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Stay cool everyone
(thelemmy.club)
It's the humidity that makes it so unbearable
...and then combined with our entire architecture, diet, clothing and lifestyles being based around centuries of keeping out the cold, wind and damp.
If your house keeps out the cold, wind and damp, it will keep out the heat. There is no special way for walls, windows and insulation to let heat or hot air pass only in one direction.
Everything is insulated and sealed shut. There are heaters inside the house. The sun comes through the window and heats the room up. The heat cannot escape.
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The issue is thermal mass. Buildings are designed to absorb heat in the winter. Obviously when you aren't using heat they'll absorb whatever the temperature is.
First 2 days of a heatwave the building holds a cooler temperature. After that the walls begin to heat and it is simply too hot at night to dissipate all the heat the building has absorbed
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We have the oldest housing stock in europe and some of the most leaky. In the winter the heat bleeds out and in the summer the cold does too.
Yes, that is true, but that is not the popular myth that the person I replied to was expressing: that "because our houses are designed to be warm, they overheat in summer." This is not true. The thing you're saying, "because our houses are actually quite shit at being warm, they overheat in summer" is true but different.
There is no special way for walls, windows and insulation to let heat or hot air pass only in one direction.
Hot air, no, but heat from sun, very much yes. That's a one-way kind of transaction
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The bricks and wall thickness are designed to absorb heat and release them in the evening though. Not sure if it can work the other way around.
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You speak with a lot of confidence for one who is not well travelled.
It only goes to 43 though (we officially had 43.8 yesterday).
We use the Dehumidify option on our units, it uses less energy (also less €) and makes the place fresh as can be.
Source: in Spain with my nuts stuck to my leg from May-October
*laughs in Florida*
Florida is unbearable even for the people who live there.
Florida is unbearable because of the people who live there.
Tell me about it. I got out as soon as I could.
That's because its housing and other infrastructure was built by colonists who care more about conformity to the colonial culture than actual habitability.
Natural cooling? Withstanding floods? Fuck that noise, let's build flat-roofed structures directly onto the soil surrounded by open grass out of materials that are both expensive to replace and too weak to survive high wind speeds. Oh no why is it so hot all the time and why does every hurricane/storm surge cause so much property damage? Better keep rebuilding the same way.
But they do rebuild to better resist hurricanes? Florida doesn't do much good for its people, but it does build for storms.
I remember when Hurricane Sandy eviscerated the northeast. I was living in Florida at the time and people were shocked that a cat 1 hurricane could cause so much damage. Part of the answer was building codes. Modern buildings in Florida are built to tolerate much worse winds, but New York and New Jersey, where strong hurricanes aren't as common, still had many homes built without such thought in mind.
That's why a cat 1 in Florida is a normal day, where if people are hunkered down, they just party straight through it without fear, even though the same storm can devastate other states. Building codes make it possible.
The new problem Florida has yet to solve is flooding. Although the storm drains are supposed to handle a significant volume, stronger storms + rising sea levels are overwhelming the infrastructure. It also doesn't help that towns are built at sea level in former swampland.
I’d set my self on fire before stepping foot in Florida
That's a great strategy to keep the wildlife off of you.
I lived in Florida and now I'm in Europe and honestly give me Florida.
The outside is bearable to me, but cooler than Florida is this time of year. The issue is there's no escape. AC is incredibly rare and even the few stores that do have it don't crank it like Florida.
I wake up its hot, I go out its hot, and I go to bed its hot.
Back in Florida it was hot while I waited for the car AC to kick on, the office was cool, and my house was cool.
Having no break from the heat is brutal
30^o^ abroad: Civilised humidity
30^o^ in the UK: Might as well be under water, being gently simmered into broth.
30° here in Iceland is a national emergency
Edit: Probably should have said "would be". It's not 30°C here
It's just 'land' now.
Is it still very windy because that would at least help.
If you paid a months salary for the chance to go to Sainsbury’s you’d bloody well take it in 30°
I need my AC unit upstairs to sleep, but I need it downstairs so that I'm not peeling myself off of my chair every 5 minutes while working. The struggle is real.
Genuinely considering buying a second, despite barely having the space.
I'm sure I'm stating the obvious here, but have you considered
- working upstairs?
- sleeping downstairs?
- lugging the unit up and down the stairs?
Don't know about their unit, but my one is 48KG, so lugging it isn't the easiest.
I would've though have it setup at the bottom of the house, have it running and only open a window at the top of the house...
Assuming no major air leaks in the house, the cold will displace the heat starting at the bottom, the rising heat then able to escape out of a cracked window at the top of the house,
Otherwise have it at the top of the stairs and hope that the falling cold will displace the heat
You would want it at the top of the house if it's purely for cooling. Cool air at the top of the house will sink down to the bottom. Rising hot air will then be cooled by the A/C unit. If you put it at the bottom, all that cool air will just sit there and never move upstairs. The open window upstairs will allow hot air out... if it's cooler outside than inside, otherwise it will allow hot air in. In either case, that won't promote much mixing of the upstairs and downstairs air, so your A/C won't improve the temperature upstairs much.
Yeah, if running it isn't too expensive then using it to boost the old 'diagonal air exchange' strategy seems like a good plan
Those are very sensible suggestions tbf; it's just that my house is really small! I live alone, renting. My room upstairs doesn't fit any more than my bed and the AC (floor unit). The only way I can work up there is with a laptop on my bed, which is an ergonomic nightmare that will have me cramping in about 10 minutes.
I have a small sofa that is comfortable enough to sleep on downstairs, that I would probably use if I did not have the AC
I can lug the AC up and down the stairs but one of those 2 areas will be so warm that by the time I've moved it I'm immediately in need of another shower... and then again when I move it back.
I'd probably just spend the next few days living downstairs, seems like the minimum amount of discomfort!
In my loft conversion that I spend most of the day in it gets quite hot. Nevertheless, scrupulously keeping curtains closed, keeping windows closed when the outside temperature is hotter than inside, and using a fan has kept me comfortable in all but the hottest days of the last few years. I always encourage this before AC due to the power usage.
Blackout curtains + closed windows do not keep my first floor anywhere near cool enough unfortunately; I think it's really poorly insulated as it is also really cold up there in the winter (though this is much more manageable to me.)
My problem with sleeping with a fan is they trigger my myofascial pain syndrome quite badly. My only relief is still air that's cooler. I also run quite hot in general :/
I have noticed, however, that I can do a single top up at around 13:00, where I run the AC for a bit to get the upstairs room slightly cooler than downstairs. Then I turn it off and close the window and it stays somewhat bearable for the rest of the day, opening the window again at night.
I completely understand your concerns about power usage as I am eco-conscious myself, and I really wish I had a ceiling fan to use instead. Getting my landlady to sign off on that is a bit unlikely.
I do accept that some people can't get by on a fan, but I'm pretty sure my friends who are buying them could, so I try to push back on the trend 😬
30° in Slavic countries is called the apocalypse.
I'm lying in bed between two fans just to survive on a top floor apartment.
Hmm, both feel acute to me.
Just been to Tesco. Was in there about 15 mins. When I got back into the car, the dash board said 41 🥵 Now parked up waiting to collect wife from work and it’s a pleasant 33 😒
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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
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