Cold Places

[santaman2000]

Yeah I remember when I was there. Mostly I said it in jest. Mine has been on constantly now for about two months. Set at 78f (25.6c) rather than the more preferred 72f (22.2c) TBH the 25.6c is very comfortable. When the first hurricane this season knocks out the power though, it'll be sweltering (unfortunately heat and hurricanes are synonymous)

 

[demographic]

Got a mate who calls me a Troll cos I prefer the cold hilly areas to hot flat beaches.
Been barfitting recently in an area thats very stuffy, dark and till the aircon is setup has poor ventilation. Its doing my head in as I'm dripping with sweat every day.

 

[Harvestman]

Moaning about the weather is a UK pastime. I've come to the conclusion that my wife is allergic to weather. Whatever it is, it makes her ill.

 

[Toddy]

You say that like 24c is warm? However, I think I've spotted your problem; you have all the windows open? Close them! Open they only let out the air conditioning.

Air conditioning ??? It's a house, no' a car

It's Scotland, we have every kind of heating system imaginable but cooling ones are pretty much unknown entities.
We get maybe two weeks of weather like this a year, we just open the windows and play with water a lot

In the middle of Winter the house thermostats are set at 20degC when we're just sitting around, but they're off at night and a big chunk of the day too.
24degC in the evening is hard going though the Sun's away down past the trees now and it's down to 22degC.

M

 

[santaman2000]

Air conditioning ??? It's a house, no' a car .....

When I was stationed there AC wasn't in cars either (or at least I never saw one with it) I suspect it's use will grow in houses as well. Not saying that's necessarily a good thing; but a likely one.

When I was a kid there were very few air conditioned houses here either; maybe one in a hundred. And no air conditioning in schools. Or Churches, etc. Now there's no such thing as any of these without it.

 

[Toddy]

If I open the back and the front doors, and wedge them open, it creates a through going draught....I was told that that was how the houses in the south of the USA were built around an open cental corridor....shotgun houses ? no ?

Can't see us being bothered to put in air conditioning for just a couple of weeks in a good year, tbh. Last year it poured most of the Summer.

M

 

[santaman2000]

If I open the back and the front doors, and wedge them open, it creates a through going draught....I was told that that was how the houses in the south of the USA were built around an open cental corridor....shotgun houses ? no ?.....

Well partly. The shotgun houses were so named because you could (in theory/jest) fire a shotgun in one end and the scatter pattern would encompass the entire house (long and narrow. They were built that way for economy of space and were tightly packed (one house next to another) for poorer families (usually in the old slave quarters, particularly in New Orleans) It was all about cheap construction and they were ANYTHING BUT efficient at reducing the heat.

The architectural type that helped most with that was the more open designs with loads of windows, screen doors, and very, very, very high ceilings (to allow the hot air to rise) Of course all those features are the exact opposite of what's needed in a modern, air conditioned home (those same features that used to let in the breeze now allow the cooled air to escape) It's a nightmare to heat and/or cool a high ceilinged house with modern fittings.

 

[santaman2000]

.....Can't see us being bothered to put in air conditioning for just a couple of weeks in a good year, tbh. Last year it poured most of the Summer.

M

Nor would I. But we'll see just how far climate change goes in changing that. And a younger generation expecting constant comfort.

 

[Wayland]

It's not the heat or even the lack of it that causes us problems in the UK, it's the humidity.

In the Summer it rains most of the time so when it gets hot the water evaporates and makes it damned sticky.

In the winter it rains most of the time so when it gets cold it's just slushy. It's never cold enough to get dry cold.

What we really need is another ice age to get rid of some of this darned moisture.

 

[santaman2000]

It's not the heat or even the lack of it that causes us problems in the UK, it's the humidity.....

Much the same here Wayland. This morning while the temp was about 87f (ambient) the heat index (what it actually feels like due to humidity) was around 96f. That's 30.6c and 35.6c respectively.

That said, when I was stationed in the dry Southwestern desert (Nevada/Arizona) and the humidity was usually below 5%, the heat wasn't really any better the way they always tell you it is (although there was less difference between ambient temp and heat index) At least not when there was a breeze in either the dry heat there or the damp heat here. The difference being that here when the breeze blows it has a cooling effect. In the dry heat it was like having a breeze from a hot oven.

In spite of that, I do miss that desert.

 

[Toddy]

I've been googling; it's not a shotgun house I meant, it's a dogtrot house

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtrot_house

That makes much more sense

M

 

[santaman2000]

I've been googling; it's not a shotgun house I meant, it's a dogtrot house

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtrot_house

That makes much more sense

M

Ahhh! Now that's more like it. As the photo makes obvious, the kitchen (where the heat from the cooking was high) was separate from the rest of the house; the kitchen would have been on one side of the breezeway (which was really part of the porch running between the sections) and the bedrooms & living room would have been on the other side. Believe it or not, there were still one or two of these standing when I was very young (mostly abandoned though sadly)

Again though, these were usually occupied by poorer families (they were usually a very rough, unpainted construction) My first two or three years were spent in a house of rough unpainted lumber (although not a dogtrot design)

Edit to add: Wiki has the dates they were common slightly wrong. They were common in the 18th and 19th centuries rather than the 19th and 20th. They lost popularity when gas and electric stoves negated the need for building a fire to cook. There was no longer the huge amount of heat generated by cooking fires after that.

 

[The Cumbrian]

When I was in Jordan, I worked on draglines in the middle of the desert from June until September.

Working outside was ok, especially if you could find some shade, but working inside the machine our overalls soon got soaked in sweat. If we went outside to cool down ( in the 40°C+ heat ) we soon learned to tie our overalls around our waist before we went; the sun, heat, aridity and breeze conspired together to give a really high evaporation rate, and if we didn't take our overalls off we'd be chilled to the bone in a few seconds.

 

[mousey]

It is too hot for me to even contenplate using the aga for cooking as it really would make the house unbarabley hot. So I've had the trainga stove out and been cooking on that - it's almost like being on holiday and the kids are loving it...

 

[blacktimberwolf]

It's not the heat or even the lack of it that causes us problems in the UK, it's the humidity.

Being surrounded by the sea doesn't help either.

What we really need is another ice age to get rid of some of this darned moisture.

Well you've only got another 11,OOO years to wait............ you had better start filling your larder up now as there won't be any arable land left to plant crops.

 

[santaman2000]

Being surrounded by the sea doesn't help either......

Sometimes it does help. The humidity here (while quite high) really isn't any higher than parts of Texas. But being near the ocean (or at least the Gulf) we get cooler breezes more often.

 

[santaman2000]

....Well you've only got another 11,OOO years to wait............ you had better start filling your larder up now as there won't be any arable land left to plant crops.

I thought it was closer to 15,000 years? !0,000 since the last ice age and about 15,000 til the next. Still on the heating side before beginning the cooldown?

 

[torc]

I did a 29km x-country trot over hilly ground today. The temp. was about 28c according to my good thermometer at home and humid.
I drank 2l of water beforehand and carried 6l and I still drank 2 more litres this evening.
The only problem with hiking in this sweaty weather is that ones nether regions get shredded even with proper undercrackers, Vaseline and such.
I met 3 ladies from Phoenix, Arizona and a bloke from Texas yesterday and with the humidity here in SW Ireland they found it somewhat hot!
Happy trails...torc.

 

[santaman2000]

I did a 29km x-country trot over hilly ground today. The temp. was about 28c according to my good thermometer at home and humid.
I drank 2l of water beforehand and carried 6l and I still drank 2 more litres this evening.
The only problem with hiking in this sweaty weather is that ones nether regions get shredded even with proper undercrackers, Vaseline and such.
I met 3 ladies from Phoenix, Arizona and a bloke from Texas yesterday and with the humidity here in SW Ireland they found it somewhat hot!
Happy trails...torc.

Do you know just what your humidity level is?

 

[Toddy]

My weather station says that it's 32.9 degC just now and humidity is 46%

I don't know if that's good or bad, usually we think of humidity as, "It's damp", "It's dreich", "It's smirring", "It's chucking it down"

I do know it's too damned hot and it's not even noon yet.

atb,
Mary