Hacks to help cope with the heat

[Inspector]

Better than a wet T-shirt is an evaporative cooling vest. Soak it for a few minutes and then put it on. You'll be comfortable for hours. If inside setup a fan to blow air over you. I used them at work when the plant was hitting up to 40C and I felt as good at the end of a 10 hour shift as when I started. Co-workers where like you guys. Whining a lot and dragging their feet.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/32508117...h1alGVGjg2g2MsN8Z5S3m3ToC/|tkp:Bk9SR-TLgMDXYA
Pete

 

[Molynoox]

Better than a wet T-shirt is an evaporative cooling vest. Soak it for a few minutes and then put it on. You'll be comfortable for hours. If inside setup a fan to blow air over you. I used them at work when the plant was hitting up to 40C and I felt as good at the end of a 10 hour shift as when I started. Co-workers where like you guys. Whining a lot and dragging their feet.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/32508117...h1alGVGjg2g2MsN8Z5S3m3ToC/|tkp:Bk9SR-TLgMDXYA
Pete

that's pretty cool! never seen that before, neat idea

 

[Droogs]

So just like a wet T-shirt only 30 times heavier and 10 times the price

 

[Inspector]

You can look at it that way but it works nonstop from 3 to 5 hours straight before you have to stop and soak it again. The T-shirt not so much. Do as you like.
By the way where do you get T-shirts that cheap? Here the vests are only 3 or at most 4 times the cost of a T-shirt.

Pete

 

[JimJay]

I recommend our "anti-heat hack" - we live in a house on the side of a mountain. It's not a hugely-high mountain but there are ski slopes above us and the snow usually lasts until the early summer. It's usually around 7C cooler up here than in the city below, but of course commensurately colder in the winter - the thick external insulation is very handy, especially as energy prices rise.

Our "hack" also has the benefit of great views (although of course wet t-shirts can have a similar upside )

 

[Sideways]

I recommend our "anti-heat hack" - we live in a house on the side of a mountain. It's not a hugely-high mountain but there are ski slopes above us and the snow usually lasts until the early summer. It's usually around 7C cooler up here than in the city below, but of course commensurately colder in the winter - the thick external insulation is very handy, especially as energy prices rise.

Our "hack" also has the benefit of great views (although of course wet t-shirts can have a similar upside )

I did some maths once. Assuming a house weighs notionally 100 tons, the increase in potential energy if it was raised a metre is only a couple of kWh.

If you could gradually raise the entire house to 1000 metres through the summer, and let it back down again in the winter, you'd have an energy storage solution that's about the right magnitude for an average household....

And ever changing views

 

[Inspector]

.....oh but the stairs up are a killer.

Pete

 

[JimJay]

.....oh but the stairs up are a killer.

Pete

You better believe it. From the road (and garage) level to the top floor is 77 steps...

 

[Droogs]

using an unfired clay pot full of water can lower the temp of a room by 7°C apparently as the water seeps through the sides and evaporates off

 

[JimJay]

using an unfired clay pot full of water can lower the temp of a room by 7°C apparently as the water seeps through the sides and evaporates off

That would need a very big pot or a very small room. Clay pots have been used to keep things cool for a VERY long time and the air coming off a water-filled pot can be up to c7C cooler than the surrounding air, depending on the conditions. However as the water evaporates the humidity of the surrounding air increases, which slows - and eventually stops - the evaporation. High humidity encourages the growth of mold and has a number of adverse effects on the human body - I've lived on a number of mountains in the past and the humidity can be a real problem...

 

[Droogs]

Where I grew up this method was used a lot but then there is not a high level of humidity on the southern african savanna.

 

[D_W]

using an unfired clay pot full of water can lower the temp of a room by 7°C apparently as the water seeps through the sides and evaporates off

even if it doesn't do much for the room, you can put your hands on it and it's cool.

Swamp coolers are popular in the southwest in the US here, though probably the cheap cost of energy has yielded to more A/Cs. If that's not a familiar term in the UK, they are basically fans blowing over bits that have water applied to them, and the energy used by the evaporating water is "absorbed out of the living space" leaving you with less heat in the living space.

They're not really used in the northeast or midwest where I am if there is significant humidity because they depend on reasonably fast evaporation to do much.

Butter boats (sometimes called "keepers") or something of that sort do the same thing here, but again, not that popular now. I'm assuming they were used in the US when people didn't A/C the house. The boat had water in it, allowed to evaporate and the butter was cooled enough that it didn't slump.