03081 How to Stay Comfortable and Safe During the Hot Summer

Your House

Stopping drafts is critical. When it is cooler inside than it is outside, heat wants to get inside. Stopping drafts is therefore important to maintaining your comfort levels during the hot summer. A draft is a place where heat rushes into your house.

Use a stick of burning incense to find the drafts in your home. Do this is on a windy day. Look around doors, windows, light switches, places where pipes enter your house, electrical sockets, cracks in walls. Hold the smoke close to the window seam or the electrical outlet, or wherever you want to check, and see if the smoke rises slowly or blows one way or the other. If its being blown around, you have a leak. Stop that leak, or heat will have an easy way into your house.

Caulk is cheap. Use caulk to close up seams and cracks where wind comes through. If there are larger openings, fill them with newspaper and plastic, a board, some dry wall, or use cans of spray foam to plug the cracks.

We used 90 tubes of caulk and 20 cans of foam to do our house, which has about 1500 square feet. Read the book Insulate and Weatherize, from Taunton Press, and follow its recommendations literally. You can find it at your library.

Pop quiz: How many times thus far in the energy section have I advocated caulk? Twenty bonus points for the correct answer, awarded in your imagination. What does this repetition suggest about the importance of caulk?

Insulation works in the summer just like it does in the winter. In the winter, insulation helps you keep the heat inside and the cold outside. In the summer, insulation helps you keep the heat outside and the cool inside. If you have more insulation, you will need less air conditioning to stay comfortable during the summer.

Shade is your friend: Keep the sun's heat from hitting windows, doors, walls.

Indoor curtains are not enough, although they help. Once the sun hits the glass and window frame, the heat gets inside the house, even if you have curtains.

You could use auto sun shades to make a cheap redneck-style outdoor window shade. Duct tape two or three of them together (depending on the size of the window). Hang them on the outside of the windows. A roll-up window shade works fine.

Shade cloth can be used to shade doors and windows. One or more curtains inside will help. Choose white or another light color (sheets are doable and cheap).

Shade the doors just like you shade your windows.

The best shade for your walls, windows, and doors is trees and other plants. While it takes years to grow a tall tree, vines like Morning Glories grow fast. Scarlet runner beans not only produce shady vines, they produce tasty beans that you can eat.

Keep the air moving around inside. Use fans to create breezes during the day and the night. Moving air makes you feel 10 degrees cooler than the actual temperature. Use fans even if you have an air conditioner. Moving air makes it seem like the temperature is about ten degrees cooler than it actually is. With fan breezes inside, you can set the thermostat higher than would be the case without the fans, and maintain comfort.

Minimize heat buildup inside the house. Avoid activities that create heat inside the house:

Cook outside to avoid increasing the heat and humidity inside your house. Eat small, light meals, spaced throughout the day, rather than two or three big heavy meals.

If you have a dishwasher, don't use it or at minimum don't use the heat dry at the end of the cycle.

Take cool showers, not hot steamy showers. Run the exhaust fan to remove the humidity from the bathroom.

Many electronic devices such as "instant on" televisions draw current all the time, and thus create heat all the time. Plug them into an electrical outlet strip and turn it off and on with the switch on the strip. This will eliminate those unnecessary "hot plates" that add heat to the indoor climate.

Don't use the clothes’ dryer. Hang your clothes on a line outside to dry.

If you smoke, do it outside.

Turn your computers off when they are not in use.

Replace your incandescent lights with compact florescent bulbs or LED lights.

Shade the outside parts of your air conditioner. If the air conditioner is in bright sunlight, it works less efficiently. Shade the compressor or the outside part of a window AC with an awning or some other kind of shade. Don’t block the air intakes.

Window AC is more energy conservative than conventional central AC, even though central AC is more efficient than a window unit.

With central AC, most people cool the whole house, all the time. With small window AC units, people only cool the occupied rooms.

Conventional central AC loses about 20% of its efficiency by sending cool air through ducts in non-air conditioned spaces (typically attics). Window units send their cool air directly into the room.

When people leave, they turn off window units. If they have central AC, people leave it on all the time, whether they are home or not.

The bottom line for AC is that you are better off with small window units than whole house central AC.

If you have no air conditioning, ventilate your house at night. Keep the house closed up during the day until the inside and outside temperatures are the same. Then open up the windows and doors. If practical for your situation, only open windows and doors that are shaded during the day. At night put box fans in the south and west windows to pull hot air out of the house. Put box fans in north or east windows to draw in cooler air. Open every window and door to facilitate cross breezes.

In the morning, close your windows and doors when the temperature outside is the same as the temperature inside.

Your Body

Pay attention to your own body. Stay hydrated. Drink at least a cup of water every 20-30 minutes during extreme heat periods in the summer, even if you aren’t thirsty. Avoid soft drinks and alcoholic beverages. The idea that an ice-cold soda pop is the perfect solution to thirst is a delusion encouraged by advertising. The more soda pop you drink, the more thirsty you will be, the hotter you will feel, and thus the more uncomfortable you will be. Soft drink advertisements are LIES! “Sugar free” drinks are as bad as the sugared versions. Try squeezing a little lemon or lime juice into your water for a refreshing treat and skip the useless calories of soft drinks.

Dress for the season. Wear shorts and a light shirt. Loose-fitting clothes are cooler and more comfortable than tight fitting garments. Go barefoot or wear sandals. Natural fabrics are cooler than synthetics. Merino wool underwear will wick perspiration moisture away from your skin and help you remain more comfortable. At night, use light cotton sheets on your bed. Minimize indoor fabrics, as fabric increases interior humidity. Wear a hat outside with a wide brim to shade your face and protect your head.

If the heat becomes oppressive, dowse your head, arms, and feet with cool water, or take a cool shower. We often go outside and dowse each other with a water hose. Keep a spray bottle of cool water handy and give yourself spritzes of cool water. Dip cloths in cool water and wrap around your neck, wrists, and ankles.

At night, wrap yourself in a damp sheet.