Tips for scorching weather?

Gungahlin Al said :

beejay76 said :

We have a well insulated house with eaves (I know! Eaves!) and it still gets hot. We do all the things you’ve mentioned and it does take days to heat up. But it always heats up in the end. Then we’re stuck with a house that’s 30 inside day and night, with no way for the heat to escape because the ceiling is too heavily insulated to let it out. Yes, we could install double-glazed roof windows to vent it, but we can’t afford that. So we’ve just installed ducted evaporative cooling instead. F#*&ing brilliant. House is now awesome in winter *and* summer.

The problem you’ve described there Beejay is thermal mass. You want mass that can absorb heat on the inside but not on the outside. Brick homes have the mass all on the outside and eventually it gets to the point where no matter how much cool air is coming in, the heat radiating out of the bricks just overwhelms it. A literal oven.

That why we chose Hebel panels for the skin of our place. 20% the mass of solid masonry plus all the air bubbles make it like bubble wrap insulation

Good stuff indeed!

We moan about our increasing need for energy, but one of the most significant things we could do to mitigate it would cost nothing: legislate that all houses have to be north-facing with properly-designed eaves.

Gungahlin Al said :

Well you know where to start then… 🙂 I wasn’t going to write all that advice all over again when people can just google the old threads.

Sadly for the renters of Canberra, making substantial changes to the house isn’t really an option.

One thing I recently discovered is that you can use space blankets (the silvery mylar ones you use for camping/emergencies) as a type of reflective window treatment to keep the heat out. At a couple of dollars off ebay, they’re way cheaper than real window tinting, and surprisingly, work like a one way mirror, you can see out from inside, but they’re like a mirror on the outside. If you mist the glass lightly before applying them and rub out the wrinkles, they stick by themselves, and I’ve found them to be extremely effective for the price.

beejay76 said :

We have a well insulated house with eaves (I know! Eaves!) and it still gets hot. We do all the things you’ve mentioned and it does take days to heat up. But it always heats up in the end. Then we’re stuck with a house that’s 30 inside day and night, with no way for the heat to escape because the ceiling is too heavily insulated to let it out. Yes, we could install double-glazed roof windows to vent it, but we can’t afford that. So we’ve just installed ducted evaporative cooling instead. F#*&ing brilliant. House is now awesome in winter *and* summer.

The problem you’ve described there Beejay is thermal mass. You want mass that can absorb heat on the inside but not on the outside. Brick homes have the mass all on the outside and eventually it gets to the point where no matter how much cool air is coming in, the heat radiating out of the bricks just overwhelms it. A literal oven.

That why we chose Hebel panels for the skin of our place. 20% the mass of solid masonry plus all the air bubbles make it like bubble wrap insulation

My cat sits under the sprinkler.

Seriously funny.

Pictures or video or it didn’t happen.

Deref said :

Madam Cholet said :

I do find that on these stonkingly hot days, the cool of the morning in Canberra is sublime. Get up early and make the most of it.

Yep. Best climate in Australia. Even on the hottest of days – providing it’s not overcast – we get those gloriously cool mornings.

I had to turn on the aircon at about 3.00 this arvo – that’s the earliest so far.

Agreed- at least we don’t have endless months of Hellish heat- also we have 9 months of winter in this town- let the warmth permeate through to those frozen bones!

Gungahlin Al said :

It may seem counter-intuitive, but opening windows to ‘let a breeze through’ will not help.

You need to take advantage of the temperature cycle we have every night because we are inland. Near the coast, the ocean moderates daily temperature changes but here it almost always drops at least 10 degrees at night. So use it.

As soon as it is cooler outside then inside, open everything up and keep it that way through the night to thoroughly purge and cool your house down – the fabric of the house – not just the air in it.

Then in the morning, before it warms up, close the place up as tight as you can. Blinds, curtains, airlocks, vents. Shut the lot. And if you’ve paid attention to all those other threads last summer about sealing up all your gaps and exhaust vents, etc, it should stay cool. We feel like we are in a cool dark cave in these heatwave times. Then all you need is a fan to keep the air moving around inside, and a DVD marathon.

But while it is hot, look around. Figure out what’s causing your home to overheat. Is it reflected heat off paving that could be shaded with one of those $360 gazebos from the hardware? Or is the afternoon sun hitting some windows that could maybe be shaded within two summers by planting a tree in just the right spot? The summers are only going to get worse, so plan ahead.

We have a well insulated house with eaves (I know! Eaves!) and it still gets hot. We do all the things you’ve mentioned and it does take days to heat up. But it always heats up in the end. Then we’re stuck with a house that’s 30 inside day and night, with no way for the heat to escape because the ceiling is too heavily insulated to let it out. Yes, we could install double-glazed roof windows to vent it, but we can’t afford that. So we’ve just installed ducted evaporative cooling instead. F#*&ing brilliant. House is now awesome in winter *and* summer.

arescarti42 said :

Gungahlin Al said :

It may seem counter-intuitive, but opening windows to ‘let a breeze through’ will not help.

You need to take advantage of the temperature cycle we have every night because we are inland…etc, etc, etc.

Really good advice, although if your house is old with lots of holes in it and shitty insulation, then closing everything up during the day isn’t going to be a hugely effective strategy.

Well you know where to start then… 🙂 I wasn’t going to write all that advice all over again when people can just google the old threads.

Madam Cholet said :

I do find that on these stonkingly hot days, the cool of the morning in Canberra is sublime. Get up early and make the most of it.

Yep. Best climate in Australia. Even on the hottest of days – providing it’s not overcast – we get those gloriously cool mornings.

I had to turn on the aircon at about 3.00 this arvo – that’s the earliest so far.

Gungahlin Al said :

It may seem counter-intuitive, but opening windows to ‘let a breeze through’ will not help.

You need to take advantage of the temperature cycle we have every night because we are inland…etc, etc, etc.

Really good advice, although if your house is old with lots of holes in it and shitty insulation, then closing everything up during the day isn’t going to be a hugely effective strategy.

My cat sits under the sprinkler.

Seriously funny.

LOL!

Two words. Ducted evaporative. There is no heatwave in this house and it costs 9/10s of sweet FA to run….

Grin and bare it or leave the joint. Very Canberran to be too hot or cold and whinging about it.

We havent had a stinker for some time so we ought to think ourselves lucky

I find that putting some shorts on, drinking a case at SummerNats, then abusing some dude’s girlfriend and having a punch on works for me.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but opening windows to ‘let a breeze through’ will not help.

You need to take advantage of the temperature cycle we have every night because we are inland. Near the coast, the ocean moderates daily temperature changes but here it almost always drops at least 10 degrees at night. So use it.

As soon as it is cooler outside then inside, open everything up and keep it that way through the night to thoroughly purge and cool your house down – the fabric of the house – not just the air in it.

Then in the morning, before it warms up, close the place up as tight as you can. Blinds, curtains, airlocks, vents. Shut the lot. And if you’ve paid attention to all those other threads last summer about sealing up all your gaps and exhaust vents, etc, it should stay cool. We feel like we are in a cool dark cave in these heatwave times. Then all you need is a fan to keep the air moving around inside, and a DVD marathon.

But while it is hot, look around. Figure out what’s causing your home to overheat. Is it reflected heat off paving that could be shaded with one of those $360 gazebos from the hardware? Or is the afternoon sun hitting some windows that could maybe be shaded within two summers by planting a tree in just the right spot? The summers are only going to get worse, so plan ahead.

johnboy said :

TAMS have a produced tips for keeping pets cool.

Probably works for people too….

Puppies just love to have a bath in the hot weather.

I keep a plastic water spray bottle with me, particularly by the bed at night. Spraying a mist of water over bare skin gives a quick shot of evaporative coolness, and you can just keep refilling the bottle…

switch said :

trevar said :

The red button turns the aircon on. Press it.

Yeah, but that solution apparently requires huge amounts of “gold-plating” to be applied to our electricity infrastructure. You know, the stuff built after the war with a projected life span of 40-50 years and no authority has touched since.

I thought the issue was the incentives structure is set up to encourage massive over investment in electricity infrastructure, which results in expensive electricity.

Personally I’ll be staying inside with the curtains drawn and the AC on.

The freezer aisle of Woolies.

We do have a split system at home, but we don’t turn it on until you are officially suffocating. We find that shutting the windows and curtains and turning on ceiling fans can suffuce for the most part of the day. We also have cool night air from outside pumped through our roof so we are able to cool the house down a bit more overnight.

I do find that on these stonkingly hot days, the cool of the morning in Canberra is sublime. Get up early and make the most of it.

TAMS have a produced tips for keeping pets cool.

Probably works for people too….

trevar said :

The red button turns the aircon on. Press it.

Yeah, but that solution apparently requires huge amounts of “gold-plating” to be applied to our electricity infrastructure. You know, the stuff built after the war with a projected life span of 40-50 years and no authority has touched since.

The red button turns the aircon on. Press it.