What a difference technology makes

[swan_tower]

I’ve spent the last two days holed up in our den, which the lowest part of our split-level house and rather cavelike — therefore the coolest room we’ve got. Our thermostat caps out at 84 degrees Fahrenheit, so I can’t say for sure what temperature it’s been in our dining room, but whatever the answer is, the top floor — which holds both my office and the bedroom — was hotter. Much hotter.

I grew up in Dallas. Highs in the high 90s were a totally normal feature of my childhood summers. But that was a place where nearly everybody has air conditioning. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area? Not so much. And living in a house without A/C means that when our temperatures spike, the experience is very, very different.

The extent of that difference got hammered home to me yesterday, when I’d been at the (air-conditioned) chiropractor’s office. When I walked outside in the late afternoon, it felt . . . not nice, exactly. But familiar. And pleasant enough. Yes, it was very warm, but my subconscious said “that’s okay.” Which was very different from how I’d felt leaving my house an hour and a half earlier; then I was going from a sweltering indoors to a sweltering outdoors, barely any contrast at all, and vastly more unpleasant. I know I’ve lost soem of my heat tolerance (I used to do marching band in Texas, navy blue wool uniform and all), but a lot of it is also just the artificial environment. Give me A/C, and I still don’t mind the heat all that much. Without it, though . . .

Let’s just say I’ve learned a lot about low-tech measures against the heat, from keeping blinds closed that we normally open for light (and angling them upwards to reduce the amount of direct sunlight that enters the room), to occupying myself with books instead of heat-emitting laptops, to the dance of opening windows and turning on fans once the temperature outside drops below the temperature inside.

Comments

[sovay]

Highs in the high 90s were a totally normal feature of my childhood summers. But that was a place where nearly everybody has air conditioning. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area? Not so much.

That was the experience of my friend in college who moved from Gainesville to Boston. He hated summers here even more than he hated winters and we weren't even having these summers.

I hope the low-tech measures do enough to let you sleep and think.

[swan_tower]

Sleeping hasn't been too bad, because the humidity here is low enough that it actually cools off at night. If it weren't for the lack of a breeze, it would have been fairly easy to air the house out once the sun went down; unfortunately, even our ceiling fans didn't do a lot to move things along.

[kore]

Yeah, I grew up in California and then the southwest. There were heat waves, sure, but ALWAYS A/C. But in seattle, "Oh, you only need air conditioning two months out of the year! Why install it just for that?" as my eyeballs were melting. And that ws even before we started having a lot of actual heat waves here.

[swan_tower]

My sister once described us as living in "a climate-controlled climate." I don't even think we need A/C two months out of the year -- more like five days, scattered about. But I also cope better with the warmth than many of my friends, who I know would argue with that "five days" assessment. :-P

[kore]

I think it's types of heat, too -- "it's a dry heat" is an old joke, but I really do much much better with extreme heat in a dry climate. But heat + humidity? I crumple. (Even the giant new ugly apodment type buildings here going up in the past 3-5 years don't have A/C! WTF, Seattle.)

[moon_custafer]

My version of this – my family spent a few months in Japan when I was a kid, where we quickly realized that, also Canadian winters may be colder than Japanese ones (except for Hokkaido), Canadian houses are designed to keep out the cold, unlike Japanese houses, which (except for Hokkaido, probably) don’t have insulation or central heating-- instead Japanese stores sell an amazing array of individual heating devices – you can (or you could in the 1980s) get kotatsu (tables with heaters built into the underside), heated slippers, and heated toilet-seat covers. We were intrigued by this piecemeal approach, but not exactly thrilled.

[kore]

....I could TOTALLY go for a toilet seat warmer since our leaky bathroom window opens onto the apartment building airshaft and we're on the top floor, and in winter the whole room is FREEZING.

[swan_tower]

Ohhhh, don't get my sister started on the poor insulation of Japanese buildings. It's one thing not to have central heating, but letting the walls transmit the heat or cold just makes the whole thing more inefficient.

I'd love to have a kotatsu, though. Except that I can't sit comfortably on the floor for a long period of time anymore.

[swan_tower]

Me too -- but interestingly, I've on two occasions spoken to people from Southeast Asia who say they feel a dry heat is far more punishing, and they're much more able to bear it with humidity. That absolutely croggles me, since in high humidity sweating can no longer do anything to cool you off, but mileage does seem to vary.

[kore]

My husband grew up in Iowa, and he says the SAME THING. He hates dry heat -- he says it's like being baked in an oven. Whereas one summer in Iowa and I was ready to never live there ever again!

[marycatelli]

It once went her from 90s and dry -- quite survivable -- to 70s and humid -- agh I'm dying.

[starlady]

Yeah, my experiences in New Jersey versus here are very similar. I'm thinking it's time to explore ceiling fans, which are a fairly cheap but fairly effective strategy.

[swan_tower]

They help, but only so far. Moving air around is not as effective as actually cooling it. Still, if it's that or nothing . . . I'm honestly a little afraid to ee what our electricity bill is going to look like for this month, given how much we've been running the fans.

[marycatelli]

What you want for nighttime cooling is big fans by the window.