We've designed but have not yet made or installed a horizontal shade for the kitchen skylight. Having one up last summer made about a 10 degree difference. This year though I want one I can open when it's cooler. I miss the light, and the shade got put up with tension rods--not so much with the opening and closing.
I'd give a lot to replace our dome with a working skylight that opens to exhaust house heat outside. A central fan would make a huge difference as well.
As it is, we put fans in the windows on the east side of the house that face into the woods, to pull cool air in, and another fan in the western window to pull and exhaust the hotter house air outside. A couple of floor fans help push the cooler air into the hosue. It's uncomfortable about four to six days in July or August, but other than that we've not needed AC.
Amy, one dish! I adapted it from here with spinach instead of chard and a little of garlic with the spinach.
I'm getting used to the no a/c thing. Although the situation is a bit different in Northern VT. Today it got up in the 80s and I had the windows open and the fan going, but then tonight it cooled off. I just closed all the windows.
I'll see how I do the rest of the summer with just this set up.
I have a whole house fan that I think needs to be reconditioned/fixed. Wouldn't help for weather like this, but would work better than just a box fan in the window as I've been doing when it isn't roasty weather.
askye- trick from a desert dweller: leave all the windows open and fans on while it is cool- basically until sunrise. Lowest temps are usually before dawn. THEN shut everything down at sunrise or so (desert it is around 9 or so when it starts heating up,) keep the air moving inside.
Tim handles the heat and humidity just fine, and can go without a/c all summer, if not for the pets (because it's really not fair to let the house get insanely hot for the fur-covered critters). So his acquiescence to my a/c jones is a very nice things indeed.
Another thing that bugs: getting hotter when I lie down flat, when I was perfectly fine sitting up a half hour ago.
askye- trick from a desert dweller: leave all the windows open and fans on while it is cool- basically until sunrise. Lowest temps are usually before dawn. THEN shut everything down at sunrise or so (desert it is around 9 or so when it starts heating up,) keep the air moving inside.
this is what I do all summer in Seattle, and there's usually only a couple of days when I need a/c. Love it. Favorite part of moving here. And the window fan I have is one I got remembering Smonster having one, with an intake and exhaust fan.
If it's humid, turning off the A/C and pulling in humid air versus leaving the A/C on is kind of a wash in terms of electricity use.
We didn't have A/C in Chicago when I was a kid, and I remember lying on top of the covers in front of a fan and not being able to sleep. I also spent a summer in Nashville and a summer in Macon without it. The next time I spend a summer without A/C, I'll either be living in a very different climate or trying to survive the zombie apocalypse.
sara I'll have to try that. I haven't really left the windows open at night, but I'll try it. So far it's been nice enough that running a fan works to cool things off.
I'm getting used to being this far north. Will and I took a drive today and if I had my enhanced driver's license we could have driven into Canada! We didn't , we just drove over to New York and around a bit. This is the first time I've been back that way since I came up and the flooding is even crazier.
Lake Champlain has been at or above the highest level recorded in the past 184 years for most of the month and we keep getting more rain. When we were driving we passed geese paddling around in what used to be crop fields. And we saw kayakers paddling around in what is flooded fields.
