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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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My grandmother taught me to put an ice cube or a cool rag on my wrists and neck, where large veins run.
Also, living in the Mojave desert with no AC we'd carry around a spray bottle and squirt ourselves. It worked great.
I've been living in my basement for months, and I do use a dehumidifier, but I would use that anyway to protect the metal and tools I have in my basement from the high humidity. And I stay very comfortable.
But I also use the basement in the colder seasons as well, letting the temperature fall in the rest of house to very low levels to avoid turning on the heat.
I retired from GM in 2005 after working in various manufacturing plants. My old plant in Western NY was not air conditioned. I remember many afternoons punching in to work for the "afternoon shift" with the temperature of my job location being well over 100°. It was miserable, but we all survived.
What a shock when I relocated to a GM division in Alabama where the plant was air conditioned. It was like working in a meat locker. That factory was so cold in the dog days of summer I would have to wear flannel shirts and hooded sweatshirts on my job. I looked forward to my lunch break so I could go outside and warm up in the 90°+ heat.
When our plant was closing down (2002-2005) the workers were "warehoused" at the site. Free standing grid heaters were brought in to warm the chilled employees: running at the same time the AC was blasting full force. If anything was a case study for the insanity GM and Delphi turned into, it was the vision of those heaters running full force in the heat of an Alabama July while the frigid air poured out of the cooling system.
The central air is seldom turned on in my old (1922) house. The two ancient oak trees keep the west sun from baking the place. The central hall does a great job of cross ventilation and fans keep things cool enough for me.
Precision manufacturing depends on stable temperatures, with most metric standards calibrated for 25C. And humidity control is important because high humidity can quickly ruin precision metal tools, even made of stainless.
But that is a reminder of the reason manufacturing historically has been in the north, and not the south. There was a reason cotton was picked in the south, shipped north to the cool and low humid north to be processed by machines into fine fabrics by precision machines.
The insanity might be moving the plants from the north to the south.
That said, people aren't machines, and the office climate should track the seasons.
Most people, I think, don't realize how much gas air conditioning in a car uses and that the wind will keep them pretty comfortable without it. I've lived over 20 years in New Orleans and never used AC in the car except to defog the windshield or when with an animal (and occasionally some people) and I can watch the gas gauge drop during those times, especially in city driving. On the interstate, I tested the gas mileage during a long summer trip with & without AC and found that my 2000 compact car made around 37 mpg without AC, but only around 27 mpg with it. I am a hot natured person and can't give up the AC in my home, but don't feel hardship in driving to and from work with the wind on me and some ice water to hand. I'd like to know how much gas/oil would be saved and air quality raised if everyone used AC in their cars half as much as they do now. As it is, many turn it on automatically and without thinking.
I have found my gas mileage actually goes up if I use the air conditioner in my car, especially at highway speeds (actually anything over about 45mph). In town, I will drive with my windows down but if I am on the road, the windows go up and the ac goes on. I lived for many years with just a window air conditioner in my bedroom after finding I was very irritable during the day because I couldn't sleep at night in the heat. I do think we get acclimated to the ac and have a much harder time in the heat because of it. But there are medical conditions that preclude turning off the ac. Given that, I do think we rely too much on ac and too little on fans. The one thing that the ac does that really helps is dehumidify the air so my ac at home is on but turned up to a higher temp just to keep the air is drier.
The reason that your gas mileage would go up when using A/C is only for the fact that when you lower your windows there is a greater drag effect on your car which the engine has to work against, and therefore use more gas. The difference in gas mileage would depend greatly on how fast you are going, since speed effects drag. The A/C does not have very much to do with your gas mileage, your windows being open or closed does. Check it out on a physics blog or something! It's interesting.
"On the interstate, I tested the gas mileage during a long summer trip with & without AC and found that my 2000 compact car made around 37 mpg without AC, but only around 27 mpg with it."
The aerodynamics of modern cars are such that rolling the windows down while on the freeway is going to NEGATIVELY affect gas mileage. I haven't a heard of a modern vehicle that can drive on the freeway with the windows down and get a boost in efficiency let alone a 40% boost. Maybe you typed it wrong? Or do you just like making stuff up?
More so, in modern vehicles using the ac rarely affects mileage by more than 5 or 10%. If you were really seeing that large a difference in gas mileage from your AC, chances are something wasn't working right.
Not Only But Also
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aerodynamics of modern cars are such that rolling the windows down
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Open window also lets in more photons. Window glass reflects lot of photons but could reflect even more if governments would allow more reflective coating. Police like to look in to identify people. Crooks like to look in too. Are there more crooks than policemen? You bet your glass there are, and then some. Besides, if police want to pull you over to have a peek inside, they can do it anytime they like. Would you then guess that more not less window coating would reduce crime but not increase it?
When I was in Arabia I found that my black motorcycle cap was a protection against the sun. The photons would heat up the surface of the hat which could then lose the heat to the ambient air. Would this indicate that a similar dark coating on the outside of the window could dissipate heat? Once the photon gets into the car it will usually be absorbed not reflected outward. Because of the shorter lambda, the blue photon from sun has many times the energy of the longer lambda of infrared generated by cabin heat.
When you are traveling at highway speed, the A/C radiator does not absorb as much heat from the engine radiator. The integral system is much more efficient. Once you have the car cooled down, drag from A/C has an insignificant effect on mileage over 50 mph.
Best thing about automobile A/C is the safety factor. People with A/C on are not tempted to drive faster just to cool down. The Maybach even has air-conditioned seats. Now you can have extra helping of Boston Baked Beans.
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