• Peereboominc@piefed.social
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    27 days ago

    So many people just turn on the AC without doing anything on preventing heat in the first place. Things you can do before the AC needs to help:

    • open all windows in the morning when it is cool. Close them when it gets hotter. This traps the cool air inside.
    • shade your windows (those overhang things on windows, tint film, curtains, plant a tree)
    • stop using machines that produce heat (oven, vacuum cleaner, dryer, etc)
      • Peereboominc@piefed.social
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        27 days ago

        OK, fair point. I was a bit naive. I was looking at it from an European standpoint. The nights are cool here and the houses are all made of bricks and very thick insulation. In those circumstances it is possible to trap the temperature. In my house the inside temperature is currently 22C/71F and outside 34C/93F. No AC needed.

        • WFH@lemmy.zip
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          27 days ago

          Ah yeah let me check my thermometer after a whole night of ventilation… yeah it’s still 27, down from 28 last night whooo. And this is my bedroom which is towards north.

          European living in a “temperate climate” here. A decade ago, I didn’t need AC. Temperatures over 30 happened for a few days at a time a couple times per summer. Heatwaves that killed old folk with sustained temperatures over 35 for a week happened once a decade.

          Now it’s the norm. We see temperatures in May that would only have been possible in the peak of August in the mid-2000s. We see temperatures over 35 everyday for weeks at a time. When it finally rains, it doesn’t cool down anymore. It just gets unbearably humid. Temperatures at night don’t fall down below 28 after a few days.

          Even worse. My living room, home office and kitchen are in full sunlight the whole afternoon. I can live in the dark, but the walls have a thick insulation. Insulation doesn’t deflect heat, it stores it and slows it down. It’s literally accumulating heat as soon as a single sun ray touches it. Once the heat creeps through, they stay hot and radiate for a week. You could ventilate all you want, you can’t fight the thermal mass of a wall heated through its core up to 45C.

          Climate change transformed my mild-winters, warm-summer region into a rainy-winters, unbearably hot summers region in a few decades.

        • Damage@feddit.it
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          27 days ago

          I was looking at it from an European standpoint.

          Nah, I’m in Europe too and my external thermometer last night recorded a minimum temperature of 26,6°C, it’s on the wall so real temperature was probably 25. My apartment is at the last floor of an old building, so insulation isn’t good…

          My roller shutters (external, real European ones) and awnings are automated to maximize airflow and reduce sunlight exposure, but in August my AC never turns off.

    • pimento64@sopuli.xyz
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      27 days ago

      For this bad advice I am sentencing you to spend a full summer in the rural American south, where it’s 38 C with 100% humidity in the middle of the night, with no ability to feed yourself other than baking bread and cooking. I’d love to see you eschewing your dryer to hang your clothes out on a clothesline, in air that has more water in it than the wet clothes do.

    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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      27 days ago

      Top tips. Also avoid bonfires inside the house and consider sleeping in a 8f deep pit.

    • whosepoopisonmybuttocks@sh.itjust.works
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      27 days ago

      Your comment made me laugh.

      It’s practical advice for the naive, who live in temperate climates. Those with actual inhospitable summers are just not having it.