"The afternoon often includes a nap. Work then resumes at 4 or 5 p.m. for a few more hours.... [T]raditional homes manage to stay cool... open windows early in the day and close them before it begins to warm up. Heavy, dark curtains block light and heat from entering the house, and ceiling fans circulate the cool air trapped inside. My family home had curtains made of khus, a native Indian grass, which we sprayed with water every couple of hours. The curtains transformed hot gusts into cool, fragrant breezes.
Many traditional Indian homes have verandas, high ceilings and walls of mud that keep the interior cool...."
If you can do it, beginning your workday — or your exerciseday — at 4 a.m. is a very effective way of structuring your waking hours to avoid summer heat.
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A 12" flexible duct running from the basement floor to just over the computer desk upstairs, with a solar powered fan on the upstairs end, blasts cool air at you all day with no cost at all.
Primitive swamp (evaporative) coolers. I don't have air conditioning in the high desert of Denver. I easily get by on swamp coolers as probably 25% of residences and businesses do. Works ~98% of the time.
Tomorrow is forecast to hit 100° but when it's that hot the humidity is <10%. I get a 25° temp drop out of my swamp cooler in those conditions. They don't work when the humidity exceeds 30%. There are arrid parts of India where evap cooling works.
I get up to run every morning at 4:00am. I live in the desert. I see many others out early, mostly not young people.
I'm up most days by three
Back in the late mid 70s I was visiting our company's offices in Houston. (I was based in Los Angeles.) Both the heat and traffic in Houston were nightmarish then (the city is way spread out) as it is now. Most of the people in the Houston office started their workday sometime between 5 and 6 a.m. and were finished up by 3 pm. Of course the offices were airconditioned, so heat wasn't the major issue. Traffic however was. And if you could leave the office at three there was time to get home and maybe do something with the kids (little league, soccer etc.) as the late afternoon cooled down a bit.
In places with three digit temps the hottest part of the day is often around 6-7pm…
A 12" flexible duct running from the basement floor to just over the computer desk upstairs, with a solar powered fan on the upstairs end, blasts cool air at you all day with no cost at all.
Respect! As a kid I wanted this kind of set up in our house. I used to sneak to the basement and sleep on the floor with a pillow when the house was too hot to sleep.
"Whatever you do, don't expect to use air conditioning in the future" seems to be the context of this article
As a farmer, that has been my pattern for decades. Just yesterday I was in the field before 7 -- mornings are later as August wanes -- to cultivate weeds in my field of winter squash. When I finished up not long after noon, it was 36 degrees [97 f], and the afternoon topped out at 43 [110 f].
But all afternoon I was inside, doing paperwork, drinking a cold ale, listening to a Cubs game (much farther north), and joking with my 12 yo daughter. It's a wonderfully human way to live.
rhhardin,
Where'd you get the free solar fan?
"If you can do it, beginning your workday — or your exerciseday — at 4 a.m. is a very effective way of structuring your waking hours to avoid summer heat."
But I just went to bed two hours earlier…
My wife does the 4 AM thing here in Texas... I'm tougher and go to the gun range at 2-3 PM. Then home for a beer!
Next NYT series: how cultures around the world eat bugs instead of animals, followed by, how cultures around the world get by with bicycles instead of cars, followed by how cultures around the world have lived in dense communities where all their needs can be met within a fifteen-minute walk of their small efficient dwellings.
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
In a summer on kibbutz in Israel, that's how we did it. Work was in the early morning. Lunch was the biggest meal of the day. Afternoons were for resting and visiting in the house. The parents spent time with their kids.
AC, an afternoon swim in the pool, or a cool shower does wonders to stave off the heat.
But these first world things require reliable energy, clean water or both. I'm at the point where I really don't care that shitty third world countries don't have these things when the spotlight is turned on us, and demonized, for having nice things.
Back in the 70's our crew did the same. off from 2pm to 6pm, then worked till about 9pm. That was erecting grain bins. But we were on site by 530am
I grew up in a house without AC in the city, and it was relatively easy to keep the house cool by opening/closing windows/curtains - provided the house had been properly designed with high ceilings, transoms, etc.
One thing Dad did was get an industrial window fan that fit neatly into an upstairs window. Flip that sucker on, the hot air was quickly sucked out, and a gentle refreshing breeze could be felt throughout the house.
Ask the AZ construction workers what time they get up in the summer. Honestly, only the NYT readers will think this is breaking news.
My grandfather raised seven children on a red dirt cotton farm in Mississippi during the depression. Working outside. No air conditioning. Humans have the ability to bring the blood to the surface to cool you over time. (People in Minnesota develop the ability to take the blood to their core sacrificing extremities if necessary to live in bitter cold) Air conditioning tends to destroy that ability.
That said, his son in law installed a giant attic fan in the hallway in the 50s that I remember his turning on when returning from church on Sunday night. It sucked the curtains straight out in the dining room bringing in cool air.
Ok, who’s ready for detasseling crew? Here’s the training video? Sorry, season’s over, see you next year.
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