Huh. AccuWeather shows the low July temps for the Cleveland area to be in the upper 60s to mid 70s. The August forecast for the next several days suggests low temps in the mid 60s to high 70s–nothing close to the 85 degree temps you describe.
You need to better direct the cool outside air into your house. Best of luck.
Or when it’s raining, that should drastically reduce the attic temp.
I would definitely start camping out in the living room. I doubt you’re going to convince your Mother to change her mind, no matter how many facts & figures & anecdotes you show her.
If what you want is a more comfortable sleep, go to the lower level at night. Good luck!
To be fair, we HAVE been having quite the heat wave here in Cleveland these past couple of days. Daytime temps in the upper mid-90’s, night temps in the mid 80’s. Fortunately, it’s going to coll off over the next couple of days.
That being said, we don’t use AC in my house. I couldn’t bear the electric bill, especially with the old inefficient window units the previous owner left behind. All of the windows are open, the ceiling fans are on slow rotate, and we have a box fan in the window pumping air in. The humidity, eh, you just live with it! Somehow people survived in the days before AC. And yes, we do sleep upstairs.
Here’s a trick I used when I when was a teenager, and faced a similar situation with my parents. Whether it will work for you depends entirely on the specifics of your situation. From what you’ve given, it seems that at best it will make an intolerable situation slightly less intolerable, but here it is anyway:
In addition to blocking vents in the unused areas of the house, I would always leave my bedroom door open a quarter to a half of an inch. I found that with the door shut, less cool air would would flow through the air conditioning vent due to backpressure. With it fully open, of course, any reserve of cool air would mingle with the warmer air outside of the bedroom. Leaving the door open just a bit, though, would relieve the backpressure, but prevent too much heat exchange through the doorway. Once I discovered this trick, my room was always a few degrees cooler than the rest of the house.
Our house was of 70s construction with high shag carpets everywhere, so rooms were airtight enough that there was enough backpressure to make the effect of relieving it significant.
This won’t do much for you during the periods when the air is shut off, but if you’re lucky, it might make the days slightly more tolerable.
Oh, and when no one was looking, I would hold a lit Bic lighter under the thermostat. Mom had an uncanny knack for detecting whether someone had moved the controls, but she never wised up to the lighter trick.
A thought occured to me just now. Last year we threw out our 30 year old AC unit and bought a new one. After it was installed, we were told it would take a few days for the temperature in the house to come down. The guys installing it said it would take that long for the heat trapped in the house and furniture to dissipate. This proved to be true and the house became noticibly cooler. Not just the air but the temperature of surfaces declined over the next few days. My point is if you leave the AC on, the cool builds up in the house and after a few days, you don’t need to run it all the time. Right now, probably everything in your house is about 80 or so and as soon as the AC is turned off, the air starts to be warmed by all the surfaces radiating heat. The AC never actually cools the house down. Run it all the time for a while, the excess AC isn’t wasted because the “coolth” will be stored in the walls.
Otherwise, have you tried sleeping in the basement?
I had the exact same problem with my mother, before she passed away last October. She’d be sitting in the living room, all bundled up and shivering, and I’d be sweating like a pig. I semi-solved the problem by installing a ceiling fan in my bedroom.
Of course, this summer, everything’s different.
Whiners…sheesh, we just came off of a run of 110+ every day, the mid 90’s we have had the last couple days have seemed cool and refreshing, I didn’t run the ac in my truck today at 94 because if felt so nice now that the air rushing by the windows dosen’t seem to burn me as it passes.
Mid 90’s heh, spoiled kids.
We called this the cave effect in my solid brick house on a concrete pad. Ran the swamp cooler pretty much 24/7 during the summer, stayed right around 80-85.
For some of the really ugly nights we just drug a matress out next to the vents for the swamp cooler.
I very gently broached the subject tonight, and apparently if I would just leave the windows closed at night (with the air off) and turn on a fan, instead of using the attic fan ( I run it at too high a speed, it’s not designed to run at its high setting…I guess they put that setting on there just to trick people) I will be cool and comfy all night.
Right.
It’s stuffy and hot.
But she’s never wrong. And the article in the seniors magazine on how to save energy and keep cool said to do that.
The living room couch is incredibly uncomfortable, but I’m getting very tempted.
kittenblue, how old is your mom? If she’s from the Depression/WWII era, forget about it. Her generation deeply believes that any kind of suffering is worth pinching a few extra pennies, and no amount of logic will change that.
Complicating matter is the fact that, as JustAnotherGeek pointed out, she’s your mother. Mothers always think they know best, and we’re just kids who don’t know better. There is a way to beat her at that game, however, if she’s playing the Mom Card. And that’s to play the Rebellious Teenager Card.
You see, every Mom has a blind spot. It’s something we learn as kids, perfect as teens, and tend to forget about after we become adults. It’s what enabled you to sneak around behind her back, conceal bad grades on a report card, wear obnoxious clothing for the sole purpose of making her freak out, that sort of thing. It may take you awhile to recall what her particular blind spot is, but don’t get frustrated, eventually you’ll remember. If you need pointers…ask your son. 
Some things you might try:
(1) Change the thermostat to 72 when she’s not looking, and pretend you don’t know how it got changed. Blame the cat, the ozone layer, any wild excuse that comes to mind. (Note: this method works best with a sibling, because the two of you can conspire to blame each other.)
(2) Tell her you’ll cover the extra expense of running the A/C lower, and promise to pay her the difference when the next bill comes. The key word here is promise. When bill time comes, make excuses for not being able to pay quite yet…maybe give her ten bucks, and hope she’ll forget to ask the rest. Eventually, of course, she’ll cancel the deal and turn the thermostat back up…but by that time, summer’s over!
(3) Move into the living room, complain incessantly that it’s too hot upstairs, she just doesn’t understand, she doesn’t really love you, blah blah. Spend LOTS of time talking on the phone late at night, play loud music (Beatles, Led Zeppelin, or Metallica work best – whichever type of music her generation hates.) Oh, and when I say move in, really move in, with all your pillows and books and stuffed animals and everything. Make the living room your permanent nest. (This part is important!!!)
Whichever method you choose, be sure to make a game of it. You don’t want to awaken any emotional demons, that would be counter-productive.
Good luck…hope you find a way to stay cool!
If its an old mercury type thermostate, open it up, and adjust it so that it thinks that 74 is 81. Either by tilting the whole thermostat or just modifiying it. They arent too complicated.
She won’t listen to you.
She doesn’t go up there herself.
Find someone she will listen to, either from respect or because it will shame her to be found out, have that person go upstairs (you offer to show them something, not as part of your battle with your mom), and have that person comment on how stinking hot it is.
Even better, have the person ask you, where do you sleep, there’s no way you could sleep up there at night, heat rises, everyone knows that!
I have to say that I understand your mother’s problem. I can’t be in a room colder than 80F or I get all crippled up. I’m sure she does too. The humidity is waht you want to keep out at all costs.
The energy costs are way above what is affordable for many people and unless she’s well off, you need to grin and bare it.
You may reach a compromise for the heat way. She leaves the air on at night set for 80F and you sleep downstairs for a period. It is her domicle, and she gets to choose what is comfortable.
Even in this 100+ degree heat, my 90-yr old grandmother will not let my grandfather run the small window A/C unit they have in their tiny house (which their children bought for them a few years ago). Every time he tries to turn it on, she comes into the room: “Turn that thing off! It’s just blowing cold air!” :smack:
It’s a depression-era thing. Why pay money for a luxury like cold air? The thing is, 90-year olds need A/C if they want to make 91, at leat my grandparents do. So we always chide her to let grandpa keep it on. But I don’t think she does, when we’re not around.
Here’s some nice ammo
From here
When I heard this on the news this morning, this post is the first thing I thought off. (Well acutally it was more like "Hey, when I get to work, I’ll be able to kill some time digging up an article and posting it)
Oh yea, she died.
Kittenblue’s mother is keeping the house at what Kittenblue thinks is to hot, not 100F. 80Fto 85F is uncomfortable not deadly for a healthy adult. The unfortunate death of the other woman was a older person using no air conditioning, not a healthy adult.
Since you’re not able to contribute, I don’t think there’s a good argument you can make. The way she’s doing it now is the cheapest for her and she’s paying the bills. I’d get a few cheap box fans for the windows, they can make a world of difference. I’m in Texas and I rarely use the air unless it gets up over 95 at night. I’m not home during the day and with good fans, I can get the apt (second story too) cooled down to the outside temp which is comfortable enough.
If it’s really unbearable, do as another poster suggested and camp out of the sofa for the duration of the heatwave.
And, luckily, (at least for Wisconsin, but I’d imagine for other places as well) the heat wave is supposed to break tonight. It’s been in the upper 90’s for the past few days (with the Heat Index at about 105 to 110) and it’s supposed to be 76 tomarrow.