Even people who have been dealing with hot summers their whole lives often aren’t cooling their home in the best way possible. Here are some tips for making your home less hellish during a hot spell.
lifehacker.com
Duh ... how sad these common sense actions have to be published, I learned these spending summers at my grand parents house
the windows were open all night, fans in a couple upstairs windows, pulling cool air from down stairs, everything was close up until mid day, then as lunch eas being prepared, the doors were opened and the fans upstairs turned on ...
- Open windows strategically: Generally you should only open the windows if it’s colder outside than inside. If you can create a cross-breeze, this rule doesn’t apply, but in general, open the windows at night to let the cold air in, and close them in the morning to keep the hot air out.
- Insulation: It’s not just for keeping the cold out in the winter.
- Protect your home from the sun: Keep your curtains/blinds closed during the day. Trees and awnings can help too.
- Don’t add heat from appliances: Don’t do any baking, and keep cooking to a minimum. Don’t run your dryer or other appliances that produce heat during the day.
- Don’t leave the doors open: What are you trying to do, cool the neighborhood?
- Cool a smaller space: Depending on the layout of your house, you might be able to get away with only chilling a single room.
- Cool yourself: Taking a cold shower or wrapping a wet towel around your neck is much easier than cooling your whole place.
- Use fans correctly: Fans don’t cool the air; they just circulate the hot air, but they’re still a vital home-cooling tool. If you place a fan in front of a window air conditioner, it can blow cool air wherever you point it. You can point a fan out a window at night to blow the hot air out of your house, and use a second fan in another window to suck cold air in.
- Change the sheets on your bed: Think lightweight fabrics that are white. This actually makes a huge difference.
- Air conditioner maintenance: Change or clean your air conditioner’s filters and make sure it’s working properly before the heatwave hits.
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Duh ... how sad these common sense actions have to be published, I learned these spending summers at my grand parents house
the windows were open all night, fans in a couple upstairs windows, pulling cool air from down stairs, everything was close up until mid day, then as lunch eas being prepared, the doors were opened and the fans upstairs turned on ...
Sure. Let that hot humid air in.
Of course, we camped all summer every summer, so I lived in a tent or on a 25x25 screen porch in later years when my brother was gone.