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Who else here is trying to beat the heat?
I know much of North America is under a heat wave right now, as well as some other parts of the world. My husband and I have central AC in our house, but it hasn't been able to keep up. We've closed up the vents for most of the house during the day and are forcing the air into our living room only as a way of keeping cool. We've also got some friends staying with us that don't have AC at their house at all.
What is it like where you are at? Are you able to stay out of the heat? Is this just a one-off weather pattern, or should we get used to this sort of thing happening more and more often on account of climate change?
Oddly enough it's relatively cool today in my part of Texas as we've had off/on rain for the last couple of days and it's continuing for another week or so. Trying to use this time wisely in the garage before it becomes too hot to do so again.
Some tips on your AC @kfwyre (or anyone that isn't accustomed to this sort of heat):
I know this sounds super basic, but make sure your air filter is clean/new. Replace if not. Also check the filter size. Many AC units have a bar/shelf that makes it seem like the unit should use thinner 1" filters, but it can be easily removed to use higher flowing 2" filters (or 2" filter bar that can be removed to use 3-4" filter and so on).
Check the coils on the outside condenser to ensure they are not blocked/clogged with grass/dirt/pet hair. This will lower its efficiency and ability to reject heat.
A properly designed central AC system is not meant to force air into such a small space as just the living room of your house. The blower unit is based on/built for airflow, not high pressure, and by closing off the vents you're making the blower work harder and it may not be moving air across the evaporator as quickly as it needs to, this can lead to the evaporator freezing up by ice forming across it, further decreasing efficiency. Keeping the air flowing to a single room isn't a long term solution, so hopefully the heat abates soon, but keep an eye on the evaporator to ensure it's not icing up.
Next tip is going to look "trashy", but what some people call trashy, poor people call surviving. Put aluminum foil on your windows to reject massive amounts of heat entering through them.
I say this last point with a bit of reservation because it involves using more resources. You can help your condenser out by increasing it's capacity to exchange heat, this is most easily done at a home by spraying water onto the outdoor condenser unit. Obviously standing outside with a hose is a no go, but if you have a sprinkler system, a manual lawn sprinkler, or go to the hardware store and pick up a misting system (just hooks to ordinary garden hose, aim mist at outside of unit after cleaning coils). This will only work if you don't have high humidity and is not a long term solution (especially if you have hard water), but can help in the meantime.
Another AC related tip, too. Some HVAC units also have multiple filters, sometimes sandwiched together into what looks like just a single-filter unit, with the secondary ones tucked behind the main one and harder to get to. So be sure to check for that, and if there are multiple filters make sure to clean/replace all of them, not just the outward facing one. I learned that lesson the hard/gross way, from personal experience of having not known that and only discovering the filthy secondary filters years later. :P
Thanks as always for sharing your expertise with us, AugustusFerdinand! These are some solid tips.
Also, some specific context for my situation relative to number 3: the "living room" in my house actually includes the living, kitchen, and dining room area all in one "big" open space. Our house is only ~1000 sq feet total, and that main living area makes up more than half of the house. The AC is able to keep that space in the 70s despite our outdoor temperatures being far higher, so it's definitely working -- just harder than it normally does. Also our insulation ranges from absolute shit to non-existent (we're getting new insulation later this year), so I'm actually impressed that it's doing as well as it is right now.
Ah, so there'd be more than one vent going into that area I assume. Not nearly as hard on the blower motor in that case. Any ideas on when your house was built? Based on year and area, and the fact that you have friends over that don't have AC at all, it's possible your unit was a retrofit and so properly designed likely gave way to "this fits in the space available" so closing vents won't necessarily upset the intended path of airflow, but just make the blower work harder as it would have been sized based on footage, number of vents, and overall unit capacity.
Still keep an eye on the evaporator, it icing over won't likely cause damage unless it's completely blocked, but you'll have to wait for it to all defrost if it does ice over and it'll be quite warm in the house while it does so.
Coulda sworn Technology Connections on youtube told me those things defrost automatically. Or was that just his fancy heat pump thing that can also work in reverse?
That's just his fancy reversible heat pump.
Just close the external shutters, or are those not a thing in the US? I can't think of a single home in Germany that does not have some kind of outside-the-window-shutter on at least most of its windows (small bathroom windows e.g. notwithstanding).
Can recommend. They work a treat in summer by (a) keeping out light from your bedroom early mornings (b) allowing you to pop a window open at night with some amount of circulation (that's even quite safe on the ground floor, as I believe opening them up from the outside is about as noisy/difficult as smashing a window) (c) keep the sun out, preventing a greenhouse effect.
Most of the external shutters I've seen in the US have been decorative/non-functional.
Here's a fun game: look for shutters which could not possibly cover the window they flank. It's super common.
I don't think swinging shutters have been widely used for non-decorative purposes in the US since… I dunno, the '50s? They're virtually all decorative. (Places which regularly get hurricanes will have hurricane shutters, but those are rarely particularly attractive.)
As @wycy said, most external shutters in the US are non-functional. People really like the appearance of something "old world", but don't care for the functionality or cost/maintenance of the real thing.
And the fake shutters get ridiculous around here... The house across the street from me went up for sale about 18 months ago, was purchased by a flipper, and then they just did some utterly random crap to the outside. It had nice, full, mature hedges surrounding the house, they were all ripped up so they could paint the brick and replaced the hedges with the three of smallest/cheapest aloe plants they could find. It had a normal brick exterior, they painted all of it bright white. There are zero trees on that property, so now it's a giant white square in the middle of a flat landscape with nothing but grass and three undersized aloe plants. Then to top it all off, because they removed the hedges they had to do something to fill in the huge swaths of barren bright white expanse, so they slapped on some way-too-small fake shutters in the middle of the wall on each side of the single front window and didn't even put them on straight.
I'm on the East coast of Canada and I'm not getting it quite as bad as the West coast is, but it's still pretty hot here - we're under a "level 1" heat warning in a three-level system. I had a heat pump installed a couple years ago and my attic re-insulated to reduce my winter heating costs, but it's also been a lifesaver this summer. I'm doing OK as a result.
My main floor is nice, but the airflow in my house is such that the upstairs area gets absolutely none of the cool air. It's like a literal wall - it's not a gradual transition. Climbing up the stairs you can feel that every bit of air physically above the ceiling of my first floor is hot and humid. And unfortunately upstairs is where all the beds are, so I've been sleeping on the couch off and on when the fans in the bedroom aren't enough for me. I suppose I should talk to someone on how to get my upstairs to benefit more from my fancy heat pump.
I'm not built for this kind of weather. My favourite summer temperature is like, maximum 25C. I remember being in 40C+ heat only once in my life, around five years ago at a festival, and I was outdoors and unable to really get away from it. It was just terrible even at "just" 40C, and I hope anyone especially where it's really bad is able to stay cool and safe.
I once housesat for someone during the summer and experienced exactly this! I only ever had to go upstairs occasionally to water some plants, but the difference in temperature and air "feel" between floors was incredible. It was stiflingly, oppressively hot upstairs, and the first floor felt so cool comparatively that I likened coming back down the stairs to stepping into a swimming pool.
That's exactly what it's like! I for sure need to talk to... some kind of contractor... to figure out how to amend this, because I think the heat pump is be powerful enough to at least make a dent in the top floor too. It's not a huge place, but it was built in the 70s for Canadian winters, so no consideration for central air conditioning at all. So it's purely a matter of airflow.
One of the first things I did here was get an energy evaluation and I've addressed some of the heating/lighting/ventilation stuff, but better indoor airflow and windows are still on the to-do list for next year, probably. After the roof. It's going to be an expensive few years.
I'm in PNW, but I'm from the midwest. I'm used to these temperatures. My house is not. All of my windows face west, so my house just gets blasted by the sun during the hottest part of the day. Yesterday we couldn't even keep one room with AC under 90F. It peaked at 98F, which is not a temperature I want to see indoors. It sucks. It's been a real unpleasant couple of days. I'm looking forward to the temperatures getting back to normal. Being able to sleep with the windows open and only turn the AC on for a couple hours during the day is sorely missed.
That is absolutely brutal. Hopefully the heat breaks for you soon.
Thank you! Today was much better than yesterday. No longer feel like I'm melting inside my own house.
You could at least install UV filters on the windows.
We've got those nice, modern, double-glazed windows like a lot of houses here in the UK. They can open a few ways, and are great at retaining heat, which usually makes them a welcome change after the wooden-framed, single-pane guillotine windows of western Scotland.
Of course, on summer days - particularly as the sun is going down and shining directly into my room - it can be like sitting in a sauna. AC is pretty uncommon in this country, and I'm not looking forward to future heatwaves. We don't really have a way to beat the heat here in any substantial way, besides gulping down water or sitting in the concrete garage. It's going to be quite bad down south through July and August, I imagine - the other year I remember train lines being shut down due to the threat of warping and buckling rails.
Same here in Germany. It's common to have AC in cars, but not in private homes.
I'm quite sensitive to heat and lose my ability to focus on anything, get quite moody and quickly become an insufferable human being! 😅
The rails are built to warp a certain amount but the tolerances to let them warp in higher heats make the ride really bumpy in the winter so it wasn't done when they were laid.
I'm in Arizona (About a half hour from Phoenix) and it's definitely been brutal. Not even a week into summer and we had a week of ~118°F. Thankfully it's since calmed down to a cool 104°F. You pretty much have to stay inside. Getting in my car feels like stepping into an oven and everything burns to touch. Classic Arizona lol.
It really does seem to be getting hotter, faster over here. Last year it felt like we had 2 or so days of a paltry amount of rain for our monsoon season and for everyone's sake I hope it's better this year. I really look forward to that summer rain. I have blackout curtains in my room (I live with my father) and they're always kept closed, with my blinds down and closed as well, to try and ward off the hellwaves emanating from my window. I highly recommend blackout curtains to try to keep the inside air cool and the outside air away. I'd also look at different bedding. My girlfriend recently bought me this and it's my favorite. It's hard for me to sleep without a sheet or blanket on and that stays cool enough to help.
Upstate New York here. Highs in the mid-90s Fahrenheit since the weekend. Sporadic days that hot are common, but the forecast week straight is not, and especially not in June.
We got central air installed a few years ago, and it has dramatically paid for itself in comfort and convenience. Despite the temps, roughly 80% of the house stays totally pleasant (the upstairs, directly under the roof in direct sunlight, escapes control a bit in the late afternoon—the AC is clearly a retrofit, and the ducting to upstairs was designed to heat it, with the benefit of escaping heat from downstairs coming up through the floor).
I think it's pretty obvious to everyone who's not intentionally deluding themselves that climate change is riding roughshod over us. My prediction is that, within most of our lifetimes, access to active cooling will become a major public health and socioeconomic issue.
Western Washington checking in. Our heat-wave just broke, but we're still in the 80s for the next week which is still high for this area this early in the season. I've lived here long enough that I purposefully chose this house due to the trees shading the afternoon sun, so even though it got into the mid 80s inside the house by late afternoon, we were mostly able to cool it down overnight with open windows and fans. Bonus that we live near the water so any breeze is automatically cooler. We're also in a little valley at the water table, so our property is often 10 degrees cooler than just up the hill. Most summers we're still in long sleeves inside the house (generally our house would be in the 60s), but these last few days, we've all been as close to naked as we can be. Saturday I filled up the kiddy pool and served mimosas, which was great until the mosquitos found us. Our night time temps will be in the low 60s, so this coming up week, we;ll be able to finally vent all the excess heat that's been accumulating.
It was still fairly cool here when I got back from southern Oregon which was in the 100s when I left and had been in the 100s before I got there. I was there for two weeks and I'll never visit in the summer again. My son loves it down there and had been looking for property, but recently fires have been all around him and the heat is more than he can bare, so he's been talking about moving back this way. I have many friends down that way, some from there and others who moved there, it's always been hot, but they say the heat stretches are starting earlier and getting longer and hotter.
I live in the South but am originally from the north.
I have our HVAC system serviced every Spring and had a guy out here in May telling me the system might be okay, but also might fail on us.
Ended up just going with the full replacement because I knew the system was at least 14 years old and the last think you want is it crapping out on the hottest day of the year.
As much as the initial payment hurt, I'm pretty happy having done it and not having to stress all summer about it going on me at some point.
It's amazingly been rather pleasant for much of the past few weeks in the Atlanta area. Alternating torrential rain and pleasantly low humidity days in the 70s and low 80s. I think Seattle and us switched weather.
In the Bay, on the peninsula the climate is currently accurate to the apocryphal Mark Twain “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”, it being 63 F right now. Don’t worry, the heat is coming, just in Fall.
However, I’m currently with family in Georgia where it is hot as hell outside, but to a normal degree so the AC systems have the cooling capacity to get the 80-90 outdoors weather to 70F or so.
edit:
Bay is definitely getting heat waves (also comes with apocalyptic wildfire smoke) the past few years, though, just later in the year typically. I'm considering getting one of those portable (two hose) ACs. Yes, it's worse than a window unit in practically every way but I'd have to do some serious negotiations to be able to install one of those, plus I really only need it for like a handful of days a year, and a portable AC is infinitely easier to stuff in a closet.
Not sure if it's worth but I'll probably pull the trigger when demand for ACs is lower (maybe this winter?).
We've had a hot week or two (not super hot, but the near end of unpleasant) previously, with a brief intermission of a rough ride currently. This is what some cities look like currently. Any takers?
Personally, I've had a much more pleasant ride. Heavy rain and a bit of lightning, but not stupid amounts of hail or flooding.
E: Talking about germany over here.
I've got central AC and its been a dream come true. I've got an open invite for friends to stay here, but they're all content with their not-meat-locker homes :)
You might not want to close of all the vents in your place. You can close them down a bit, but I'd keep them all open a little bit.
The first night of our heatwave I was closing vents, but the system couldn't understand my method since its designed to regulate the entire home. I ended up turning off the AC, fixing the vents, and then bringing the AC back on again -- and it quickly balanced everything out and has been a dream ever since.
My brother who works in HVAC explained this to me with a lot of detail -- but basically you want to balance the pressure.
This is the best part of living on a hillside in western ny. It's hot, sure, but it's wildly breezy too, almost all the time. I've got every window in the house open for the heat, and a small AC unit just for the bedroom so it's not too hot to sleep that I use if it's a muggy night. It's only in the 90'F range today, not too bad with the breeze. I take a cold shower if I'm feeling super-hot and it does wonders. I've got a medium size fan in the living room that can move a lot of air directly over me.
I am not going to be doing any strenuous activity, though, and I've been taking it lighter than usual on the caffeine.
I don't know about that, where I'm at we've shattered most of the heat records in my region going back 100+ years and I can't remember it ever being this hot... and we're in June.
That's the crazy part. Here's an article from my area.. Not only did we record the hottest temperature on record in the country, but smashed a bunch of local records by ~10 degrees C. That's a pretty big anomaly.
Ohhh, whereaboutsish in Maine?
I grew up in the midcoast area. Any time I go home to visit in the summer I sort of hate it because it's hot but no one has AC and I can't spend all day in the ocean, so it's actually worse than summer down south.
I do miss the snow though...
Skiing land!
I think the only time I've thereabouts is for a nordic race back in middle school, so it's been a loooong time.
Over here in the desert valley areas around Southern California, the heat has surprisingly not been that bad. But as we move into June I expect things to get very bad very quickly.
And it's going to suck because our air conditioner is the one-hose variety that basically only gives you a column of cool through the vent and barely, eventually will cool a room at the cost of extreme power usage.
Eastern US. We've had a few waves in the 90s with high humidity. Not many houses have AC, including my current place - so all I've got is a window unit and some fans. My bedroom gets the window unit and is staying cool. But my office next door is 85-90 degrees inside...work the past few days has been amusing. Spend 30-60 minutes in the office doing work and sweating my ass off. Then taking a break to go lay down in the cool room. I certainly haven't been very efficient this week...
We're used to 100F+ days here, but even though we're used to it it's still extremely unpleasant. Unfortunately, week after week, it has been cooler during the week when I have to work all day, and then peak on the weekends. Sure enough, today's only predicted to hit 97, but the weekend will hit 104 again.
Hot as usual here in South Carolina. Ironically it was rather cool (upper 70s and 80s) last week. Not really an issue here as everyone has AC, unlike much of the Northeast and Northwest.