Those of us in the northern hemisphere are likely facing warm even hot days and trying to keep comfortable, if not cool. Here in Northwest Montana, we’re only faced with 2 months at the very most of very warm in the upper 90 degree range days. Even when we climb into close to 100 degrees, the nights here are still very comfortable even cool, because of that we don’t have air conditioning. I know many of my neighbors do, but it just hasn’t been something we’ve felt as necessary. Though I do admit during that week or two when we stay close to 100, it is tempting. How do we stay cool?
- On warm days with no wind, we keep the windows closed and the curtains closed. We open during the night and leave them open in the early mornings to take advantage of the naturally cooler weather. We then keep that cooler air circulating through the house with ceiling fans and other fans when necessary.
- On days with a nice breeze, we keep everything open and take advantage of as many cross breezes through the house as possible.
- We don’t cook, much. We eat a lot of salads, raw veggies, and fruits. We do cook some, but try to keep that cooking as brief as possible – no long cooking roasts this time of year.
- When its time to can, I do so in the early morning and late evenings to take advantage of the cooler temperatures, rather than keeping the house sweltering. Someday, I’d love to have an outdoor kitchen for these kind of activities.
- Take it easy – we’re less active in the warm afternoons in the summers. We do active again in the mornings and evenings and use the afternoons to catch up reading, paperwork, and just chatting, drinking iced tea.
- Hang clothes on the line. Any household item that puts out heat, clothes dryer included, heats up your home.
- Keep hydrated! Proper hydration keeps your blood moving which allows you to sweat and in turn keep your body cool. Drink water more often that any sugared drinks, iced coffee, or even iced tea to keep yourself properly hydrated.
These tips don’t make it feel like a nice spring day necessarily, it does however; make it bearable. Any good tips, I’m missing?
Taking a warm shower right before bedtime helps cool me off. Although we’re more likely here to be cool at night I can remember nights in Idaho where it was *very* hot at bedtime and I don’t sleep well hot. I’d mist the sheets with water and turn on the ceiling fan. The evaporative effect cooled it enough for me to get to sleep.
I’ve also dampened my night clothing for the same effect.
Since moving back to the northeast in what is apparently a cooling trend here sleeping at night this summer isn’t a problem with heat at all. Last night it ws 49 degrees!
I do have AC, but haven’t used it in, oh… at least the past few years. My home as a child didn’t have it, so it doesn’t seem like I’m missing anything. We use ceiling fans as necessary on the hottest days, running on low speed, and it really does make a difference. Like you, we also do “active” tasks in the mornings and evenings, leaving the afternoons for the things that many people do in the evenings. On the really sticky nights, we wet small towels, wring it out, and hang it next to each person’s bed. Surprisingly, that makes it quite cool.
Definitely use evaporative cooling to your advantage! Wearing a wet bandanna around your neck will help you feel cooler even when working and sweating in the heat. We do that on our farm days all the time; our own garden has more tree cover, plus we can do that early/late and the farm day usually runs into the heat of the day. If you have a freezer, you can roll some ice cubes into the bandanna to improve the effect and keep it from drying out too quickly. You can also stick your feet in a pan of water for a bit…
Two things we do is get our clothes wet, have water fights and instead of changing just keep those wet clothes on all day. Also, if you have windows that open from the top and bottom, open them so there is an opening at the top and bottom…hot air rises and cool air moves down. The cool air can come in and the hot air can move out. Thanks for sharing with us!
we don’t have a/c and we live in the midwest…heat and humidity are the norm for summers here.
we do the open top windows to let out the hot air trick here.
when it gets too sweltering, we move downstairs to sleep and the kids put up tents and sleep outside where it’s cooler. if it weren’t for the subdivision next door (in what used to be a cornfield) we’d take advantage of the large sleeping porch.
i also sometimes hang some wet gauzy fabric in front of a fan for the evaporative effect. works very well!
I work at an unairconditioned facility where the inside temps read 96 on average well after the sun goes down. There aren’t many people assigned there because everyone gets ill with heat exhaustion, and I can’t say I’m immune to that, either. The two biggest helps to me during the most prolonged heat? Fans and ice. It seems that if I’ll keep ice on hand and drink cool drinks, my body temp can handle external heat pretty well, at least for 8 hours. Longer than that, with no moving air, no way. There are no windows there to open (arggh) so fans are the other lifesaver.
Where we live presently, we can’t open our windows day or night unless we’re right in front of them…we’ve had prowlers try to enter our windows right while we were in the house in broad daylight (double arggh) And lastly, for what it’s worth, one year I was really committed to walking a certain number of miles daily regardless of the weather, along a certain route that bordered a major roadway (for safety). When the heat got to the 100 and more mark, that pavement would just bake anything. But always carrying water bottles, and soaking a lightweight towel and wearing it around my neck kept my head from feeling dizzy, and well into the trek, pouring water over my head did the trick for some relief.