Summertime heat temperatures can soar to sweltering digits, heating up everything everywhere and making staying indoors where it is air-conditioned an optimal choice in staying cool. (Read: Ways to reduce the high cost of home cooling)
But what if your home does not have air conditioning, what if you do not even have a window air conditioning unit in your home? How can the indoor temperature be kept as cool as possible?
Keeping Cool With No Air Conditioning at Home
Having lived without in-home air conditioning for many years in the past, I have picked up lots of tips and tricks along the way to try and keep the home cool.
Open Windows
First and foremost, prepare your unairconditioned home against the heat. Open windows wide in the evenings, when the night air is cooler and before the sun’s heat is on the next morning, close all windows to trap the cool night air inside the home. Be sure to close curtains and blinds, even cover windows with blankets if necessary, to keep the heat from the sunlight at bay, therefore ensuring cooler temperatures inside the house.
Keep Airflow Moving
Another important tip to use in cooling your unairconditioned home is to keep airflow moving. Use ceiling fans or box fans to circulate air throughout the house. When the windows are open, place fans in front of the open windows to bring in the cool air and always have other fans going in the house to circulate the cooled air-even when the windows are closed against the heat of the day.
Contrary to common belief, making fans from cardboard or paper to wave in front of your body will not actually keep you cooler because you are burning energy and therefore heating up your body instead of cooling.
Turn Off Lights and Electronics
Turn off all lights, as many as possible, because those lights burning give off heat that in turn heats up the unairconditioned house. This goes for electronics such as computers and television sets as well, turn them all off when not in use or even do so and find another activity such as reading quietly during the hottest parts of the summer days.
All electronics put off heat and in an unairconditioned home, any heat adds up. Appliances such as washers, dryers, and ovens should be sparsely used, if at all, during the daylight hours. Use these most efficiently after dark when the windows are open and cooler air can be had.
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Trying to Stay Cool
When it comes to the human body itself, trying to stay cool inside an unairconditioned home becomes challenging. The easiest way to do this can be summed up as doing as little activity as possible. When your body is still, there is little energy being burned and therefore less body heat rising.
Keep cool water handy, both for drinking and for keeping pulse points on the body wet. When drinking water, cool water is better than icy cold water because the body has to work to bring the water temperature to body temperature.
Perspiration is a body cooling mechanism all it’s own; when sweating, placing a fan where it blows directly on your body cools dramatically. Keeping the body wet serves to keep the body cooler, take cool showers, mist with water spray, whatever it takes to stay wet and therefore cool.
While it is not easy and doesn’t seem productive, the easiest ways to keep cool in an unairconditioned home are physically doing and running few things as possible during the daytime hours when the heat is strongest. About the time one is frustrated with the heat, the fall will come and with it, cooler days.
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