Fans don't work above 90 degrees anyways, and with the humidity are even worse than no fan at all. Did you try the Target off of Barranca?

Have you tried a sportsfan79?

If you aim it outside it should blow out a lot of hot air.

Kevin, all good advice from Michael O'Hare. Here's some more. As a native Californian -- Bakersfield! -- I know all too well that, in summer, it often happens that the air hardly cools off at all at night. A little, yes, but nothing dramatic. But now I live in Portland, OR., and the difference in air temperature between day and night is massive.

In such an environment, a whole house fan makes enormous good sense. Mounted in a ceiling near the center of the house, it can exhaust all of the hot air from your living space into the attic during the night, drawing in (much) cooler air from outside through slightly-open windows or screened security doors. At the same time, it will push the super-heated air in the attic out through vents there -- assuming you do have your attic adequately vented -- dramatically reducing heat radiating in during the night and morning hours.

Whole house fans have their problems, to be sure. They can be noisy (I purchased a unique model with two smaller fans -- the same kind in mainframe computers, actually -- because they're quieter and designed to run all night. Some of the huge whole house fans create such a draft and so much noise that you really can only run them for short periods of time). In humid areas you might not want to draw in outside air. And, again, often enough in Southern California the evening air temperature isn't dramatically lower than your indoor temperature anyhow. Still, I have some friends who put one in down there, and they swear by it (and marvel at how effective mine is).

House fans are the bomb (no, Bob, I'm not referring to WMD this time).

What do you do if you live in a bad L.A. neighborhood and can't open the windows at night?

Allow me to add another piece of Incredibly Obvious Advice (tm)

It is always cheaper to buy fans sometime other than the hottest days of summer.

This should fit well with Mr. O'Hare's advisory that it gets hot during the day and cooler at night.

Thomas: Actually, I did try the Target off Barranca, and they were completely sold out except for one teensy little blue fan. After trying a bunch of other stores, I went back and got one. Better than nothing, but so small that it hardly even counts as a fan. "Hawaiian Breeze" my ass.

And I've always found that a light breeze is helpful even in very hot weather. Marian has a little table fan in her sewing room, and I brought it downstairs the other day when it was 95, and it seemed to help. Who knows, maybe it's more psychological than anything else, but it still seemed to make a difference.

I don't recall where I heard that, but maybe it is more psychological. It is supposed to be much less hot the rest of the week at least.

One suggestion about fans: don't have the thing blowing directly into your face. You'll spend a fortune on Visine or Restasis or Murine. I'm not kidding; it dries your eyes out badly.

Spend time in the mountains....Aspen sure put Kenny Boy on ice.

Um, fans are available from an awful lot of online retailers. I rather doubt they'll all be sold out. Try Amazon for starters.

Fans help even in the hottest weather, incidentally, because the air movement accelerates the evaporation of sweat from the skin.

Also, if you think you might experience a power outage, there are fairly powerful battery-operated fans available, as well as things like cooling vests (try SafetyCentral.com for a big selection--I just ordered a fan and a vest from them).

enzohino: in bad neighborhoods in LA, almost everyone has iron bars on their windows. You can open the windows but nobody can break in.. or out. Of course this raises another question, what do you do if there's a fire and you need to escape out the window? The bars are supposed to have an emergency release, but in every place I've lived in LA, the release mechanism (usually a big bolt) was painted over and stuck, so it would be easier to try to break through the wall.

I want some genius to figure out how we can "store" the cool air from the night and then slowly release it during the day.

What about those cooling devices that go around your neck from the Sharper Image? There's one at the Irvine Spectrum.

>> "Hawaiian Breeze" my ass.

Kevin! Dont point the fan there! It is thermodynamically inefficient! And an awkward position to blog in!

Awww! Poor Californians.

Try Texas where we count the 105% days to see how many in a row. Live without air conditioning? God gave us air conditioning so that we could stand to live in Texas.

I have central air, ceiling fans in every room except the kitchen, and when it gets hot I also turn the small fan on and aim it at the keyboard. I've noticed that the dogs refuse to stay outside in the middle of the day (they know where the air conditioning is.)

Oh, and my electric bill dropped 5% when I switched to the flourescent bulbs. If you can pay average cost over the year, at least the electric bill won't surprise you.

I agree about the heat associated with incandescent bulbs. Two weeks ago we were having a heat wave here in the Northeast and I felt the glow from the bathroom lights, wasted energy from the bulbs left by the previous tenants. Replaced with compact Flourescents now.

I want some genius to figure out how we can "store" the cool air from the night and then slowly release it during the day.

When it's daytime here, it's night on the other side of the world. We can just use their air!!

Are people who live in hot climates really not wise to the "sun makes your house hot" yet? I live in flippin' Alaska, and I figured that out.

I'm hoping for a general social regression to the quite sensible routine of sitting on porches and drinking rum punches all summer.

Saltillo tile absorbs heat throughout the day and then disburses it at night.

So simply rip up your floor and tile it. You might narrow your temperature range by a degree or so.

(The other good tip is to build monumental stone architecture. Ever been in the middle of a Mayan pyramid? Nice and cool. Bats everywhere, but still.)

Oddly enough, fans in the evening did some good in central North Carolina, where there was usually night cooling. Portland, with its low humidity, is a perfect place for them.

Here on the mid-Atlantic coast of Florida, life without AC is miserable, although a fair number of Miami residents do without. Fans everywhere. At least we're having normal weather, nice to be out about sunset, between the no-see-ums and the skeeters.

We live in the land of humidity and high temps here in So. MD. This year we only turn the a/c on when the temp reaches 90 and the humidity is 40% or higher. That's usually 3 PM, or so. And when we turn the a/c on it is set at 80. When the temp starts to drop below 90 (the humidity, of course goes up throughout the night, so we try to ignore that) we turn the a/c off and the fans on. A fan is positioned over my right shoulder, about 8 ft. away. In the bedroom the fan is on the floor and tilted at our midsections. Cooling only your face accomplishes little. Keep the midsection cool (by the way, keeping the midsection warm, in the winter) is the key. Our electric bill did jump from an average of $135 over the last 6 months, to $150 this month. But that's still pretty damn good!

Vornado is having a sale on at least some of their fans. Prices lower than Amazon.com and no sales tax and free shipping. This may be only for the floor fan that I ordered after one of my fans developed a mysterious ailment.

Best advice is to move the heck out of Socal.

Best advice is to move the heck out of Socal.

I'll second that. I'm going to Brasil in August. I'm tempted not to come back.

We have a mid-century modern house with lots of windows. Lots and lots. Although we have the "good" exposure with the big glass wall facing south, deep overhangs, and a mature pine on the southwest (the house formerly belonged to a trained landscape architect), I have still learned a lot about passive solar heating by observation.

Solar shades to block radiant heat and still let you see out are pretty cheap and easily installed. Honeycomb blinds -- especially the blackout kind -- will give you better "R value" for insulation than the best quality window. Strategically placed vines and trees can be used to shade windows. We also installed an induction cooktop when we remodeled the kitchen. It uses a magnetic field to heat the pan only rather than the air around the pan and is almost twice as efficient as well as safer.

Ripping out the carpet and installing tile has helped to modulate the temperature quite a bit. In the summer the slab cools the house and in the winter the slab warms the house. Plus you feel cooler when your bare feet are on the tile.

Unfortunately and quite serendipitously we had a roofer out this week to give us an estimate for a foam roof which while nauseatingly expensive (I believe that it will be made of bundled dollar bills weighted down with gold coins), should help keep the temperature better controlled. Boy, did he pick the right week to convince us of the superiority of his roof.

None of those solutions are any help with a dew point temperature of 70. There is no alternative to air conditioning.

We live in what is lovingly called a 'first and garden' in Boston, and would be known as a 'street level and basement' in any more honest locations.

My little office room has no windows, and since it's next to the crawlspace under the attic I need to run a dehumidifier, and those things spit out a lot of heat when the suck the water out of the air.

Oh, and my Fiance can't stand air conditioning.

Happily enough, Boston seems well stocked with fans, we got a window fan for our bedroom upstairs with two fans, so you can set it as pure exhaust to pull the hot air out, or as in/out to encourage circulation when we have guests and want to keep the door closed.

We are also considering a move to L.A. - if we do, now I know I'll have to bring the fans.

Hell's Bells, Pechorin, if we waited for the dewpoint to be below 70 we'd almost have to keep the a/c on 24/7! At least for us, a temp below 90 is the trigger to turn off the a/c and turn on the fans. If the temp remains below 90, but the humidity is 40% or above, tough shit, we don't run the a/c. End of conversation. At the moment I am quite comfortable. I'm not hot and I'm not cold. I can't ask for more.

If only in consideration of future property owners, plant the trees. A friend in Davis has towering Valley Oaks that keep the temperature 15 degrees cooler than the neighboring fields. He says they add 5 to 10 k each to the resell value.

Buckeye and Valley Oak are great native deciduous trees that give shade in the summer and light in the winter. Bay laurel and redwood will provide year round shade and privacy.

Native trees require a lot less watering once they are established. In fact the oaks will be hurt by overwatering. If your neighbor has a leaking pool a redwood or cottonwood might be a good choice and could reach 30 meters in 50 years.

Considering global warming you might want to consider a mix of Mexican and California natives. Mexican Boojum and fan palm?

Screw air conditioning.

The real solution is to just die.

Yeah, all you wusses who can't handle 120, 130 degree summers that will be commonplace in the next 10 years, just die.

Die, or learn to adapt to the heat.

Less people living, means less CO2 going into the atmosphere, and maybe, just maybe, a few human beings will survive the even hotter summers to come.

Whole house fans can be quite nice but if you are prone to allergies, look out! It will suck allergens in on a conveyor belt.

Compact fluorescents are the best. If you're just using them now, you're not doing it right. They have been my mainstay for nearly 20 years. Several of the bulbs I bought back then are still going strong. That by itself is reason to use them, let alone the energy savings.

When I was in graduate school, with no money, I never ran the AC but I lived in an older house with window fans. They worked pretty well, even in the hellish humidity we have here in the south, and even in the middle of the day they at least got a breeze moving through the house and so were at least as effective as a ceiling fan.

You can also look into white cellular shades. They are cheap and reflect most of the sunlight right back out of the house during the day. If there aren't any at the hardware store, they can be had online.

Kevin,

Get a whole bunch of tiny little pc cooling fans and hang them like mobiles all over the room.

I want some genius to figure out how we can "store" the cool air from the night and then slowly release it during the day.

Geothermal heating and cooling.

Does OBF have one of those doppleganger thingies?

The California coast probably won't get that much warmer with global warming -- because high pressure systems eventually induce an influx of marine air. It's the interior that's going to suffer.

Whole house fans have their problems, to be sure. They can be noisy (I purchased a unique model with two smaller fans -- the same kind in mainframe computers, actually -- because they're quieter and designed to run all night. Some of the huge whole house fans create such a draft and so much noise that you really can only run them for short periods of time). In humid areas you might not want to draw in outside air. And, again, often enough in Southern California the evening air temperature isn't dramatically lower than your indoor temperature anyhow. Still, I have some friends who put one in down there

Those fans have all been bought up by KBR and sold over in Iraq for 1000% of their cost where you are.

Does OBF have one of those doppleganger thingies?

No. I'm just moody today.

The California coast probably won't get that much warmer with global warming -- because high pressure systems eventually induce an influx of marine air. It's the interior that's going to suffer.
Posted by: B on July 26, 2006 at 10:00 PM | PERMALINK

The California Coast - as in, within 5-10 miles, or at least on the West side of the coastal ranges. Places like the LA area - will suffer. Except for a thin strip along the ocean. Where I live, we regularly get what's called the "June Gloom" - where the heat of early summer brings on about a 2-3 week period where we get a bunch of cloudy/foggy days in a row. And it's a marine layer, so it tends to burn off around noon-ish, and is low in altitude, so the coastal foothills block it from penetrating inland, though it'll filter through some of the passes and work it's way into some of the valleys inland.

June Gloom, this year, of course, is gone. It's hotter than hell, and I can see the ocean from my house. Worse - the heat comes with humidity. At least the inland regions are spared the hell of high temperatures with humid air.

"But Marge, if we don't have the air conditioning on high, that means the environmentalists win" - Homer Simpson

Isn't it odd how Kevin Drum imitates art? Only a couple days ago I made a video satirizing nanny-ish advice like that offered above.

I had a blog post about the fan thing earlier this week at http://la-stories.blogspot.com/ Not too surprisingly, people in L.A. have been buying lots of fans lately.

At least the inland regions are spared the hell of high temperatures with humid air.

Obviously you have never been in the Midwest after a bend in the jetstream sucks up moisture and heat from the Gulf.

I'm going to Brasil in August. I'm tempted not to come back.

I'll second *that*.

Robert: I want some genius to figure out how we can "store" the cool air from the night and then slowly release it during the day.

One word: adobe. In places with a large day/night differential massive building materials like adobe can help even out the temperature differences.

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You guys are just getting CFLs now? I've got a couple that are older than my 11 year old daughter.
Our power company gave each customer TWO CFLS FOR FREE about two years ago. I think the real reason was to save us power so we could sell more to California :)

Thomas: Actually, I did try the Target off Barranca, and they were completely sold out except for one teensy little blue fan. After trying a bunch of other stores, I went back and got one. Better than nothing, but so small that it hardly even counts as a fan. "Hawaiian Breeze" my ass.

And I've always found that a light breeze is helpful even in very hot weather. Marian has a little table fan in her sewing room, and I brought it downstairs the other day when it was 95, and it seemed to help. Who knows, maybe it's more psychological than anything else, but it still seemed to make a difference.

Heres what you do. Work your ass off in the heat all day long. After work drink alot of beer, after a long day in the heat, and drinking muy frio cervezas, you climb your ass into bed, and lay a damp rag acrost your chance with the fan on, you WILL wake up freezing your ass off.

If it's very warm, you should run the fan in the upstairs window all day on low speed to help dissapate the warm air that collects at the top of the house.

Probably the best thing in addition to the above is to not use tv's and computers if possibly because they put out a lot of heat.

Bloh by laptop if you don't already!

At last a breath of cool reason,

Ann Coulter says Bill Clinton is really gay,

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Coulter_says_Bill_Clinton_displays_signs_0726.html

Try a solar-powered attic fan, they work great. Check here for details http://1877solworks.com/fan.htm

two words: ceiling fans!

" 'At least the inland regions are spared the hell of high temperatures with humid air.'

Obviously you have never been in the Midwest after a bend in the jetstream sucks up moisture and heat from the Gulf."

OBF was talking about California, not about North America, as was implied by the context.

"Awww! Poor Californians.

Try Texas where we count the 105% days to see how many in a row. Live without air conditioning? God gave us air conditioning so that we could stand to live in Texas."

Sounds like the Central Valley of California to me. We have wildy different climatic regimes in adjacent parts of California, far beyond what you see in a similar-sized part of Texas.

BTW, I was in the Dallas area last week, including job-related fieldwork on Tuesday afternoon (Lewisville Dam area) when it hit 107. It still wasn't as bad as 90 degrees with high humidity.

"Yeah, all you wusses who can't handle 120, 130 degree summers that will be commonplace in the next 10 years, just die."

You're jumping the gun on the timing. Maybe Phoenix in 2050 and Fresno in 2100.

"Geothermal heating and cooling."

I never heard this name applied to this (at least) several-decade-old technology until last week. For those who haven't heard, this name in this context does not mean steam from underground hot rocks like in Iceland. Instead, it means huge underground containers full of boulders bathed in water, with the water circulating through the house in pipes and back to the rocks all year. The rocks have huge thermal inertia, provideng summer cooling and winter warmth.

"The California coast probably won't get that much warmer with global warming -- because high pressure systems eventually induce an influx of marine air. It's the interior that's going to suffer."

Not if coastal upwelling fails, which just might happen. Ever been to the Italian coast in summer? That's the California coast if we don't have a cold ocean next door. For those relying on stereotypes and media portrayals, summer ocean temperatures off central and northern California are generally in the 50s. Surfers wear wetsuits in these areas for good reason.

Finally, the evening exhaust fan in your dwelling should normally be placed on the west or southwest side of the building so that incoming air will be coming off sides of the building that have been in shade for hours, and not off an area that was in direct sun for some hours until just a short time ago.

Bill D.

I meant to add that a central fan is not the only excellent option. Just a powerful window fan alone can work wonders if properly used. My parents' former house just would not cool off at night even after it cooled off outside, so Dad installed a permanent and powerful window fan in the laundry room window on the southwest side of the house. In the evening we'd open up the bedroom windows on the northeast and southeast sides of the house, put the fan on high, and miraculously cool the air temperature inside by 10 degrees or more in a matter of minutes as cool inside air came in. Of course the fan had to run for a long time so incoming air could to continue to exhaust heat given off by the interior until the house itself was cooled off. That was key to getting the morning temperature low enough inside to make the next day reasonably bearable for most of the day.

Bill D.

Re: Adobe and Geothermal. Need a solution that can be worked into the existing 100,000,000 Homes in this country.

After living most of my life in places with extremely high summer temps and humidity, my husband and I now live in the arid Southwest. It's been somewhat hotter than normal this summer here in New Mexico, but we have a window fan that we turn on as the sun goes down and it draws in the cooler night air very effectively. The cool air remains in the house most of the day. And keeping the curtains drawn during the day on the south and west sides of the house really does help. It seems that straw bale or adobe houses are good for controlling temperatures.
We lived in Ohio before moving to the Southwest and living there was a summer nightmare. There was no way to deal with the heat/humidity other than air conditioning. I grew up in Illinois and thought the humid summers there were bad, but Ohio is off the chart. Maybe that explains some of the odd behaviors of Ohioans--they go 'troppo' like Australians.

Obviously you have never been in the Midwest after a bend in the jetstream sucks up moisture and heat from the Gulf.
Posted by: Disputo on July 26, 2006 at 10:44 PM | PERMALINK

No - I have. And I grew up in that shit (Chicago).

And no - NOTHING I have experienced in California - including 118-degrees in Death Valley, comes close to that misery.

I'm just sayin, that the past few weeks on the coast have not been a dry heat. I'll take a dry heat over humid heat any day.

All the fans are in France, which is having its second heatwave in three years. It's not as bad as the infamous ``canicule'' of 2003, when 15,000 people, mostly elderly, died.

The problem in France is that few homes and apartments have air conditioning (summers are usually quite mild here), so we make do with lots of fans.

(Last night we had a great thunderstorm, which cooled things off a little. Hopefully the heatwave is almost over.)

Wow! Actually, I'm a bit surprised to see this lots of thoughts about reducing energy consumption on a US blog. That's very encouraging! Congratulations, Kevin, and all the others, you're doing the right thing.
:)

For thousands of years, humans had no AC or fans. Perhaps the hardest aspect of this is knowing it is possible to be cooler, but you can't have it. Growing up in a family that couldn't afford AC, and only had one fan (not on the kids at night), I recall how my mother longed for AC... in the long hot Missouri summer nights, I sweated buckets and hoped and hoped a breeze would come by my window, but it seemed that never happened. Same thing surely happens now not just for those in energy crises without access to fans, but for Americans in poverty, and some in the middle class, whose wealth has been transferred to the economic higher-ups, who might not be able to pay their utility bills these days, and may be lacking disposable income.

Kevin, you live in Irvine, right? I have relatives in Manhattan Beach who do not even have air conditioning (like most of their neighbors) and I'm just wondering whether the Irvine area is warmer than the beach communities or if you're something of a lone air-conditionist?

I know it't more heavily republican, which could help explain the hot air.

-Brian

No one has mentioned window tinting. Get the high grade film, and get it installed professionally. It is a little bit of an investment, but it makes a huge difference in the amount of heat that gets inside your home, and thus cuts your A/C costs and saves energy. Before I saw a demo I was worried that it would harm my view of the lake behind my house, or not let in enough light to feel like it was 'airy' in the house, but neither of those things happened. I've lived in Florida almost a year and know my house would be a lot warmer inside without the tinting.

By the way, I have lived in Chicago, Orange Co. California (I used to work off of Barranca - seeing that name made me homesick!), Denver, and now Flroida. Chicago heat takes the prize hands down. I thought Florida would be worse, but so far it has not bewen that horrible.

The rectangular window fans that you can set to blow in or out work really well.

Also, cold compresses on the back of the neck are very refreshing, if you're staying put for a while, ie at your computer. So are wristbands that have been in a freezer all night.

If all else fails, beer. There is nothing more American than passing out in front of a window fan.

My God!!! Southern California having a run on a seasonal product, besides sun tan lotion! It's the apocalypse!!!!!

OK, I grew up in Malibu, but have lived in the Boston area for the last 15 years - every year it's the same rotation of product runs:

First big snow: run on shovels, snow blowers and bags of salt.
Late Spring: run on tomato plants and general gardening supplies.
First heat wave: run on fans and ACs.

If you don't plan ahead a little they may run out of the object of your sudden desire, though they try to stock enough of everything for each season (they want to make some money, after all).

Has anyone tried the solar powered air conditioners?

cld- LOL

"Ann Coulter says Bill Clinton is really gay,"

So he wouldn't do her either. See, even Bill has standards (after Monica we weren't sure)

Poor Ann, running out of men, back to her 12-speed.

My experience with extreme Chicago heat and humidity and no AC taught me the following:

Your body will adjust pretty well, but it takes a couple weeks or so. The first few days feel the worst. The absolute worst is going from, say, Chicago winter to a tropical rainforest. Your body has adapted to the cold and suddenly it is thrust into immense heat. Of course that is why people from the tropics suddenly put into the cold feel the cold so much too. The body adjusts, but it takes time.

With a fan blowing on you you can stand most anything. Even a small fan pointed at your head while you sleep helps immensely.

You will sweat, of course, but as long as you remain hydrated and don't have to look 'cool' you will be okay.

mroberts,

Here in MN we get a big run on car batteries the first big cold snap. It ain't worth it. At the first sign of sluggishness in the fall you should buy the new battery.

I never did understand the emphasis on the difference between blowing air in or out. Unless you are inflating or deflating your house, all of the air that goes out a window has to be replaced by air coming in somewhere else. Coversely, air coming in a window will push air out somewhere else.

I would think it would be better to blow cool air into the room where you will be, and let the warm air go out some other open window, in another room, than to blow the hot air out, and have to wait for cool air to find its way in some other window, through the house, and into the one where you are.

Google: "Cool Tubes"
.

Here's a simple solution that nobody seems to have thought of yet...put your clothes in the freezer before you wear them. Cools them off and makes them damp, and then when you put them on they cool you off right away and take about an hour to warm up to room temperature.

We recently had a heat wave here in Seattle, where there is no AC, and I kept all my t-shirts in the freezer for three days and put a new one one every three hours. Did a terrific job of keeping me cool.

Whole house fans are great but there is an important caveat: You must have adequate air supply, open windows or some other source, to make up the air exhausted by the fan. Otherwise, it's possible for the house fan to reverse the exhaust on combustion appliances like a gas water heater. The result is combustion byproducts, like carbon monoxide, exhausting into your house rather than out the chimney.

You also see this same phenomenon with heavy-duty range hoods, which are oh-so-popular in the high-end kitchen remodels. These are even worse than house fans because they can pull exhaust from both your furnace and water heater, all when your house is buttoned up for the winter.

Though it is always warm here, Aruba is cooled by sea breezes constantly. It is much more comfortable here than Houston, and even better than Aspen this time of the year.

Tripp,

Car batteries - I love it! I think we get a minor run here on car batteries and tires, but nothing like you would get in MN.

Funny thing though, battery makers insist that heat is the most damaging to a battery - go figure. Maybe they get damaged by summer heat, but you simply need more power in winter to start cold engines, so you don't notice it until then...

Geothermal is the best advice for people building a house or refitting their HVAC. It takes ~$6,000 extra, but it pays back in ~5 years. My first year with geothermal has been great. Total energy costs are 50% lower per square foot of house. My old house had a high-efficiency furnace, though the windows were old.

You can retrofit houses with geothermal. The geothermal wells only require perhaps a 10' by 30' section of lawn, and they're covered with dirt and invisible once they're installed. The initial cost is the biggest problem. For smaller houses, it's hard to justify an extra $6k for HVAC. Builders of large homes say that the high-flying corporate folks think they'll be transferred to another city before the system pays itself back.

There's no disadvantage to using geothermal, in fact you don't have the noisy outside fan unit that periodically kicks on.

Install bright white roofs and use a lot less electricity. Here are the test results using identical metal roof tiles, except for their color.

Check out http://www.antirad.com/rooftest/

"It is easy to see that there is a 50 degree F (28 C) difference just underneath these almost identical aluminum shingles. The surface coating is the only variable. There is a 7 degree F difference between the shiny aluminum and the white, the white being cooler."

I suggest that the electrical utilities finance energy saving improvements in existing dwellings and workplaces. The payback is the need for less generating capacity, less air pollution, less dependence on oil, gas, and coal, thus, lower their price. The money they make on the efficiency loans will compensate for the loss of income in electrical sales. Not having to build additional generating plants will also help the utilities save money.

In the interim, while you are waiting for the big fix, you can try this.

Covering unused windowpanes with clear, multicellular, insulating foam sheets reduces heat gain (and loss in winter).

Fans help a lot. I like the five inch, 120 Vac powered computer fans that use around 15 Watts and stir up the breeze at my work station. Check out some of the online surplus electronic stores.

Several commenters have mentioned compact flourescent lights. Has anyone tried the new LED lights? They are supposed to be as bright as halogen, but do they get too hot?

Tips to Reduce Cooling Costs:

1) Landscaping – Trees can be effective at lowering the temperature inside houses by blocking the direct sunlight in the summer. If you are counting on the warm sun in the winter months, don't plant evergreen shade trees on the south side of your house, plant deciduous trees instead (trees that drop their leaves in the winter.) Other landscaping ideas include use of trellises and vines, tall shrubs or even pergolas to reduce the amount of sun beating on South and West facing walls.
Prune the lower branches of your tall shade trees so you allow summer breezes to blow through. Some people even plant hedges and fences placed to channel breezes through a house.

2) Turn Off Lighting – Turn off unnecessary lights, especially incandescents and Halogens. Incandescent and Halogen bulbs actually make light by generating heat (these bulbs emit 90% of their energy used as heat; the light they shed is really just a by-product.) Switching to more efficient Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL’s) can help since they emit only around 30% of their energy in heat, making them far cooler (plus they use only 1/3 to ¼ of the electricity as incandescent bulbs!)

3) Appliances – Most energy used by your appliances ends up heating your home. So, on hot days, do chores like washing dishes or running the clothes dryer in the evenings. If you have a stand alone freezer, move it to the basement or garage where it won't heat up the rooms you're in. Don’t use the stove on very hot days or consider using a barbeque to keep cooking heat outside the home.

4) Awnings, Curtains & Blinds – Shutting the curtains or drawing shades/blinds on sun- facing windows will block some of the radiant heat from the sunbeams pouring in those windows. That radiant heat will raise the temperature inside an average house up to 20 degrees Fahrenheit on a hot summer day through unshaded windows. Solar Shade screens are another effective way to shade windows. These fiberglass insect screens have a special weave that blocks sunlight. They can be installed in standard screen frames and must be placed on the outside of the window glass, two sets of screens allow regular insect screens to be switched back in for winter months. Properly installed awnings can reduce solar heat gain by up to 65% on South and West facing windows.

5) Maintaining Your A/C Unit – An air conditioner depends on large amounts of air flow to effectively do its job. Keep landscaping and other equipment far enough away that air flow is not impeded. Outdoor coils should be cleaned every year or so and indoor coils every couple of years. The average home loses 30% of its conditioned air though leaking ducts, correctly sealing duct work can save huge amounts of money on hot days.

6) Energy Efficient Windows – If you have older single pane windows you can realize tremendous savings by installing new energy efficient double pane widows with LoE2 glass. Energy efficient windows act like sunscreen for your house. Energy Star rated windows reduce solar heat gain in your home by up to 50%, reduce overall heating & cooling costs by better insulating against air leakage, block up to 75% of harmful UV rays which cause fading in your carpets & furniture, and increase the re-sale value of your home. Even if you can’t replace all your windows, replacing just the windows that typically are in full sun from 12 pm to 5 pm can make a substantial difference as these windows are responsible for 40% of your home’s solar heat gain on a sunny day.

7) Ceiling Fans – The use of fans can make your home much more comfortable for a fraction of the cost of running air conditioning. Ceiling fans do not directly cool a room, but the “wind chill” effect of moving air can make a room feel as much as 4 degrees cooler. You can reverse the fan motor in winter months to help spread heat throughout your home. Ceiling fans can be used in any size room (choose a fan size that is right for your room dimensions) and work best when their blades are 10 to 12 inches below the ceiling. When buying fans, look for the ENERGY STAR label; fans that earn the label move air 20% more efficiently, on average, than standard models.

8) Whole House Fan – Install a whole house fan to help exhaust hot air from the house. To use a whole house fan effectively: 1) close up the house in the morning when air is cool 2) when the temperature outside your home begins to drop below the temperature indoors, open the windows on the North and East side of your home (where the coolest air will be) 3) turn on the Whole House Fan to blow the hot air from the inside of your home into the attic for venting outdoors (attic venting such as whirlybirds also help keep your home cooler.) 4) cool air will pour in the open windows and lower the interior temperature of your home, making less work for your air conditioner and possibly allowing you to avoid using A/C at all! A whole house fan needs only run for around 10 minutes.

9) Ventilation, Insulation and Air Sealing – Sealing air leaks to stop drafts and insulation can help keep your home cooler. Air leaks can allow conditioned air to escape and reduce the effectiveness of your cooling system. Check around windows and doors and seal leaks with foam, caulk or weather stripping. About 1/3 of the summer heat gain in your home comes via the roof. Attic insulation provides a barrier to keep that heat from entering the living spaces of your home. Lastly, don’t forget about ventilation, a well vented attic keeps heat from building up.

Woof! Late to this party, but I've just got to whine.

This week has been pure Hell and I'm gonna tell you all all about it whether you wanna hear it or not..

Just try cooling your house with a swamp cooler when it's 109 degrees with 52% humidity! Ack! So, it cooled the house down to 90, but -- clammy? Every piece of paper in the house curled up. Every door and drawer stuck.

We finally just turned the damned cooler off, opened windows on the north side, shut all the honeycomb blinds facing south/west, turned on every fan in the house and lay naked on the floor with wet towels covering us.

Sorry for the rant, but my husband (he's from Florida and keeps saying"you call this humid?") is sick of my whining and I gotta talk to someone! -- we live in the desert and our humidity is usually around 15%. (Then, the swamp cooler brings 109 down to 80) I guess everyone in SoCal (even TBogg in San Diego!) is pretty fed up this summer.

What the hell is going on? We haven't even had a decent monsoon rain out of all this misery.

Dry lightning-strike fires - yes. Rain - a spittle.

Thanks for listening! Good night.

PS - Vornado circulating fans are great.

PPS - Putting your shirt in the freezer sounds good.

PPPS - Next year I'm gonna build a separate little sleeping structure similar to a Florida Porch with screens on three sides. Heaven.

Tip to saving money on the AC:

Set it at the lowest temperature that a Trappist monk would condone then don't touch the thermostat or on/off switch. An AC also dehumidifies and much of the heat in your house is stored in the water in the air. Your furniture and walls also store heat. If you try to save money by running the AC only at night, you're simply opting to run the AC continuously at night and that's probably going to wind up costing money. It takes a long time to bring the air in your house to equlibrium.

During the day, run the small exhaust fans in your bathrooms to vamoose the air that accumulates near the ceiling.

Use awnings where possible. Grow shade trees. Particularly on the south side of your building.

The 2003 European heat wave was mentioned above. That ordeal was a "5 standard deviation" event. Interesting. A once in a million year event. We've heard of 100 year floods and have seen more than our share. But a million year heat wave? Bizarre.

I meant to add that a central fan is not the only excellent option. Just a powerful window fan alone can work wonders if properly used. My parents' former house just would not cool off at night even after it cooled off outside, so Dad installed a permanent and powerful window fan in the laundry room window on the southwest side of the house. In the evening we'd open up the bedroom windows on the northeast and southeast sides of the house, put the fan on high, and miraculously cool the air temperature inside by 10 degrees or more in a matter of minutes as cool inside air came in. Of course the fan had

Great job http://snow.utoronto.ca/cgi/wbbb/gen_forum/config.pl?read=37424 snowutoron3

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