Wonder how those cheap construction Texas McMansions with the huge foyer and high ceilings will fare. Some of the largest power bills I ever had were from when I lived in Texas, and that was in a pretty small place.
use (ceiling) fans & turn the AC down. way down. heat rises. make the high ceilings work for you not against you. just like they did in the 1920’s.
Not me, I put in solar panels 5 years ago.
Nothing some extreme weather can’t fix. ;-(
No fucking shit. It’s not even mid summer yet, and we keep our ac set as high as health conditions allow. Damn thing runs almost non stop with this old, busted ass house
Might cost you less to seal some windows or something than the cost of running the AC 24/7
You forget that American houses, especially lower class ones, are made out of practically cardboard or literally foam. While sealing can help a decent amount most older homes are lucky to have R10 insulation total from drywall to whatever external sheeting exists. Even now most new construction only has to be R15.
That means at best you’d be running the AC 24/7 during the summer months if you live in the 80% of the US that gets above 32c for days at a time.
wasn’t an issue at the time older housing was built. US population was 1/3 what it is today. There was plenty of oil and electricity to go around for everybody.
It was still an issue, the problem was either you just didn’t have the knowledge and/or money to deal with it, were working with bad scientific beliefs based on real problems that were solved differently, or just lived in what used to be a much more mild climate.
In especially the 1930s-1950s the poisonous construction materials did in fact have slowed effects when you had a drafty house, so it became practice and advice to not fully insulate the home, to not create a sealed environment since the homes that did have good insulation and a good seal generally had more ‘mysterious’ deaths that were attributed to ‘stale air’ and even brought back the term ‘miasma’ for a while. It was gas/lead/asbestos/arsenic/CO/CO2/Radon poisoning. But back then they had correlation and used it as causation because why would air ever hurt you.
That and for the most part you had trouble keeping the house warm, not the opposite problem, so the cheapest and time tested solution was more blankets and a stone fireplace for part of the year and just deal with the outside temp the rest of the year, even on really hot days like the record breaking Chicago high of 102 in 1918 where the average was, you know, 80 for the several decades before and after that.
I wish I had foam. My house was built in the 1920s and as such has plaster walls over lath, with a layer of studs behind and asbestos siding over the exterior sheath. Did you notice what’s missing from that list? That’s right: Insulation!
I insulated the shit out of my roof when I had the ceiling out of the second story (there is no attic), but the walls basically may as well just not be there as far as the season’s temperature is concerned, whatever it is. Somehow, some way, I’m going to have to stab holes through the plaster and blow in some insulation material. The bottoms of the exterior walls are literally open into the basement, though, so I have some work to do down there first.
On the bright side, this place was built back when they were still using real timber so it’s probably not going to fall down until much later after all of the other new construction around here.
using real timber so it’s probably not going to fall down
Nothing wrong with today’s lumber, but there’s a lot wrong with antique building standards of the 1920’s + lack of code enforcement + old carpenters attitude of “that’s the way it’s always been done” if they even knew the current/correct rules in the first place.
A lot of near furniture grade lumber was used in old houses because it was common and cheaply available- unlike now. But there is no special advantage to using it in old houses for structural purposes. Today’s houses are as engineered as automobiles are for cost and safety.
I’m there with you, only difference is my house has tongue in groove wooden interior walls.
tongue AND groove.
At least you can theoretically take those apart and put them back up, right?
There’s old wiring behind my walls, too. I may ultimately just have to resort to sledgehammering them all and running Romex, then putting drywall back up to replace the plaster.
old wiring is sketchy. materials degrade over time. plastic polymer technology used in insulators before the late 70’s was not what it is today. insulation on new wires will last 80++ years. The old stuff, not so much…
Aye. And there are still some runs of cloth insulated stuff in my basement. If I ever touch that (literally), those lengths will have to be replaced. Things to do, things to do.
To be fair, OP said their house is “old and busted”. I live in a century old farm house so I know old and busted.
We run our furnace fan sometimes when it gets hot out as our dug basement stays cool so it’ll blow that cold air through our house. But we have made sure to seal windows better, use black out curtains on the south side of our house (Where the sun tends to be most of the summer) and do what we can without needing to use our Heat Pump or AC units.
plant shade trees to the south and wait a few years for them to grow?
Working on it! We have a small hill on the south side that leads to our south hay field. We want to start growing stuff on that hill in the next year or two.
I lived in one of those old 3 deckers that you see all around old cities in the NE US. They were built in the 1930s-40s. It was so drafty that in the winter I could literally feel a breeze coming from gaps around the walls.
My house has a basement that is so much cooler than the outside in the summer that if I put on glasses that have been sitting down there and head outside I’m blind from condensation. lol
Yeah, a layer of plastic film well sealing the windows will go a long way. I know a lot of people like making foam inserts that make a huge difference. Insulating foam is cheap, and it just needs a layer of fabric glued to it to look half decent.
I greatly appreciate articles, in which statements are rephrased and reused 3 to 4 times, to really get the message home. Really, I truly value articles that reinforce their key points by restating them in different ways—three or four times—so the message really sinks in. What I especially enjoy in articles is when the main ideas are repeated and rephrased multiple times—three or four instances, to be precise—because it ensures the message is thoroughly understood and deeply ingrained.
Perhaps it was written by Mojo Jojo.
Hey ChatGPT, can you make this “article” about 3-4 times longer so I can get paid?
Hey Chat, please summarize this article for me in which the same point has been repeated 3-4 times in order to make the main idea really sink in.
You get an article longer in seconds, not minutes. ChatGPT will make you a longer article — without the headache of writing it. You can even ask it for fewer emdashes — giving you results you will love.
But Trump promised my electricity bill would be cut in half!!!
His fans will say “They will go down any day now. I blame Obama.”
Yes, but each half regrows as a full bill.
Hydra-electric power
Always the opposite of what he says. Always.
Thanks trump! Thanks ai bubble!
Hopefully the summers will be cooler in the future 🤞 🤞 🤞
Bro thats dangerous we actually need to make the earth hotter so it doesnt totally freeze up bro
Yeah, they are paying for all the datacenters.
The datacenters that largely received State tax exemptions, and only need a skeleton crew of people to operate. So they’re not even contributing to the local economy.
They contributed to the economy of whoever we voted for, apparently. Other than bribes I’m not sure why you’d allow this.
Not the economy of the 99% anyway. I worry for the future of the world with these fucking things. Countries needing money are going to allow these to be built when companies throw enough money and lobby governments. The damage they will do to the environment will be tragic. So many are going up so quickly with not a thought to how they affect the area they’re built. From what I have seen they consume massive amounts of fresh water and heat the air around them venting into the atmosphere. This is surely going to have lasting affects on the earth (if enough are built). The AI bubble is just inane, its money laundering at the grandest scale and it needs to be stopped before its too late.
Ai, yai, yai…
Not just them
But many European countries were largely saved from energy price hikes thanks to investing in renewables:
Between solar panels and a home battery my electricity bill is negative during summer months. As in I produce more than I need so I’m selling back to the grid.
During the winter when I don’t get enough from solar with my battery and dynamic pricing I can buy electricity when prices are low so I don’t pay high prices during peak hours.
In the Netherlands my electric prices have remained steady but gas went up substantially.
Electricity prices went up to 2.60 yesterday at 20:00, not very stable, unless you’re on a fixed contract of course, which is literally the most stable.
Yeah but energy prices have been astronomical since the start of the Ukraine war
You elected him; you should pay for his decisions. Seems fair.
He is also doing many things contradictory to what he said he would do during his campaign. An issue with politicians doing things that they were not “elected” on the premise of. Then we can just go down the rabbit hole of if elections are rigged, blatant corruption, so on. The people should not pay for the decisions of a government that doesn’t take care of its citizens
I voted against him. Why am I paying for his decision? Does that seem fair?
In this case I recommend raiding the white house. This seems legal now and if someone asks you say you lost your way to the cage fight arena
STFU.
Someone regretting their vote?
Nope.
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)
Its 8am and heat index is already 93F. I don’t think opening a window is going to help.
Top tips. Also avoid bonfires inside the house and consider sleeping in a 8f deep pit.
Saddam had the right idea:
Bro really was ahead of his time. Using natural geothermal sources of environmental temperature meditation even when surrounded by oil.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe don’t settle in a bordering uninhabitable climate
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.
deleted by creator
it wasn’t a hundred years ago
I guess my comment wasn’t outrageous enough to be clearly identified as sarcasm… Should’ve used the /s for good measure.
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.
Yup. Nothing is too outrageous for someone to truly mean it online anymore.
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.
