I live in a brick home, in Australia where we are heading into summer. We have already had one spell of warm weather which led my SO and I to resume our battle from last year regarding the best way to stay comfortable in a warm house on a hot day.
She favours keeping windows closed - even after the house has warmed up due to successive days of high temperatures. I find that stifling.
I, on the other hand want to keep fresh air moving, even if it is hot air. For that reason, I’ll have a window open at least a little. Another window opened in another room permits a degree of flow though ventilation. I think I’m letting the room “breathe” and that is increasing the comfort level for the humans in the room. My partner remonstrates with me for letting all the hot air in, even when it seems the temperature inside is in the ballpark of the temperature outside.
OP, could you help the SDMB fight Northern Ignorance and clarify for us (well, clarify for me) how you name your seasons Down There?
You called this coming season summer. But seems to me I hear other people use the terms “summer” and “winter” inconsistently – sometimes I think I hear that “summer” means the hot months (just like Up North), othertimes I think I hear that “summer” means June-September (also just like Up North).
How dry is it? When I lived in Arizona (25 years) we’d drape a wet towel over a box fan and use it as a sort of impormptu cooler to aim at where we were sitting.
When it’s a 30 plus day I keep all doors and windows shut, with the curtains drawn. I prefer to keep as much of the the heat as possible outside, even if it means it gets a bit stuffy inside. When the cool change/storm does arrive (like last night’s amazing one), the house cools down much more quickly if I’ve been able to prevent it warming up too much in the first place.
It depends.
If the inside air is the same as out side then open or close it is almost the same. Don’t go by feel. Get a good temp gage. Take a reading inside then place it in a open space outside, but not in direct sun light. Next to a building or direct sun light will give a false reading of the air temperature.
If you are nearing the hotttest time of the day and the readings are the same then open up. By bringing in outside air you may also lower the humity inside the house.
Close the doors and windows completely, put dark coverings over the windows to prevent the greenhouse effect, and turn on a fan if you want a breeze. Only open the windows when the outside temperature is lower than the inside temperature.
Snnipe 70E is the one bringing good thinking to the table. It depends on a number of factors. Where are you? What is your house made of? Does it cool in the evenings or stay hot all the time?
For example, if you have hot dry days and cool nights in short spells and have a heavy (ie brick interior walls) well insulated house it can make sense to insulate the interior by closing doors and windows during the heating period (day) and then open it up at night (cooling period).
Contrastingly, where I am in Qld and with a light poorly insulated house this isn’t an effective strategy because it just stays hot day and night for weeks. Everything heats to ambient and trying to keep the heat out doesn’t work much. Perhaps shutting up for the very hottest part of the day, or shutting those windows and doors facing the sun during the day will help a little. Mostly though you have to adopt the ventilation strategy so that at least you get the advantage of evaporative cooling from breeze, and to ensure that the interior doesn’t rise above ambient from the sun.
So we need more info. Where are you, what’s your house made out of?
Some of it depends on humidity. Open the house at night if the air is cooler outside than in. Use a fan if necessary to draw the cool air into the home. When you don’t think it will get any cooler inside, close the house up and keep the curtains closed on the sunny side of the house. If the house heats up to the same temperature as outside, or if there is a good breeze, open the house up.
I have closed up the house and used a dehumidifier when it was humid outside because warm, dry air feels cooler than warm, wet air and because I have mold allergy issues. It works pretty well.
My strategy is to open everything in my house at night and get up right after dawn to close it all up. Then I keep it closed up tight (including drawing the curtains) until the day starts to cool down again towards night. I’ve always had houses that were pretty well insulated, and haven’t tried it outside of various parts of CA and WA states, but most modern homes can maintain their temperature pretty well.
If I want air to be moving (I usually do), I rely on ceiling fans or portable box fans. The trick with a wet towel does work if the humidity is low enough.
Part of my strategy also counts on a house fan (also called an attic fan in some areas) which are mounted in the ceiling tot he attic. They pull air in through the windows and up through the attic in the house. Since the attic can build up a lot of heat, this is more effective than just using box fans in the windows.
I’m in Melbourne, Princhester. And the house is brick which means for the first couple of hot days, it’s lovely and cool. Then the bricks trap and retain the heat and before long it’s stifling inside. Interestingly there isn’t much glass, and little opportunity to add drapes in the two rooms we occupy most. So the strategy of reducing the problem in the first instance through blocking transmission of heat through windows is unlikely to yield big wins.
I have always felt a stuffy closed room magnifies the effect of the heat, and I know the typical “Queenslander” house is specifically designed to enable maximum ventilation. I just find myself sitting and sweating thinking even a warm breeze would be preferable to no breeze at all… it seems to me to be a determinant of personal comfort that goes beyond the logic of hotter inside vs hotter outside.
Whatever, I think wet towels will indeed be draped over fans this year! What a good idea (and how come that hadn’t occurred to me earlier!!)
Using this strategy depends on how humid it gets. Where I live, the hot days are usually humid as well, so you don’t get much evaporative cooling.
I remember seeing many houses in Alice Springs with the cooling units on the roof and learning they were evaporative coolers. Obviously, they have reasonably low humidity there in the hot months so they work well. Around here, closing windows and running the heat pump would be a more sensible option, if it’s one available to you. We just run fans.
Also, the house doesn’t cool down until the small hours, if then, so nights are often spent trying to catch the breeze from the fan without it spilling onto my partner who likes it to be toasty warm in bed even in the height of summer.
This past August, I spent three weeks in southern France. Most of the areas I visited were centuries old, and the homes had no air conditioning. But they did have shutters, which were almost universally shut during the day. There may have been fans inside, but the hot outside air was shut out.
In your situation I’d install ceiling fans, drawing the hot air upward. My house now has central AC, and I still have a ceiling fan on low in my computer room.
I actually have a whole page on my website devoted to how swamp coolers work complete with Flash animations and everything (and why they kind of suck) but I decided not to link to it because people would misinterpret it as attention whoring :rolleyes:
We use the water misters that attach to a garden hose.
Open one window in the front of your house and use a box fan and a garden hose mister to create a swamp cooler of sorts. Open one other window at the other end of the house and use a box fan to blow hot air out.
Depending on how your house is set up I try and focus the cooling to the living room and the bedroom. I close the doors to all the other rooms that can stay hot. I use intermediate fans between the two box fans to keep the breeze moving.