• Peereboominc@piefed.social
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    14 hours 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)
    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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      7 hours ago

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

    • |IlI|lIIl|IlIll|Il|IllI|@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I’m about to be a huge asshole… so buckle up.

      It’s literally just past midnight where I am - and the temperature is 80F and 85% humidity outside right now where I live.

      Opening up the windows to “LeT in the CoOl” is laughably stupid suggestion for a MASSIVE number of folks living in parts of the US whose climate is more akin to EGYPT than to any part of Europe where air conditioning is still not the norm.

      I have solar panels across my roof, I have solar screens on every window, energy efficient shades, black out curtains, and I only do laundry and cook in the oven (if even that) ONLY when it is dark out.

      The actual solution is NO LLM HYPER CENTERS, neighborhood and building-wide geothermal energy, super white painted roof tops, requiring solar panels over any existing commercial parking lots that tie into the local grids, and high speed trains.

      The stuff you suggest is like the “paper straw legislation” equivalent… when a dozen companies create something like 80% of all pollution with city-sized cargo ships crossing the ocean, private jets, and homes the size of warehouses consuming insane levels of resources just to exist as secondary holiday living spaces for the endlessly greedy.

      • Peereboominc@piefed.social
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        12 hours 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.

        • |IlI|lIIl|IlIll|Il|IllI|@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          No worries. Hope I wasn’t too harsh. Just want people to realize their personal experiences with only their local climates should probably not be letting that limited set of personal experiences then shape their own understanding of areas of the world of which they are far less familiar…

          Imagine someone who’s never been in the desert going “why are they wearing full white robes?”

          …and then that same person proclaiming : “Shouldn’t they just wear a t-shirt and that will help keep them cool?”

          Not that I’ve lived in any desert before or worn anything like that before, but when wondering that myself, instead of thinking I knew better, I looked up some info… and instead found out that those “full-length white robes” actually not only protect their skin from UV ray damage, but also help insulate them from the heat better than just wearing less would in climates with less brutally hot dry temperatures. Also keeps wind from blasting sand against their skin, and when the temperature drops at night in the desert, that style of clothing also does a better job at keeping them warm.

        • WFH@lemmy.zip
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          10 hours 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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          9 hours 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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      13 hours 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.

      • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        It is like when I tried the travel advice to wash my clothes in my hotel room sink. Well in East Asia the humidity is so high and the AC in the rooms so weak that my clothes would just be soaking wet in the morning. I think that only works if you are vacationing in, say, Arizona.

        • |IlI|lIIl|IlIll|Il|IllI|@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          Ah yes… because we are responsible for our entire multi-generational family tree settling in an area a hundred or more years ago… and we should just be okay completely bailing on the area where everyone close to us has ever lived… where we have connections… OH also, it’s totally not insanely expensive to find a place away from where you have always lived… you know… where the cost of living is cheaper because it is crappier than somewhere nice…, which also means then the deck is stacked against you moving somewhere nicer is even harder because a better place is more cost prohibitive by the nature that it is just a more desirable place to live.

          • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            8 hours ago

            I guess my comment wasn’t outrageous enough to be clearly identified as sarcasm… Should’ve used the /s for good measure.

            • WindyRebel@lemmy.world
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              4 hours ago

              In this day when you have MAGA and fascism pushing in all over the world where it can, no outrageous comment can be taken as sarcasm when many people actually mean it.

              /s is mandatory now methinks.

    • whosepoopisonmybuttocks@sh.itjust.works
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      12 hours 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.