We’re having a nasty confluence of sorts here, a heatwave combined with the smoke from forest fires in three of the cardinal directions. This is definitely a ‘first world’ complaint as the people with real problems like having your house consumed by wildfire are hundreds of kilometres away.
Professor google has come up with lists that cant be summarized like this:
1. Close blinds
2. Use Fan
3. Don’t use heat generating stuff
4. Keep your AC in the shade
5. Plant Trees
6. Turn on AC
Well, we don’t have AC and the tree solution is incoming next year, but it is kinda sucky right now.
Our current plan is to close the house during the day and then once the sun isn’t high anymore (around 9pm) we open all the things and let the cool air(?) in. It works moderately well, but if anyone has some whiz-bang advice, now is the time to share. :)
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
4 comments
July 18, 2015 at 9:12 am
MoS
What sort of overnight temperatures are you experiencing? Modern, code-insulated houses are great, until they’re baked and then the heat you’re grateful they retain in winter can become an ordeal in summer. My response was to replace all the “low-e” contractor grade windows with “high-e” casements, the old fashioned style that open like doors. Where I once had 15-sq. ft. of ventilation in my livingroom I now have 85. I also installed very good blinds. During hot spells I open all the windows overnight. Fortunately we have a very low crime rate here and I have a loud dog.
First thing in the morning, as close to dawn as possible, I begin shutting down the house beginning with the west-facing windows and blinds. Once I have those shut there’s usually a couple of hours left before the other parts of the house need to be closed up. By noon the entire house is closed up and shuttered which leaves it a bit dark although I find that comforting when I realize what’s being kept out.
My house came with ceiling fans in almost every room. They were as low-efficiency as the original windows so I replaced them with somewhat larger, higher-capacity and super energy efficient units. During hot spells I run three of them – kitchen, livingroom and my bedroom – on low overnight. They’re just enough to keep air circulating when the breezes die down late at night.
Another nice thing is when the forest fire smoke gets really intense and you just have to close up the house and accept the heat (no a/c here either) those ceiling fans do make the place a good bit more comfortable.
It’s finding a routine that works best for you and your house and being very disciplined about shutting the place down at the right time.
I can imagine what you’re experiencing with the smoke and soot from those fires. We had three days of it from a fire over on the mainland (Sunshine Coast) before the winds off the Pacific returned to sweep it all away. It was three days but, around here, it turned us into complete babies. Then again we have a large retiree population (sort of like Canada’s Florida) and they’re quite susceptible to respiratory problems. I’ve never heard as many ambulance sirens as I did those three days.
Good luck. Let’s hope this ends soon. Pray for rain. I did and I’m agnostic.
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July 18, 2015 at 9:32 am
The Arbourist
@MoS
Thankfully the heat broke earlier this week. We had, dare I say, some rain and cloudy conditions. It was and is, a nice change of pace.
We too have a similar system of locking the house down as the day’s heat starts to arrive and it works well for the first couple of days, but eventually the heat soaks in and we get to sizzle in our own juices until we can get a cooler night, or cooler couple of days.
We only have one ceiling fan it sounds like more might be the answer.
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July 18, 2015 at 4:17 pm
MoS
Hi: I just stumbled across a report on how evening low temps have increased even more than daytime highs since the 70s. It’s those cool evenings that are needed to flush out the accumulated heat. If we lose that I suppose we’re “cooked.”
As a kid I lived in a place where the nights could be brutally hot. No a/c in those days. We did have one option. They used to make a sprinkler head designed to fit a Coke bottle to dampen clothes before ironing. My mother got us each one. When it got really uncomfortable we would slightly dampen the top sheet and let evaporative cooling work its magic. It wasn’t terrific but it was often enough to let me get back to sleep.
It sounds awfully primitive but, in a pinch, it does work.
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July 18, 2015 at 10:34 pm
jasonjshaw
Make ice, find a way to put ice in front of fan.
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