Beat The Heat And Survive The Summer
The “Dog Days” of summer are almost upon us and record temperatures are sweeping the country. Unfortunately we have the highest number of elderly and medically fragile people in history, and an aging infrastructure that is feeling the strain of heavy electrical use as our senior citizens struggle to stay cool.
We’re here to give you tips and tricks to help you beat the heat should you be susceptible to extreme temperatures, or should your power be out. Here’s a short list of suggestions:
1. Drink plenty of cool water to keep yourself hydrated and reduce your body’s core temperature. (Warm water won’t do this, and cold water might be a shock to sensitive systems.) Drink regularly, every hour, even if you don’t feel thirsty. Avoid soft drinks and alcoholic drinks that are actually diuretic and rob your body of the water it desperately needs.
2. Eat small, light, non-spicy meals. Eating heavy meals cranks your metabolism and can raise your body temperature. Also, digestion robs you of energy. Since the heat is already robbing you of some energy, you don’t need to add to this drain by taxing the digestive system. However, don’t skip meals since it’s food that replenishes the electrolytes you lose through sweating and increased water consumption.
3. Some sources suggest you wear “light colored, loose fitting clothes.” However, that’s only if you’re going outside. If you go outside, go with that rule and also wear a loose fitting hat or carry an umbrella for shade. Forget the fashion rules, follow the heat rules. (By the way, royal blue and/or white are the best colors to wear for their heat reflective qualities. Ever wonder why most tarps and boat awnings are blue? This is why.) For indoors though, forget all those rules and go with the “bare as you dare” notion. The more exposed skin you have the more efficient your cooling-by-sweating process can work. Also, be sure to tie up long hair, and if you have a beard, consider shaving in order to remove all that facial insulation.
4. Though “bare as you dare” is the way to go indoors in limited AC, most of us would prefer to have good air conditioning. If yours is out, or if power sources are uncertain, go someplace that has AC like the mall or other places that don’t mind people coming in and hanging aro
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und a while. Also, you can “AC pool” with friends just like you’d car pool. Go to a friend’s house who has a good AC system.
5. Failing to find another source of AC, and considering that the power might be out, here are a couple more tips. First, stand-alone floor unit air conditioners aren’t that expensive and can run off regular household current without the need for the special 220 volt outlets. This means that they can be operated using the smaller gas-powered electric generators. Can’t afford a generator? You can probably afford a power inverter which can sometimes be found for under twenty dollars. They plug into your car’s cigarette lighter and, using an extension cord, can power an appliance like your stand-alone AC, or at least some fans. Speaking of your car, if nothing else, if your car has AC you can ride around during the hottest hours of the day, providing you can afford today’s gas prices. If absolutely nothing else, go to your nearest “dollar store” and see if they have any of those little battery-powered fans.
6. Can’t afford a stand-alone AC but you have a generator? Your generator or power inverter can also power your fridge and/or freezer where you should have two-liter plastic bottles full of water filling up every empty space in both the fridge and freezer parts. Having cold water is a great thing. You drink cool water and use cold water to soak towels to wrap around your neck, wrists, and ankles where the veins and arteries are closest to the surface. This is one of the best ways to reduce your body temperature. Also, setting up a few of the frozen two-liter bottles in front of a fan can blow a nice cool breeze your way. (Write us at info@disasterprep101.com and we’ll email you instructions for a homemade AC unit that uses these two-liter plastic bottles.)
7. Now that we’ve talked about keeping you cool in the heat, let’s backtrack a bit and talk about reducing the heat you might experience. Naturally, the first rule is “block the sun.” Do what you can to reduce the sunlight that hits your house or comes in through the windows. Keep the shades drawn, and you might even consider hanging a white sheet or blue tarp as an outside awning on the side(s) of the house that catch the most sun. These tarps are also effective if placed on the roof as they’ll reflect the sun’s rays.
8. Next in cooling the house come ventilation and insulation. If you have an attic, and the power is on, you should have a vent fan that keeps air flowing through the attic. Along with that, we suggest you have roof vent turbines, or a ridge vent (your home supply store can tell you all about these). In extremely hot weather, you might set a garden sprinkler on your roof and let it run for the hottest couple of hours of the day provided your area is not on water restriction. As for “insulation” one way to insulate parts of the house is to close off seldom-used rooms (especially those on the sunny side of the house), and close off their AC vents if any. This blocks heat and also reduces the area that your limited AC has to cool.
While we’re here, we’d be remiss in our duties if we failed to give you the symptoms of sunstroke and heat exhaustion, both of which require medical attention:
Heat Exhaustion: Symptoms include heavy sweating, and skin may be pale, cool, or flushed. The victim will also exhibit a weak pulse, with fainting, dizziness, nausea, or vomiting.
Sun Stroke (sometimes called heat stroke): Symptoms are high body temperature, hot, dry, red, skin (usually with no sweating), rapid shallow breathing, and a weak pulse. Sun stroke is the more dangerous of the two.
The most immediate first aid for either of these is to get the victim into a cool spot, and reduce their body temperature with ice-cold wet towels around the neck, wrist, and ankles. You can also put them in a bathtub of cool water. Don’t use cold water in the tub as that will shock the system. Regardless of your first aid measures, you should seek immediate med
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ical assistance.
Remember, hot weather is nothing to ignore, even if you’re not among the elderly or medically fragile. Heat can affect everyone. Play it safe, stay cool, avoid exertion, and stay healthy. Also, when considering heat safety, don’t forget your pets.
By: Paul Purcell -
Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com
Paul Purcell is an Atlanta-based security analyst and preparedness consultant and is the author of “Disaster Prep 101” (www.disasterprep101.com.) Copyright 2006 Paul Purcell. Permission is granted to reprint this article provided all portions stay intact.
Attic power vent warning:
Fan blades are extremely sharp! When doing any type of maintenance work around it, make sure that power supply to the motor has been turned off! Most of those vents are controlled by a heat or humidity sensing switch, and can become active/cause injury while you’re performing cleaning.
Humming, muffled noise coming from above the ceiling during the summer is most likely an attic power vent, working hard to pull out hot air from under the roof (attic power vent should be placed close to the roof ridge – top, or installed as a gable vent).
The most common installations include adjustable thermostat and in some cases humidistat, which activates an attic power vent motor accordingly with your preferences (once set, it operates automatically responding to temperature or/and humidity changes).
There are also some devices preset by the manufacturer (usually between 85F – 100F), and attic power vents with no sensor at all, controlled by on/off switch mounted in various location (usually close to the attic entrance).
For the attic power vent to serve its purpose properly, and save instead of wasting your money, certain requirements have to be met:
There must be other, adequate number (or more likely square footage area) of ventilation ports installed in lower section of the roof.
Those ports are called:
- soffit vents, if your house roof has an overhang, which extends beyond the house exterior wall
- or gable vents – located at the attic area, commonly on the exterior wall where the two planes of a sloping roof join, forming a triangle
There’s a possibility, that type of your roof allows only for installation of vents on its surface – good examples are hip roofs on many of the Chicago style Georgian type homes, which have no overhang/soffits.
In such case, if the attic power vent has been installed in upper section of the roof, passive vents should be placed not less than 1/3 of the distance between the roof bottom edge and top (ridge). Hip / ridge vent system can be also installed, or vented drip edge mounted along the roof edges.
For the attic power vent to perform efficiently, the attic floor, and all penetrations between the attic and living area of your house should be properly insulated and sealed.
Any gaps, holes, and lack or inadequate number of attic vents will cause attic power vent to create a vacuum, and remove AC cooled air from the house. In some properties, there’s an open duct (or two) between the attic and utility room, which provides combustion air for gas burning appliances – it must remain open on both sides.
- Make sure that the attic power vent, or its opening is protected with wire mesh / screen. Vents are usually equipped with wire mesh that wraps exterior of the fan blades housing, and prevents rodents from accessing attic area. If that screen becomes damaged and you decide to install one from the attic side, be prepared to clean it often – the birds often build nests inside the fan, especially during the cold season.
Also, some of the larger animals are strong enough to penetrate this obstacle, in the process damaging fan blades. Therefore, it’s a good idea to examine your attic periodically – be careful, most attics have no flooring installed, and walking on framing is difficult / if possible, examine fan condition from attic access point.
Before installing a new attic power vent in your house attic area, make sure you properly calculate square footage area – vent calculator. If installed fan is too small, it will have to operate much longer, to move the same amount of air through the attic.
- Adjusting thermostat too low might cause fan to run constantly during hot summer – try to set the temperature dial to a 100 -110 degrees Fahrenheit.
The fan should start automatically as soon as the attic temperature rises above the preset setting, and cuts off when the attic is cooled down to approximately 10% below the thermostat setting.
Go Green and try low voltage, solar battery operated power vent – saves money on installation, very quiet, but approximately 3 times as expensive, as a regular attic power vent.
For more valuable information from Dariusz Rudnicki, on how to maintain your real estate property, correct most common problems, and prevent serious disasters by doing repairs the right way, please visit http://www.checkthishouse.com
Dariusz is a licensed Illinois home inspector who has been in this business for over eleven years, crawling through the areas you’d newer expect that even exist in your house… just to let you know that everything is working properly… or not. If you have some attic ventilation, or any home maintenance related questions, you can always ask him for help.
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