--and their generators are at less efficient settings (and now their revenue drops at nighttime).
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one of my cars has a marginal A/C & I tried two frozen whiskey bottles (water only, please) stuck in the inside vest pockets. This was far more effective than it has a right to be. Of course, I froze them after midnight.
Summer thermostat settings SHOULD always be well above 72 F to accommodate for lighter clothing and winter thermostat settings SHOULD always be well below 72F to accommodate for heavier clothing. I have a very difficult time understanding why the seasonal clothing aspect never seems to enter the discussions--thus, I have LOTS of unused sweaters.
We have a long ways to go in terms of end user energy use sensibility.
I, like Stan Cox, put on my air conditioning maybe once a year to see if it works. I just do not see the need for "all-the-time" full-blast AC. The body does have a natural thermoregulating system that can work efficiently if allowed. When the body is taken care by keeping it at a healthy body weight, providing it with adequate hydration, exercising it on a regular basis and allowing it to acclimate to the warmer/hotter temperatures, one doesn't lose their cool, but rather gains it!
I am AC-free (not by choice, exactly) but will probably be that way for a while due to not having the economic wherewithal to upgrade my old house's electrical system and install central air. However, on the plus side, the house has an attic fan installed and that really does a fantastic job of bringing the house temp down. And here in Ohio, there are only a few weeks in summer (usually) where the house really bakes. We have a window unit in one room for those days, and everyone in the family sleeps there when it is too hot to do otherwise. It also helps that I don't care for the meat-locker effect of some AC systems - I like being cool but not frozen.
The downside of a lot of fans, however, is the omnipresent white-noise roar. I'd love to find a way to silence those. (Same problem with no AC in the car - it's hard to listen to music with all the windows down!)
I do not use the A/C at my house to save energy and money on my electric bill. My wife and her daughter do not like me because they think I am cheap. By reading this article it realized that I am not alone. If our ancestors lived without today's services, why we should not?
We live in the midwest in a home built in 1892, clearly before AC. The house is built for cross-breezes, and there are chases through the pocket doors and some places in the walls that run from the basement to the attic above the 3rd floor. There are trees planted along the West side, as well as porches and overhangs on that side only. We did add AC when we purchased the house-- we moved up from Louisiana, where going without air conditioning is seriously not going to happen. We rarely use the AC, though, choosing instead to strategically open and close windows and doors, use the attic fan, and close the dark blinds on the west side in the afternoon. We use box fans to pull the air in during the cool hours, and push out the hot air when it's warmer in the house. We know it's time to turn the air on for a bit when paper starts drooping from the humidity!
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trees planted along the West side, as well as porches and overhangs
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People love the old houses with their overhangs that block summer high sun but allow winter low sun to warm and illuminate. Reflecting pools are also great for scooping up photons for cozy winter morning then sending them in through the window. A thin layer of ice on the pool is a brilliant midWest scene straight from Norman Rockwell.
Now that window A/C is inexpensive and energy efficient, I have noticed at home improvement outlet that small window heat-pumps are also available. It is so easy to cut a hole in the wall between storage room and bathroom for one of these heat pumps. Best to check where the wall's stud is with gadget from the outlet. Condensate water can run down into shower or tub. Heat pump can then warm the shower room but cool it with a flip of the switch after your shower.
What will engineers think up next?
Nextel
?
In Portland we only need to worry about this for a few weeks during the summer. I have installed mylar-lined blinds in my apartment windows to mitigate the greenhouse effect of the morning sun on hot, sunny days. I completely close up the house before I leave for work in the mornings. At night as soon as the exterior temp is lower than the interior, and in the early AM, I get a cross draft blowing through the apartment to cool it down as much as possible. That usually keeps the place down to a temperature where I can sleep.
When I was in Southern China & Hong Kong last July, however, I used the A/C in my room in order to sleep, and I moved very slowly during the days. (How do THEY sleep?)
I'm not against AC but people have taken it to ridiculous extremes and the Great Recession does not seem to have an effect. Do stores really need to prop their doors open to cool down the great outdoors? Maybe supermarkets are justified to have icebox temps in the summer but I don't see a need for it in the mall or in a store that doesn't have food as its main product. Meanwhile at home, it is obvious: Don't dial it up below 75 F and move it down if it is below 75 F outdoors (lest your heating kicks in!).
As a person who is very sensitive to high heat due to medical reasons (read 80+ degrees or more) and is doing her darndest to save electricity, I open the windows and night, use the swamp cooler (yes, we have a dryish climate naturally) in the room we are using. Ceiling fans help, but once it hits the sustained 90's I can't take it anymore.
One thing that really helps me stay cool is a rolled "neckerchief" that has the water retaining pellets sewn into it - basically a tube sealed on both ends. I soak the thing in cool water and tie it around my neck. I can go out during the day and am able survive. When I remember, at night I pop it into the fridge and the next afternoon it's a delightful freezie surprise!
In the office, I have been fighting the office staff to keep the temp at 75, and through a programable thermostate am pretty much having my way. I'm going to pick up more "neckerchiefs" when I go to the farmer's market this weekend and perhaps hand them out to the staff :)
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sensitive to high heat due to medical reasons
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My granddad's friend has Uhthoff's Phenomenon. When she gets overheated she looses her sight. What will happen to us when the planet heats up? Lot of surprises in store for us? We need to do what the Chinese are now doing -- have only one child per couple. Theoretically this would cut the world population in half once every 2^5 years. With each person driving auto same distance, half the number of people would mean half the pollution. With roughly 2^33 people in the world today to get population down to 2^10 or 1,024 people it will take us (33-10)*(2^5)==736 years plus the lag time for attrition of old people. 736 years from now if people are living for 444 years thus lag time will take us past the millennium. We got ourselves into all this overpopulation. Now we need to get ourselves out of it. Overpopulation has been just a little bit too popular. "Love's been a little bit hard on me." But just remember folks out there in blogasphere land --
you can do as much adding you have time for, so long as you don't multiply!
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