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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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I am so supportive of cutting out or eliminating AC. I grew up without any and so still view it as a luxury. However, in my adulthood, I have developed year-round allergies to most pollens, dust and mold. These are uncomfortable even with medication. It nixes opening windows at night, drying clothes on a clothesline, even using fans unless the room is recently cleaned. When I come inside from gardening in the summer, I take a shower and feel blessed and guilty that I can hide in my air-conditioned house.
Until I was in my late teens, there was no AC in our house. My dad had it installed only at the insistence of my mother's physician when my mother's asthma became chronic. Looking back, I don't know how we managed all those years without it. It was so hot, it was hard to breathe by the late afternoon, and sleeping on wilted, damp sheets was frightfully uncomfortable. In the long stretch of high heat plus high humidity in Georgia (it can extend from early May through late October), AC is a necessity. Give up my air conditioning? No how, no way!!
We use gas/oil/electricity/wood/coal to heat our houses in winter and keep comfortable. A/C does the same for us in the summer. -- We lived 35 years without A/C here in the hot, humid Midwest. When the circumstances called for a new furnace and our finances allowed it, we installed central air. We both now sleep better, feel more energetic and, in general, enjoy a better quality of life because of the A/C. Plus, my wife works outdoors all day and really needs the break from the heat when she comes home. Could we survive without it? Certainly. But why would we want to?
I am one of those people who constantly complains to management that its too cold in my office in the summer. I bring sweaters and wear gloves (no space heaters, they're too much of a fire hazard)), and WISH my outspoken behaviour WOULD make some kind of impact. But, aside from suggesting I move my desk outside, building management is not willing to change the status quo.
Perhaps we should consider canning the stuffy, outmoded dress code we Americans follow. "Professional attire" for men requires winter weight clothing even in the blazing hot summer months. Those of us who are still held to this code should lobby for a change to business casual, which allows lighter weight fabrics and short sleeve shirts in the summer months. If the lobbying fails, buy lightweight polyester or silk suits for summer, and unless you have a meeting with a super important client you need to impress, roll up your sleeves, and take off the coat and tie in the office.
I'm sure there's a happy medium between temperatures that make most of us feel like ice cubes, and ones that will make most of us unproductive and crabby. Perhaps that 'happy medium' lies somewhere around 78 degrees, instead of the requisite 68-72 degrees that most office thermostats are set for.
Hey, greetings from sunny Charlotte. We live in a 50's ranch with lots of trees and an attic fan and do not use our air-conditioning. Sure it can be warm at times but the air is sweeter and we wake up to the birds singing. And best of all is when you hear the rain in your dreams all because the windows are open. love it.
I love the magic of air conditioning!
Without window air conditioners and then later central whole house units there would have been little if any economic growth in the area I live. Before A/C in the time period of 1900 to the 1950's this was a very small southern town with the only outside influence being that of all branches of the US military establishing bases in a 30 square mile area. Today it will be 94 degrees with 100% humidity all day. As a native I can contest that one never ever gets use to the heat or the mold that will grow without A/C. We save money and the earth's resources in the fall and winter down here by opening the windows wearing more clothes. Since our winters are mild it all equals out.
I would like to read the same story next winter about "Life without central heating in the Northeast and Western states"
Give me A/C or give me Death!
God bless you Willis Haviland Carrier! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Carrier
"The number-one summer complaint of people working in large offices is that it’s too cold."
According to what scientific study?
And even if that is the #1 complaint, it doesn't mean the temperature is too cold. In an office setting their are a wide variety of people. For ever person complaining it is too cold, there's another wishing it was colder. Some of of "run hot" than others, so to speak. So sure you NOTICE those who are too cold and put on a light sweater.
Sure, there are buildings where it is too cold. But note that most of the time, the vast majority of people are not putting on anything extra and are not too cold. Start raising the office temp and you risk having people that are too warm, uncomfortable and getting less done.
Which really brings us to the point of air conditioning, it makes life better. We get more done. We're not just a puddle of goo hiding in the basement, avoiding melting away. We can think and function well. We can get things done. We're less irritable. We sleep better. We're healthier and live longer (it's no lie, heat kills).
So if you're like Mr. Cox and want to sweat more, be less productive, sleep less, be more crabby, live a shorter life and have an overall lower standard of living, by all means go ahead and do it. Just don't act so damned clueless as to why most of us do the same.
Mr. Cox is advocating that people should be uncomfortable, but rather that the point at which people can be comfortable, sleep well, and be productive can often be attained with less use of air conditioning than is common today.
I have read some great ideas and comments from people who are not "clueless" but rather who are generally curious and willing to experiment, committed to reducing energy use, or similar reason.
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