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I have long been of the opinion that modern dwellings, not to mention modern heating and air conditioning, cannot handle much in the way of open windows. Basically, if the outside temperature is between 60 and 80, go for it, but outside those bounds....
Take today, for example. It's currently a VERY muggy 80 degrees outside, high projected at 93. I'd bake if the windows were open.
I just dropped my kids off at their kid's day out program. It's an in-home one day a week thing, and I couldn't help but notice that the air conditioning was off and the windows were open. I vaguely remember her doing that last summer as well. My poor son came home at 3 baked and drenched in sweat. And this summer he's refusing to wear shorts. Not that I think they would help...much.
Does anyone else keep their windows open on a day like today? I mean, this person doesn't even have an attic fan or a window unit or any ceiling fans...just one of those floor fans like the kind we have on 24-7 to keep our office (computers make it hot even in winter) somewhat breathable.
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There is a theory that AC full time actually leads to kids who are less able to acclimate to hot weather and more likely to get Asthma.
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On hot days, I usually open the windows (but leave the blinds mostly drawn, to keep the sun out) for the cross breeze in the morning, then close them as it gets towards 11 or 12.
In general I'm not big on the dry texture of air-conditioned air, and I like my indoor temperatures in the summer warm enough that I can comfortably wear the same clothes inside and out. I grew up in, respectively, a house without air conditioning and a house in which the air conditioning was set to 82 degrees. I'm baffled by the temperature most people keep their homes at. (And offices. I feel bad about the energy waste, but I run a space heater through much of the summer at work.) But my boyfriend likes things much colder, so I'm trying to learn to compromise--even if it means I have to put on a sweater before walking through his office.
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Since we don't have central air conditioning, I have figured out a few rules for using the windows to cool the house. First of all, if it is going to be a hot day, then the windows should only be open at night, except for a window or two on the top floor with a fan set to exhaust. If it's 90 degrees outside and the windows are open, pretty soon it will be 90 degrees inside as well. It helps to have a basement that you can draw cool air out of. If it gets too stuffy in the house during the day, open north facing windows only and set fans in front to move the air in.
The biggest thing, though, is acclimatization. If you don't have air conditioning available, you just get used to it, for the most part. My dad's old house in Yuma, Arizona didn't have air conditioning, and I got used to it even though many nights the outside temperature wouldn't get below 90F, and during the day it could get as hot as 120F. Powerful fans can compensate for a lot.
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I was never bothered by heat when I was a kid. If he gets enough water I wouldn't worry about it. (That's not a temperature range where you have to particularly worry about aggressive salt replacement, at least if you're in the shade, AFAIK.)
I'm not sure why the person doesn't try harder to keep the place cool, but I think people do get used to it. It takes a while. I stayed in a place with no cooling where the interior temperature was regularly in the high 80s, and after a few weeks it didn't particularly bother me. I just got used to being sweaty all the time and drinking a lot more water.
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We are lucky to have a limestone house with 18" thick concrete walls... so our house stays cold longer. Once it does heat up outside though, we do what Crowswife said. I am not a huge fan of the air conditioning anyways. I sit in a 10 x 10 "office" with the a/c unit that also cools our giant conf. room. 40% of the air out of that system comes out in my room. I work with some pretty large people that need it to be 3 degrees while they are in that conf. room. Needless to say I am an ice cube all summer.
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I prefer to have it cold than hot. You can always put on more clothes but there's a limit to how much you can take off. Especially in public.
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Americans set their thermostats way too low in summer. I'm all for drying the air out a bit, and I'm not going to make people work in 30 degrees, but really, 18 degrees when it's shirtsleeves outside is not reasonable. Not to mention expensive. I wonder how much energy prices would drop if all large buildings raised their thermostats by three degrees? There's no need to keep it cold enough that you have to wear a sweater.
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It may be that we all keep our houses too cool..I was just think mid-90's was a bit high. Plus, it is very, very humid in the summers where I live. This makes a huge difference. And also, no one knows how to cool their houses around here. It sounds like a few of you, especially theCrowsWife, have figure out some tricks to keep your house cooler than 90 degrees on a 90 degree day, but in my experience when it's 90 degrees outside and the AC isn't on, it's nearly 100 inside. The houses I'm familiar with seem to trap heat...especially the one I live in now. Actually, it's awful, and i so want to move but the market is not going to support such a thing right now. But we set our thermostat to 72. The basement will be 65 and upstairs it will be 80. Since we spend a lot of time upstairs, we don't have much choice about setting the thermostat a bit low.
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: I prefer to have it cold than hot. You can always put on more clothes but there's a limit to how much you can take off. Especially in public.
And even if you could take off some/most/all of your clothes, if it's 90+ and muggy, you're still going to suffer. At least I do.
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It's rarely hot enough to require AC. When it is, I set it around 75... but right now, I've yet to turn it on for the year. If I feel a little stifled, I just turn on a fan.
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Whale: Definitely true. Too often I've wanted to be able to take off my skin.
Christine: Our house is the same way. Last summer the AC was broken and it was over 100 every day for a week (and we were taking care of two babies who needed a lot of holding.) it was a very uncomfortable time.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I don't use an air conditioner at home. Usually, if there is air moving, I am fine.
How old is your building though? Was it built before A/C [was common]? If so it may have the thicker walls that help keep things cooler.
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I'm talking more about offices and public buildings than private homes. They all (at least around Cincinnati where I live) seem to be set to the lowest temperature anyone has requested, rather than the median. I wear a sweater and run a heater in my own office. It's not as though we even have a dress code, being a university. The T-shirts that are comfortable outside are perfectly acceptable attire; if people had to wear suits I could understand keeping it cold, but that's not true. It baffles me how people can waste money on making others uncomfortable; I could understand if it were a question of comfort, but when it gets so cold you have to wear a sweater that's no longer a reasonable excuse.
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quote:Originally posted by Christine: It may be that we all keep our houses too cool..I was just think mid-90's was a bit high. Plus, it is very, very humid in the summers where I live. This makes a huge difference.
To be clear, I wasn't trying to critique your own choices in your own home--just to broach the possibility that the daycare center may keep itself the way it does because whichever individual is handling the temperature may actually find 80 and humid comfortable.
I have to consciously remind myself that humidity bothers other people. The first year I spent in inland southern California, with its dry, desert heat, was my idea of hell. I kept desperately wishing I could import the soft air of the North Carolina summers I was used to.
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quote:KoM, it is freezing in my office, too. I keep a sweater here and a cape thingy.
You really shouldn't wear your super hero attire during the day. It's sloppy practice and has led to many a secret identity being exposed. I'd think the super hero's union would look down on that.
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Ha! It is a well known fact that my superhero costume is a pair of flannel pajama pants and a fuzzy purple bathrobe. I am Sloth Girl and my superpower is napping.
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Umm... I'm in the same state as you, Christine (same weather) and at home the windows are just open. One box fan going. That's pretty much how we do all summers (we don't have an A/C option)
When you grow up with it that way, you get pretty acclimated to it. And kids seem to be bothered even less by it than adults.
disclaimer: we do live in the country, not the heat-producing-asphalt-pavement-reflecting city; which means we have the benefits of fully capturing any breeze (if there is one) as well as shade trees.
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I work in a building with no airconditioning and bad air circulation, it is really fun whenever it's sunny Posts: 5700 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Farmgirl: Umm... I'm in the same state as you, Christine (same weather) and at home the windows are just open. One box fan going. That's pretty much how we do all summers (we don't have an A/C option)
When you grow up with it that way, you get pretty acclimated to it. And kids seem to be bothered even less by it than adults.
Yep. I'm not living in that state these days, but I grew up there (not sure what part of the state you live in, but I grew up in the country about 20 miles from Lawrence) in a house without AC. We used fans pretty extensively in the hotter parts of summer, but that was it. It wasn't an issue.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Farmgirl, Noemon, what kinds of houses did you live in?
Here's the thing. I do not believe that modern houses are designed not to have AC running in them pretty much all summer. You get an old-fashioned ranch house or farm house, then you're talking about a place designed not to have AC. They planned for it when they placed the windows -- to get a nice cross breeze -- there is likely good ventilation, ways to help the heat escape through the top of the house, maybe an attic fan, etc. etc.
My house, like most modern homes, was designed for aesthetics, not efficiency. We can barely get a breeze going with every window in the house open because they aren't well placed. There is no attic fan nor a place to put one. The attic crawl space is air tight and insulated.
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We had a swamp cooler in Arizona once. It actually worked remarkably well, but doors and windows were always open.
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Ours was a pretty old place, and but it wasn't all that well designed when it came to airflow. We'd put box fans in the windows, had a pair of foot stool fans that would usually be running, and had a couple of fairly high quality free standing fans. No attic fan or anything of the sort.
It's not that it wasn't hot; it was. It's just that with the breeze it wasn't too bad despite the heat. I know I ate a lot of popsicles, and spent a lot of time swimming in the lake that the Corps of Engineers built near our place in the mid 70s to keep cool.
I'll bet you're right, though, that modern houses are largely built with AC in mind, and that they have poorer circulation than most older houses.
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*Puts on architect's hat* Prepare to be bombarded with pretty much pointless, but slightly relevant, information.
You've hit it pretty well with cross ventilation, that will be far and above the biggest benefit. This ties into building orientation, which is really where modern homes are so very weak. Grids are great for efficiency and circulation, but really poor to design buildings around. Ideally, there is a balance between solar orientation, and wind orientation. You want to orient the long side of your building to the wind, or better yet, shape the building like an 'L' and catch the wind in the inside corner. That way when the house windows are open the wind flows through, and when the windows are closed, the turbulence calms the wind inside the 'L' just a bit. Also, while windows are nice to have in every room, they should be placed with a through to prevailing winds if they're going to be used for ventilation. With even the smallest bit of a breeze, a well designed house shouldn't need any fans for ventilation assistance.
Solar orientation is all but ignored at this point, which is fairly sad. Science has done a lot to counter this with double-paned glass and IR/UV tints, which increases efficiency, but that efficiency is lost if you ever open a window. Through most of the country, windows on the west face of a building just aren't worth the effort. South facing windows are great, provided you shade them correctly and keep any of the direct summer sun from landing on a window sill. But even with energy efficent window, if you have a huge south or west facing wall without some form of solar mitigation (and whether it has windows or not) it's going to be a massive heat sink.
Another, fairly odd occurrence, is that more and more houses are getting rid of attics in favor of vaulted ceilings. This, for the most part, is detrimental in two ways... One, it adds a lot of volume to the air, that is harder to circulate air through, and takes more time to cool off (natural or artificial means). Also, attics server doubly duty between storage, and as a massive insulation space. Air is a pretty crappy medium for transmitting heat energy, and an attic is a pretty large air buffer in that regard. When you attach your ceiling directly below the roof, you lose that efficiency. Any ventilation is spaces should be done with low and high windows, it shouldn't be necessary to vent the air from the inhabited space out the roof. Not to say that such things won't help many modern houses, just that it shouldn't be.
Brick is actually a very poor insulating material. Over time, any heat exposed to brick will transit through it. However, that 'over time' part has a large impact, as brick also has a very high thermal mass. It's something everyone's noticed, and takes for granted. Brick absorbs heat during the day, and slowly passes the heat through its thickness. About the time that the inside face of the brick is getting warm, the sun has gone down, and the brick will start radiating the heat back out (to the cooler side, which you hope is outside). This works phenomenally well in dry climates were there are large temperature swings, using this to a building's benefit requires the outside air be cooler than the interior at night, and the sooner that happens the better. Humid air can dampen (no pun intended) that effect.
Also, while I'm a big proponent of designing buildings to their region and climate, HVAC (air condition / heating) systems have come a long way. There are some systems where it's more efficient energy wise to run the AC in a well designed / insulated house than it is to run two ceiling fans. Actually combining climate and technology would be a wonderful wonderful thing, but something I don't expect to see become common place in this country for a long long time.
Alright, I think my need to lecture has been met. This is what happens when you only give me one topic a year concerning my profession!
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I've lived in the South my whole life (Texas and Louisiana) and I couldn't survive without AC. The humidity is insane and around this time of year, we're topping 100 degrees in the afternoon.
However, my ex lived in an old New Orleans shotgun duplex and they had no central AC, just window units which we left off most of the time with the exception of the month of July. But those houses are designed to optimize airflow. We could leave the windows and interior doors open and get a wonderful breeze most days.
Warden's post just reinforces my negative opinions about modern upper-middle class suburban neighborhoods.
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I wished I could keep AC turned on most of the year 24/7. I'm not cut to live in a tropical country, me thinks. :-(
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