I'm not sure exactly where you are but I visited Massachusetts and Maine when I was 7 months pregnant and we were in the middle of a heat wave here consisting of weeks of 100 + degree days. It never got above 80 my whole trip. I was in heaven. I slept with my windows open every night. I would never use the ac if I lived in that region either. The house I grew up in had this huge attic fan we would use during thunderstorms when the temp would suddenly drop 20 degrees. We would open all the windows and the fan would suck the hot air into the attic then suck cool air in from outside. Has anyone ever seen one of those? I've never seen one in another house. It was built right into the ceiling so when you turned it on these slats in the ceiling would open.
The good ol' bucket swamp cooler! It worked better in the 90's when the little turbo fans came out, But still nothing but adding moisture to a confined area. I wont go with out central air, A/C in the truck or jeep, Friends better have central too lol! In southern iowa, It gets 100F easy and humidity to boot. Sometimes you cant even breathe its so high, Just plain miserable.
The question was different. Last time it was... hm, how often do you RUN the ac? Now it's do you have one? I know, AC'ing is very interesting.
Every once in a while theres a group of special needs people that come into my work with and last time they were in there one of them was like "we LOVE your guys's AC" and the guy behnd him was like "yea, were AC connoisseurs " It was pretty funny. Our AC is broke now so theyre gonna be pissed next time they come in.
I was unaware, until now. My motivation was yesterday's sweltering, suffocating reminder that summer has arrived.
You & your coworkers should keep mini water guns ready to go. When they come in and find out the AC's not working, just squirt attack them. :2thumbsup:
I'd die in that kind of heat too. I left Ontario because it had lots of snow, ice on the roads and car windows in winter and lots of humidity in summer, I hated all of it and I came here because. I heard it was dry (almost desert dry) and lots less snow. I love our summers but I love having AC as a relief from it too. My house and all of my vehicles have AC except my old chevy, gotta think about that, what to do, what to do. Mind you it does have them little vent windows that when turned the right way will blast a lot of wind in your face. I wonder why they don't make them anymore. I got a good blast at my feet too from the lower vent so it might be ok.
the house i live in has a built in ducted heat pump/hvac system. we're in summer here, and it comes on as needed. other members of the house adjust it usually and seem to be more reasonable about doing so then they were last year. of course the summer is still young and life is always changing. for now all seems comfortable. if i were on rural land with which i could do more or less as i wished, i would probably rely more on natural shade and ventilation. that just depends on the situation and every physical place is different. many techniques of passive forced ventilation are possible.
Some areas are worse than most. I grew up in town/25k people, Wasn't too bad in town and tolerable. But I now live 1.? from the river in a small 'village' in farm country. We got hammered with rain real bad today and the highways and fields were hazy. That means tomorrow you could actually watch corn grown from the high humidity in the fields. Its nuts how bad it gets in areas and some have little to none.
the a/c in my bedroom is broke, but for now the window unit in my living room is enough to keep it comfortable enough. i try not to run it all the time b/c air conditioners use a lot of electricity. it's not the heat thats so bad but the humidity i can't take, the a/c takes the moisture out of the air. if the air was completely dry i could tolerate it being a higher temperature but wet, sticky air just feels nasty and i can't take it.
it has been really humid this past week with all the rain we've gotten. I left my house at midnight on Wednesday and it still felt gross and sticky outside. the humidity is the worst part about Iowa summers.
I agree, humidity gets me the worst. Was one reason why I hated living in Ontario near the then big lakes. It was bad and even with AC in the house the humidity would set right back in when doors were opened. Where I used to work we had several huge AC units on the roof and it was great plus we had blowers in areas that AC didn't reach but one area I worked on some machines was up in the ceilings. For some reason humidity trapped itself up there with any bit of heat that could collect. It was awful but the bosses didn't argue if we took extra breaks anyway so often I would go up there, do some work and come back down into an AC area then go back. Only in the very middle of summer it was like that and even tho we were free to do that job as we were able it was quite miserable. A few times I took a break to have a shower and change, it felt so bad. Luckily no one was stuck to that job long, we rotated. I feel bad for you RollingStoned, doesn't sound like fun to be so uncomfortable while putting out to the workforce, and we are just started with summer, I hope they do something soon. My house AC here has already been on a good few times, not left on long but that's an indication it could be quite hot this year, usually I don't even have it on for another couple weeks. Last year I could count how many days it ran the whole summer.
Only in Iowa lol, Can you walk from the house to the car, And look like you just won a marathon! I can deal with the vast majority of it, But I always call it a day when my boxers are soaked! Nothing worse than your clothes just hanging off you, Damp and stanky!
Good old Iowa swamp ass. haha. It sucks when you walk outside and you just feel wet. That's how it felt last night after it rained. We went to a baseball game and the air was just wet with humidity.