People from the "hotter" regions, how do you deal with the heat?
I am from Eastern Europe and this is the hottest summer on my memory. For at least 3 consecutive years the heat is breaking all records.
This stuff is unbearable, I can’t even play video games on my laptop, because it warms up very fast and the keyboard becomes uncomfortable for me to use.
So, could you please share any useful tips on how do you survive the summer?
I do construction work in Alabama. I basically bitch and complain all summer long and hate every second of it. There’s no relief unless you’re in the AC. I’ve been thinking of ordering a liquid cooled vest actually. They look weird but I’ll try anything. The humidity here is killer. Sweating doesn’t help like it does in dry climates. Every time I walk outside my body shuts down and I have literally no energy. I think i had a heat stroke last summer.
If someone above me tells me to go work outside all day and doesn’t offer me a substantial amount of money, I tell them to go fuck themselves. It isn’t worth it.
In the American southeast, especially in a river Delta, you can’t live in a house long without AC or a dehumidifier. Mold will grow to toxic levels quickly in a house that’s left without electricity for very long in areas around me.
We have trouble opening our front door in the summer when the temp gets above 38 due to the humidity causing the wood door to swell. The heat index reached 47 last week due to the high humidity so there’s a ton of water in the air.
This is what killed around 700 people during one heat dome event in Canada a few years back. So much humidity in the air that sweating wasn’t helping cool people. You body can’t cool so you overheat and die. Not all people died from that but they were attributed to heat causes.
Those vests can be very effective. I use a coolshirt system in my track car, and I can be in the car indefinitely on a 100F day with no a/c, as long as the pump is recirculating ice water through my suit.
Wear loose cotton clothes (long-sleeved if stepping out in the hot sun)
Keep yourself hydrated.
Avoid soft/ aerated drinks/ soda & coffee as they'll dehydrate you. Stick to cool water, ice chips, fresh lemonade made with water, fresh fruit juices, melons, spinach-cucumber-onion-tomato salads, yoghurt,
Eat light.
Stick to well-ventilated rooms with good air-circulation (fans help)
Cold water showers to cool down
Sweating is good. It'll cool you down. This is also why Indians eat spicy food and drink hot tea even in hottest summer. Get sweaty then take a quick cold-water rinse.
If you have to step outside in the hot sun, umbrella, hats, caps etc are your friends.
Wet towel on the back of the neck for a quick cool down.
ETA: When it gets so hot that we lose our appetite, then our go-to meal is to mix up cooled cooked rice with unsweetened yoghurt and a pinch of salt. its variously called yoghurt rice/ curd rice/ thayir saadam / dahi bhaath / dahi chaawal . This is an easy to make & easy to diges meal that is guaranteed to cool a person down.
thayir = dahi = curd = yoghurt
saada = bhaath = chaawal = cooked rice
I’d make one exception: cotton wants to hold water. Evaporative cooling needs water to evaporate. There are synthetic materials that will hold much less water, so they’ll weigh less from sweat and evaporate more quickly, providing a tiny bit more cooling. Plus many have protection from the sun reducing the amount of sunscreen that has to be worn.
There are a line of shirts known as “fishing shirts” that are made to be big, and they have vents to encourage air to circulate inside them. They work great.
We got one on sale 3 years ago and I have zero regrets. Every heat wave I sleep like a baby. We’ve maybe used it 20 nights total, but so freaking worth it. We do keep it to one room though, not trying to decimate the electric bill.
Ever since I started riding (motorcycles) I don’t even really notice it anymore. Anything less hot than “armored jacket and helmet under the sun” just doesn’t register as hot anymore
If you’re without an ac in Europe I highly suggest getting a simple window unit for your room. They are easy to install. Be sure to seal your door so the air doesn’t escape. Portable ac units are known to be very inefficient, be wary of those. Cold showers help in extreme circumstances. Block all sources of light. Blackout curtain or just some covers over the windows. Keep humidity below 60% if you can, dehumidifiers will help but larger ones will rack up your electric bill quick.
The problem is that the windows might not be suitable for window units. For instance in the Netherlands our windows typically tilt or turn (like a door) open, they don’t slide up. The walls and ceilings are usually solid brick or concrete, so you can’t hide ducts in there for central AC. That leaves a split unit in one room or a portable unit.
Blocking the light made a huge difference in my house. I have are 3 small skylights on the south side that now have sun shades on the outside. They still let in some light, but it’s at least 5c cooler on the top floor.
Oh well, that sucks. Guess a portable unit would work in this case. Could just jimmy the pipe and make a diy block for the window itself. It’s just a simple tube that sticks out the window. Good to know a bit about them before getting one.
AZ here, Get a cheap low power desktop for work shit, it will heat up less and you’ll be able to ventilate it better.
Otherwise, a/c, thermal curtains, insulated reflector layer in front of that, make sure your weather seals on your doors are good. Drink water all the time, carry water with you all the time. Good luck with all the heatwaves and welcome to the club.
Thank you for the all the advices but my laptop is already the “low power” option. The other one is a desktop, which produces way more heat. Although still less than most modern “gaming stations”
The club, is sadly, not the one I would like to be in. I have always been a fan of winter but it seems like with each year it’s going to be harder to enjoy it
In the southern US we have air conditioning everywhere. People avoid going outside except for very early or late in the day when the sun isn’t on you. I try to get any yard work or anything outside down before 10am and avoid going outside the rest of the day.
Yesterday was actually a “nice” day where I’m at because the high was “only” 34C. People were outside enjoying it, but still avoided the sun and were mostly out in the morning and afternoon in shaded areas.
The weather has been so bad lately here in Texas. I was actually happy when I saw it was only 96 degrees outside which meant I could use my long sleeve shirt today lol.
Multiple days over 103+ degrees weather has been torture. It’ll be back to that in 3 hours lol.
Ceiling fans should be set to warm weather mode (there should be a switch on the base which changes the direction of spin), you want them to pull hot air up (so the lower edge is the leading side) push cool air down, had it backwards
Cotton/baggy clothes: cotton loses all insulation properties when wet so its nice on a hot day, baggy clothes are generally more breathable
Self-misters are fine, but do not use humidifiers, lower humidity = faster sweat evaporation = cooler you
Drinks w/ ice and/or icecream: cold stuff inside your body will cool you down
Avoid the outside at 1-2pm: this is usually the hottest part of the day
For your laptop: buy a desk fan and point it right at your laptop, has the bonus of cooling you down too
Ceiling fan is opposite. You're cooled by the air going over your body. Typically (in US, at least) that means counter clockwise in summer and clockwise low speed in winter.
Also as to clothes linen layers are fantastic in heat if available.
air will be blown over your body either way, all you're changing is the direction the air is coming from. blowing from the ceiling means blowing hotter risen air
Yeah, ceiling fans are a very rare thing in Eastern Europe. I haven’t ever seen one with my own eyes and I have been to all kinds of places in my country
While viscose dries faster than cotton, cotton is a breathable fabric and lets you sweat, which cools you down. - Indian here, so have some experience living with hot weather.
Loose, long-sleeved cotton clothes will prevent sunburn + cool you down.
If AC isnt an option, the way Ive gotten through summers without is opening one window on one side of the building, then another one on the opposite side. Then point a box fan facing outward of one window, and do your best to seal the gaps with some cardboard or whatever you have. This will create negative pressure in the building, drawing in a bunch of air from the opposite window.
it's the same reason a breezy summer day feels cooler, the air is still cooler than your body temp and draws away heat better than sitting in still air, plus its more evaporation if you're sweating hot. also indoors without AC during summer is an insulated oven.
would be nice with a test for a sealed fan like I described. the problem with that setup is that the negative pressure will try to pull from both windows, competing with the fan trying to blow out and not getting as much flow
I live in the southern US, and my house basically has this built-in. There’s a big fan in the middle of the house that blows air into the attic, so if you open a few windows and flip the fan on it creates a breeze through the whole house.
Make sure your sewer traps haven’t dried up though. I turned it on with the house closed up one day and it sucked in air through the shower drain in the guest bathroom that hadn’t been used in a while…
Attic fans are great. We'd run it when the sun went down to draw in the cool night air. After that we shut everything up and drew the blinds. The house would stay very cool until late the next afternoon. On super hot days we might have run the AC for a few hours in the late afternoon or evening.
Yeah, a whole-house fan. You turn it on in the evening and it expels the hot attic air from the top while sucking in the cool fresh air through open windows. It actually works really well and is much more energy efficient than AC. When it gets super hot you still need AC though.
Use to take ice packs you freeze to then use to keep your lunch cool in whatever you carry lunches in. Also had a couple hard-plastic small rectangular packs that went into mini coolers that could be frozen …anyway, we’d put them under our Nintendo deck back in the day, to keep it cool, because it’d be summer and back then we didn’t have air conditioning, and a lot of games we played didn’t have saves, so we’d keep that Nintendo deck on for hours & hours and it would run hot like that.
Also, this sucked but it works; put on a bathing suit, while in doors, & get a cold shower, and then surround yourself with some electric fans. Then as soon as you start to feel hot again, go get another cold shower. Again, it sucks, having to constantly get wet, but it was some relief.
Honestly I’d live in my bathtub chin deep in cold water if I ever lose the ability to have AC now, I’m too old to deal with the g.d. heat anymore.
In the Philippines, Filipinos usually go to malls for free air-conditioning since electric bills here in the country is not very friendly in terms of the costs. If you are lucky enough to be in the middle class, running the AC during afternoon for some hours is enough already.
San Diegan here. Beach. That’s what we all do. Pool works too. And of course AC.
Get as much cold air inside overnight as possible then close all the doors and windows a little after sunrise. If your house is well insulated it’ll keep it relatively cool until after lunch. Also, keep the blinds closed on the side of the house actively getting sun.
Light weight or moisture wicking clothes.
Fans. Lots of them.
Damp washcloth on your neck or a spray bottle to mist yourself. If you want to step that up, put the washcloth in the freezer for a bit then wipe your face/neck down.
If it makes you feel better, so do I. I’m ALWAYS cold. I’m built for desert weather (except your stupid monsoon season. Fuck that noise).
Everyone’s going on and on about how hot it is this last week, and I’m like guys it’s barely been touched 90 like twice. I’ve been in heaven. I’m finally not cold all the time.
Brazilian here, to be fair I’ve read so many good tricks here that I am not sure what I have to contribute, but yeah, light clothes with bright colours or white, don’t dress dark as your clothes you heat up. No shoes if you can, but also not barefeet lol sandals and flip flops havaianas styles. If you live close to the beach obviously go take a swim, otherwise swimming pool or AC at home or car or go to store random stores with AC too lol. Drink cold stuff, keep hydrated. Fans, and cold shower.
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