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Slashdot Asks: Beating the Summer Heat?
July is always one of the hottest months in the U.S., but this year the heat got an early start. Sustained hot weather has slammed huge parts of the country, and led to some serious consequences. All those AC units employed to bring some relief to homes have contributed to the extended post-storm power outage in the eastern part of the country; five days in, the count is still over a million customers in the dark. (I'm writing from Austin; this year Texas's famously warm weather is a little less impressive by comparison to the midwest, the Carolinas, and many other places; temperatures are expected to remain under 100 until Saturday.) If you're in one of the severely affected areas, how has it affected you? More importantly, what strategies have you used to beat the heat in the absence of (or simply unreliable) electricity? Details help. In particular, how are you keeping the human and animal members of your household safe from overheating? Read on below for an extended set of questions on dealing with the ongoing heat wave of 2012's early summer, and respond to any of them that make sense in your situation. Note, answers are of course encouraged from people who aren't in the worst-hit areas, too! Though you're free to respond however you'd like, it would be useful if you start with your location right at the top of (or in the title of) your comment, so others can scan them easily.
- How hot is hot for you, locally? What temperature extremes have you seen in your own dwelling or neighborhood in recent weeks? (Also, how are you measuring them, if in any way more specific than reading local weather reports? Do you have a home weather station, and is it hooked to an upstream data feed like The Weather Underground?)
- Have local power systems failed, and if so for how long? Do you have a generator, and do you have any advice for others who are considering one?
- Some people (especially kids) face greater risks than others in sustained heat, and some types of medicine require refrigeration. What are the consequences for you and your household of extreme heat?
- If air conditioning is part of your strategy for keeping cool, what do you do to maximize its effectiveness? (Insulate or cover windows? Run it at certain times of day? Raise the thermostat and rethink your idea of "room temperature"?)
- If your power goes out, how prepared are you for a one-hour blackout? What about a day, or a week? Have you taken any measures to keep your life sane if a storm (or just a glitch in the grid) robs your home of AC, TV, and PC? Even if your local summer weather hasn't been unusually hot thus far this year, are you keeping more water or other supplies on hand in case your area later gets gets the heat-and-darkness treatment?
- What advice would you give to others who want to maintain safety and sanity while under the broiler? (Especially useful are ideas for city dwellers, who don't generally have space for an extra freezer or a safe place for a generator.)
- Whether you're in one of the worst hit areas or not, are you taking any steps to protect electronics and data from outages or extreme heat? Have you seen any failures that you believe to be caused by temperature extremes?
- Finally, what are you doing to find some relief from this summer's heat, other than cranking up the AC? Are you spending more time at the local pool? Waking up early to enjoy morning temperatures? Scanning San Francisco real estate prices?
I hope your Independence Day is a good one, no matter the temperature.
Get the fuck out of here. How exactly does my use of an air conditioner in the summer contribute to extended post-storm power outages?
Don't worry, AC, he wasn't talking about you...
To beat the summer heat, turn off your Bitcoin mining rigs. If you turn on the air conditioning to compensate, it's going to cost you more electricity than the value of the Bitcoins that you generate.
Paid Q&A/Research
It was 106 at my car on friday when I got out of work. It was 107 outside my house saturday. Some areas around atlanta his 109 reportedly. My work parking lot is a big slap of concrete surrounded on 3 sides by buildings and the 4th by a hill, so it focuses heat even more with no chance of wind. On way home from work stopped at a bank drive thru. While in line I normally fill out my slip on the back of my visor, which is solid enough to be a good writing surface. Couldn't. It was too hot to rest my hand on it, as it was painfully hot to touch. Mostly stayed indoors as much as possible. Installed some thicker curtains to block more sunlight. Drank a lot of water. Made sure dogs did not stay long in yard, and did not walk on pavement. I used to live in florida, which stays hot longer, but doesn't get as hot because the sea moderates it somewhat. But it was more humid there. Prior to that I lived in the republic of panama, which is even moreso (never gets anywhere near as hot, but even more humid). I just keep telling myself that here, at least the heat eventually ends.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
and my biggest weather problem is keeping my coffee warm.
You know how a lot of people rag on the preppers who keep plenty of supplies & their own generating kit & stuff for end of of times. Guess who has power & food that isn't going to go off. Prepping isn't just for alien invasion scenarios.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
I live in Seattle, you insensitive clod!
(where many residents were still using their furnaces as of last week, and today's the first sunny and warmish-day in what seems like a month)
I bought one on Amazon just to try it out. Who would have thought a bunch of people living in a desert would have figured out how to stay cool. Re-wet it depending on how hot it is. Wring it out and put it on. Keep water in the fridge and it works even better.
If I've come back from a long run nothing cools me down faster than 1 or 2L frozen water bottle applied directly to arteries.
No AC growing up, and we just layed in front of fans and drank water. Human body can take quite a bit if you give it adequate water.
Location = SC.
Temps = over 100 last few days, 97 today, Horrid humidity as normal.
I had coated black roofs for years (I prefer metal roofing because it's tough and taxes are lower. I loathe asphalt shingles!) but two years ago I hit all my roofs with white roof coating including my non-air conditioned shop.
It reflects so much light that you can get sunburned by the reflection if you apply it on a bright day. I had to wear sunglasses while mopping it on!
Hard to measure on my utility bill what with all the tools I run, but I'm much more comfortable. If your local codes/covenants allow white or light roof materials or coatings, give them a try.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
http://www.builditsolarblog.com/2012/07/cooling-without-power.html
Comment removed based on user account deletion
QUIT CRYING, AND PLAN + INVEST $$$ BETTER.
As an accident of geography, my town has three power companies. In my corner, luckily, I have the power company that does preventative maintenance and when there's a bad ice storm, we lose power for usually a couple of hours, once nearly a day.
Seven miles away, they have two-week outages. The PUC sets the rates independently, so it's not a matter of funding. If anything, my part of town is lower profit (less dense).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I moved back to Canada.
Bonus: I don't have to hear about the presidential election.
Ponca City, Oklahoma
Back in the 1950s, we used "coolers" - huge metal boxes that cooled by evaporative cooling. The walls of the cooler were filled with porous wood shavings and a pump circulated water that dripped through the shavings while a 10 horsepower motor sucked air through the shavings and into the house. My bed was right in front of the blast of air from the cooler and I remember that it seemed to cool quite well - probably lowering the inside temperature 5 to 10 degrees and making it quite comfortable during the night. I found out years later that what we called "coolers" were called "swamp coolers" in other parts of the country and in my travels I saw swamp coolers still in use in desert climates in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California.
One reason that coolers worked so well back then was that during the drought, the humidity in Ponca City was about zero so water evaporated readily. It seems to me that up until about 1976, when Kaw Dam was built east of town, the humidity was a lot lower in Ponca City. My mother says that having Kaw Lake so close changed the weather patterns around Ponca City and that the humidity rose a lot since its construction. If someone tried to use a swamp cooler today, I doubt if it would work at all.
Every summer I would spend a month with my grandparents in Boswell, Oklahoma. Nobody thought anything about the heat - it was just how life was. But everybody looked forward to the cool of the evening, just when the sun got low in the sky and the shadows would lengthen and the fireflies would come out. The whole family would go out on the big front porch, sit in the swing, drink ice cold ice tea, and wait for our neighbors to come around and sit down with us to talk about the events of the day. Simpler days and better perhaps - at least in memory.
Ponca City, We Love You
Has been out of power 2 days. Having multilevel housing helps the temperature distribution vua wide vertical passage through the stairway. Spent it in the first level.
Most pressing was having cellphone powered. Did it in the mosque (only two buildings in the area were left powered: mosque and McDonalds), thanks to Allah, I go there for all five prayers.
Two of my friends (Virginia, Maryland) did not have it today. One of them got it today.
Small detail. Monday morning during commute hours noticed police car in the ambush at the unpowered intersection with major road/minor road scenario), checking for rollers. Really, police? Really?
I am originally from the steppe area of Russia, so we have derecho-shmerecho all the time, only it was called strong wind. Short after I left, there was the most serious hurricane that broke half of the trees in my parents town. The power was restored within few hours. That was 90s, the time of lawlessness and collapse in Russia, black years of Yeltsin, organized crime and disorganized government.
This country is going down.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
It's raining. As usual.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
I'm not an American, I live in Southern Europe where temperatures often go over 40C (*9/5 +32 = 104F IIRC the conversion).
Our ancestors managed to survive without AC using common sense.
1. Close every shutter early, and open them late (when the temperature is cooler outside). You don't want curtains, it won't work.
2. Limit your movements : you don't want to open the front door very ten minutes.
3. Shut down every electronic devices, or isolate the room in which they are.
4. Have a nap during the hottest hours of the day ( 2-5 PM), and profit of the coolest hours of the day : early in the morning, or a bit hotter, late at night. (Obviously, if you're not working, and have the time to do it.)
5. Drink often, and drink water.
6. Take care of the young, and the elderly. The latter are usually forgotten, and left alone. Have a look at the 2003 summer in France/Europe if you want to know what not to do. Sometime people were found dead days or even weeks after they actually died.
That's basic things that can make quiet a difference.
It's as if a bunch of people were brought up to believe human beings aren't adaptable to some moderate temperature hikes. We are, only stupid ones aren't.
It has nothing to do with stupidity, dumbass. The issue is that human bodies adapt slower than the weather changes. People in the midwest are not accustomed to these temperatures. Especially the old, the young, and the ill.
I'm born and raised in central Michigan, but I lived a handful of years in Tucson, Arizona. It took me about two years before I could stay outside during the day as long as natives. I would simply get too hot and have to go inside, regardless of how much water I drank. One day I literally drank three bottles of water to every one my cousin drank, and I still had to go inside eventually because I was showing early signs of overheating.
However, even in the middle of January when it would drop below freezing, I never once wore a coat in Arizona. Not even a light jacket. The natives thought I was nuts. To me, it was literally never cold because of the intensity of the sun regardless of the actual temperature. Even at night I could still feel heat radiating off the ground from the day since even mid-winter the daytime temperatures were still in the 70s.
When I moved back to Michigan, it only took one winter to reset my body to this climate, but it was the coldest winter I ever remember (the weather was actually quite mild).
In summary, I'll be pointing and laughing in six months when you get 8 inches of snow and have to shut down the entire state for a week.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Do NOT do a DIY on a automatic power generator or try to jumper a manual generator to your house as if you do not do it the right way it can back feed and kill workmen trying to fix the power lines.
You should plan on one minimum 3-day outage per year with the current electrical grid, on a national average. If you want to drop that to 8 hours per year, expect to pay about $1,400 per kW peak demand per year more. If you want to go to 45 minutes per year, it should be another $700/kW.
An interesting thing about that number is that it is actually cheaper to put in your own generator (or even solar with batteries!) than having the utility do it. The payback is only a couple years worst case.
The issue is that for higher reliability you need to limit distance effects and be able to tolerate maintenance activities.