Little bit toasty here

[Davion Highlander]

I hate visiting the older hospitals and court buildings at the moment in full suit. Let alone when I have to wear my robes in court. The heat seems to just seep into those old buildings.

[warshipadmin]

" Dr Wainwright added: 'Scientific modelling predicts that by 2070, summer temperatures in the UK will be on average 5°C hotter than today."

Yes, and our children will not know what snow is (2000). I assume he is using the now discredited RCP 8.5.

[Johnnie Lyle]

Ok report.

Just 10 days ago I had to run the heating as the combination of damp and cold was uncomfortable. Remarking it was disappointing.
But at least things dried out inside.

In 6 days we went up over 10 degrees Celsius. Summer has come in with a bang.

I've dug out the fans and we're already only opening windows on the shady side.

Outside is bearable, as light wind and relatively low humidity allows sweat to evaporate.

The van of course has no AirCon, so has become a punishment box with a window to add sunburn to being cooked.

Now the storms come. Spectacular lighting.
Sadly the wife gets nervous about lightning.

Personally it's sort of cleansing, a release.

Thunor is busy tonight, but a prayer to smite the enemy is out....along with try not to hit anything precious.
Just in case.

Why only on the shady side?

Wouldn’t it be better to try getting air to flow through your dwelling, thus creating a cross-breeze?

[Zen9]

Ok report.

Just 10 days ago I had to run the heating as the combination of damp and cold was uncomfortable. Remarking it was disappointing.
But at least things dried out inside.

In 6 days we went up over 10 degrees Celsius. Summer has come in with a bang.

I've dug out the fans and we're already only opening windows on the shady side.

Outside is bearable, as light wind and relatively low humidity allows sweat to evaporate.

The van of course has no AirCon, so has become a punishment box with a window to add sunburn to being cooked.

Now the storms come. Spectacular lighting.
Sadly the wife gets nervous about lightning.

Personally it's sort of cleansing, a release.

Thunor is busy tonight, but a prayer to smite the enemy is out....along with try not to hit anything precious.
Just in case.

Why only on the shady side?

Wouldn’t it be better to try getting air to flow through your dwelling, thus creating a cross-breeze?

During the early and late phases yes, I'd open both sides to let the heat out.
But throughout the bulk of the day the sunny side is much hotter than inside the house. So the flow through is actually bringing hotter air inside the house.
Only the shady side is cool enough and because of the orientation, the afternoon sun pours into my daughters room making it the hottest room in the house. Blinds down from 12 onwards.

Once the sun nearly set everything gets opened.

So a lot of 'management' of the windows is required and this also comes down to orientation of the fans inside.

Still it beats living in a converted loft with no insulation, three stories up and paying £900 per month for 'pleasure'.

[David Newton]

When you get above 38 for a week i’ll be impressed…

Well we're not going to manage a week of that, but it does look like there's a substantial chance we'll manage two days in a row over 38 Celsius later this week. Yet another scorchingly hot heatwave has now begun in the UK. The June temperature record of 35.7 Celcius will be a gonner on Wednesday almost certainly. The absolute record of 40.3 Celcius may be threatened as well.

That works if you have sufficient temperature and humidity differential at night. Here in CA, summers can run upwards of 100-110 degrees F during the day, but routinely drop to 60-70F at night. Add in a decent cross breeze and you can rapidly cool a dwelling down to downright chilly.

If you don’t get that nighttime temperature drop (or, worse, high humidity), then opening all the windows is a lot less helpful. The issue in the bulk of the US isn’t just temperature - it’s the humidity. Temps that would be quite comfortable (say 70s-80s, or even low 90s) are much less pleasant when you have high humidity. People generally run the AC less to cool things down than to dry the air out.

So if it’s hot but not humid, or hot during the day but cool at night, then opening all windows, breezes and fans do a lot to cool things off (assuming of course you can get the breeze to flow through the structure). If it’s also really humid - or your architecture doesn’t facilitate natural ventilation, it can be god-awful. Especially if you don’t have lots of ersatz cooling stations such as malls, theaters, big box stores that are open to the public and routinely air conditioned.

It can be a rough couple of days.

The Met Office has issued a red warning for heat and humidity on Wednesday and Thursday for exactly those reasons. As I said above the June record will certainly fall, and the absolute record is in danger. However unlike when we set the absolute record in 2022 it's going to be pretty humid as well and overnight temperatures are forecast to be 25 Celcius in some areas.

So to translate things for those from the US: two days over 100 Farenheit certain; pretty high humidity; very limited domestic air conditioning; little to no breeze and overnight temperatures at or just below 80 Farenheit.

The issuing of a red warning is justified, and I am NOT looking forward to Wednesday night or Thursday night as it's the night time temperatures that are the most dangerous about this.

[Nightwatch2]

Yea, that’s hot and miserable.

We’re getting there too but at least a/c is common here.

[Paul Nuttall]

The express has already started warning of plunging temperatures in the coming weeks......

[Bernard Woolley]

The express has already started warning of plunging temperatures in the coming weeks......

Of course it has. Do we know yet how it will affect house prices?

[David Newton]

Perhaps they're trying to cool the market.

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

Miserably hot despite opening cross-venting windows @2130, when outside became cooler than inside.

Dehumidifier earning its keep...

Have surfaced from towel-sprawled 'Sweaty Starfish' mode for fridge raid...

Yes, I am definitely 'equinoctial' rather than 'solstice', latter celebrated yesterday...

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

O330 BST, AKA 'Oh-Dawn-Thirty-ish', well-ventilated kitchen is still ~23ºC ~~73ºF.

But, there is now a cool breeze infiltrating at ankle height !!

I have hopes for morning...

Note kitchen's budget min/max thermometer --YMMV-- claims reached ~28ºC yesterday.
Perhaps when I was having siesta !!

[Johnnie Lyle]

You should be okay if you can get a breeze going. Fans can do a lot to help air circulate.

If not, since AC is not a possibility, try a swamp cooler.

The other option for at least the day is hitting up places with better environmental systems.

[David Newton]

You should be okay if you can get a breeze going. Fans can do a lot to help air circulate.

If not, since AC is not a possibility, try a swamp cooler.

The other option for at least the day is hitting up places with better environmental systems.

Hence being in an office with air conditioning is a MASSIVE help. Guess where I am now.

I've just seen some dewpoint temperature modelling for later today. The models say a dewpoint of 22 or 23 Celcius around where I live. Apparently that's on a par with Florida's usual values.

For those without air conditioned offices to hide in then another option is shops. Larger stores are routinely air conditioned.

[Drunknsubmrnr]

Is refitting homes with heat pumps helping with the AC issues at all?

[Belushi TD]

You should be okay if you can get a breeze going. Fans can do a lot to help air circulate.

If not, since AC is not a possibility, try a swamp cooler.

The other option for at least the day is hitting up places with better environmental systems.

My wife used to teach in Elizabeth, NJ, which is one of the ghetto cities here. She taught on the top (3rd) floor of a building built in the 1930s', in a south facing classroom. Temperatures would routinely end up above 85 degrees in the afternoon, and occasionally top 90. Her solution was to get a fan and a large plastic bin, fill the bin with ice, and have the fan blow on it.

Her kids called it a ghetto air conditioner.

Don't know if that would be of any help to our UK members, but it might provide some temporary relief, particularly if you're able to set the fan and ice bin up in a manner that the air blows directly on you.

Belushi TD

[Johnnie Lyle]

You should be okay if you can get a breeze going. Fans can do a lot to help air circulate.

If not, since AC is not a possibility, try a swamp cooler.

The other option for at least the day is hitting up places with better environmental systems.

My wife used to teach in Elizabeth, NJ, which is one of the ghetto cities here. She taught on the top (3rd) floor of a building built in the 1930s', in a south facing classroom. Temperatures would routinely end up above 85 degrees in the afternoon, and occasionally top 90. Her solution was to get a fan and a large plastic bin, fill the bin with ice, and have the fan blow on it.

Her kids called it a ghetto air conditioner.

Don't know if that would be of any help to our UK members, but it might provide some temporary relief, particularly if you're able to set the fan and ice bin up in a manner that the air blows directly on you.

Belushi TD

We call that a swamp cooler. You can get classier ones; I picked one up a few years ago when my AC went out. At least here in the US, you can routinely find those and varieties of wheeled or window AC units for sale in big box hardware stores (such as Home Depot or Lowe’s) when summer temperatures get high.

The swamp cooler has the twin advantages of not requiring a window to vent out of and being the easiest to move to a different room as needed.

Window AC units generally require dedicated 240v outlets, but some work of standard plugs. I have also seen rolling units that work off standard power outlets. They require an outside window to ventilate (so you need to get cardboard to create a decent seal since the exhaust hose is rarely the same size as the window) but again will cool a room down pretty well and can allow you to go for weeks without functioning AC (as a friend discovered when it took roughly a month to get hers fixed).

Both are also renter friendly.

Might be worth looking at Amazon if not in the big British box stores, if only on the “have it and so won’t need it” theory.

[Johnnie Lyle]

You should be okay if you can get a breeze going. Fans can do a lot to help air circulate.

If not, since AC is not a possibility, try a swamp cooler.

The other option for at least the day is hitting up places with better environmental systems.

Hence being in an office with air conditioning is a MASSIVE help. Guess where I am now.

I've just seen some dewpoint temperature modelling for later today. The models say a dewpoint of 22 or 23 Celcius around where I live. Apparently that's on a par with Florida's usual values.

For those without air conditioned offices to hide in then another option is shops. Larger stores are routinely air conditioned.

That’s increasingly why the US doesn’t open cooling centers - we have lots of large, air-conditioned spaces that are already free and open to the public.

A modern cinema is also probably a good choice, because they’re used to having lots of people in a single room, and so should have an HVAC system that can compensate.

Sadly your country is fond of warm beer, so you don’t have out walk-in beer fridges in larger stores and gas stations.

Not much help at night, but a bunch of fans will help.

[Nightwatch2]

You should be okay if you can get a breeze going. Fans can do a lot to help air circulate.

If not, since AC is not a possibility, try a swamp cooler.

The other option for at least the day is hitting up places with better environmental systems.

My wife used to teach in Elizabeth, NJ, which is one of the ghetto cities here. She taught on the top (3rd) floor of a building built in the 1930s', in a south facing classroom. Temperatures would routinely end up above 85 degrees in the afternoon, and occasionally top 90. Her solution was to get a fan and a large plastic bin, fill the bin with ice, and have the fan blow on it.

Her kids called it a ghetto air conditioner.

Don't know if that would be of any help to our UK members, but it might provide some temporary relief, particularly if you're able to set the fan and ice bin up in a manner that the air blows directly on you.

Belushi TD

We used to have a fan that was built that way. The frame had an ice tray built in. Worked pretty well in dry Colorado on a desk if one was sitting directly in front of it.

[gtg947h]

So my dad was notoriously cheap when he was younger, to the point that he never used the AC in his old 82 Camaro and so it just didn't work any more.

Well, we moved south when he got hired by the airlines and eventually (years later around 1997 IIRC) he got tired of driving to work in the summer with no AC. Passengers don't like sweaty pilots, you see. So he did one of his glorious and infamous "Dad Special" fixes and rigged up a contraption made of cut up milk jugs, shoestrings, and ice, basically hanging it in front of the air vents.

It worked great! Cooled the car down just fine, at least enough to be bearable. So the next day he heads off to work with his new budget AC installation hanging off the dash, proud of his ingenuity.

Only, there was a flaw in his test plan. You see, he only tested it with the car parked in the driveway, and forgot to account for acceleration-induced movement. Ignorant of his incomplete test, he pulled out of the driveway and made it to the end of the street, when that next turn promptly sloshed a bunch of ice water right into his lap

Soon after, he bought a new vehicle--with working AC.

[Micael]

It’s not as hot here in Sweden as in the UK, at least not yet. I am however at my parents at the moment and their house has got an annoying tendency to heat up a lot. This coupled with them not really believing in the necessity of AC means that it is currently 28C/82F indoors and I am somewhat fearing for the next few days as the outside temperature is set to start climbing.