Surviving the heat like a Commoner

Image credit: Randall Munroe of XKCD

Hey all, hope you're not melting out there! I've been taking some R&R this week, so it's going to be a short newsletter this week, but I do have some tips to pass along for staying comfortable during extreme heat in cheap and energy efficient ways.

The limits of air conditioning

To start out with, let's talk about why Nate and I don't have air conditioning:

Our house was built in 1953. It barely has central heating, and it's definitely not set up for central air. It has a lot of passive cooling advantages, like being made out of brick, having large eaves, and being surrounded by huge maple trees. But retrofitting it for AC would be a huge task, and we've got other things to do.
We want our bodies to stay heat-adapted. When temperatures change gradually, our bodies have the opportunity to change along with them. That's why a 50-degree day in March feels so different from a 50-degree day in September. As the effects of global warming get increasingly severe, we don't want to go through dangerous heatwaves in bodies that haven't been adapting themselves to the heat. AC is nice while it works, but a sudden AC failure during a heatwave is much more dangerous to your health than the heatwave would be on its own.
Solidarity with our friends and neighbors without AC. Nate and I already count ourselves very lucky to live in a well-built house that we own, in a world where that's out of reach for a lot of the people who know. Spending a bunch of money to make our house even more comfortable feels weird when so many of our friends don't even have stable housing.

One weird trick

Step 1: Fill a mason jar with as much ice as will fit. Then fill up the gaps between the ice with cold water. Close the lid very tightly.
Step 2: Keep the ice jar in your lap while you're sitting down, or up against your torso if you're lying down.
Step 3: Your circulatory system will do the rest. The ice will absorb heat from your body as it melts, and your overall body temp will stay comfortable even if the surrounding air temp would normally be too hot.
Note: If you don't have an automatic ice maker, but you do have an insulated cooler, it might be worth picking up a bag of ice at Montague Foods. It's hard to keep up with making that many ice cubes in manual trays.

Other tips:

Open up all of your windows at night and set up fans to get as much cool air flowing through the house as possible. Close them up in the morning to keep the heat out. If you live in a house without a lot of masonry or other reservoirs of thermal mass, try filling up the bathtub with cold water or getting a bunch of 5 gallon water jugs from Montague Foods. (Big jugs of water are also good to have around from an emergency preparedness standpoint.)
Pets and kids are good at finding cool spots to hang out. Make sure your pets have plenty of water and shade, but also consider taking their advice if you find them spending time in unusual spots. They've probably found somewhere that naturally channels cool air.
Don't do physical work outside unless you absolutely have to. This is a good time to catch up on rest.

Recommendation Corner:

In addition to the heatwave, I had an additional reason for taking a break this week: I found a new favorite video game. It's called Timberborn, and you play as a society of co-operative beavers who are trying to repair the earth long after the humans are gone. It's sort of a cross between SimCity, Minecraft, and a Becky Chambers novel. Absolute Wiley catnip. I've been going pretty hard for the past few weeks, so getting the chance to just turn on an audiobook and lose myself in beaver-based systems design has been a real treat.

This Week's Nails Beaver Metropolis

Didn't do my nails this week, because the polish from last week is still in good shape, so instead, here is the virtual city of beavers I've been building all week. They have zip lines! And universal food and health care! If only it was this easy to implement in real life.

Take care of yourself in all this heat! If I don't see you around town, I'll see you back here next week.

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