The Reality-Based Community: Coping with the heat:
There’s no plan for a regular home handyman column here, but I notice many people going about heat wave management the wrong way, so here’s what you need to know. First, what you can do quickly, and without air conditioning, which is a lot if you’re smart.
some good stuff here: I wasn’t aware how reasonably-priced a whole-house fan could be. We bake here in the summer, living on a ridge with a full Western exposure all afternoon and none of the breeze from Lake Washington or Puget Sound to mitigate it. It was over 90 in the house for too much of the time during last week’s heat wave. If the main living area of my house is 1400 square feet, that looks like about 11,800 cubic feet: a 3400 cfm fan can move that volume of air in less that three minutes. As quickly as evenings cool down here, I’m sold.
The stuff about CFL lights I knew and we do that where we can. They never seem to live up to the hype, though. Time for another look, it seems.
Air conditioning isn’t worth doing and I don’t like living in a hermetically-sealed box. Time to see what my local Grainger can do for me.