Adjusting to the heat

Like most people, I make adjustments to my schedule during periods of higher heat.  Last night I found myself deciding to unload hay from my truck well after dark.  

With some areas of the country really getting hit hard, I wonder what adjustments others make?

We've been edging closer to a flat-out drought on the northern Plains (USA).  Add the unusually warm June to the mix and we've been adopting more of the 'siesta' approach to mid-day.  With the lack of rain, garden watering starts at about 9 pm and ends at 10, about the time my wife is done feeding animals and we finally sit down briefly to feed ourselves.  Weeding is an early morning affair, before the sun gains its strength for the day. The only silver lining of the drought is the reduced bug load.....biting flies and mosquitoes are starkly reduced making chores and the pressure on the animals that much lighter.  Still employed part time in retirement,  I'm grateful for the A/C of the facility when in at work during peak heat periods.

Drinking LOTS of water.....

I have installed 2 mini splits one for myself and one for a friend.    

I have found the Midea "U" mini split 10,000 BTU I am running off solar,  is working awesome for me,  it draws at max 450 watts.      It is the main reason I am now off the electric grid.

I work outside only in the morning and evening.

I often freeze fruit and make milk shakes to help with the heavy heat of the day....

Other tricks if you don't have AC is to wet your clothes down and put a fan on you to keep cool.

I have started putting cover over my transplants until they get fully rooted before removing the cover as they take the stress of the transplanting much better.

A trick from years ago was to put clothes in a plastic bag in the refrigerator so they will cool you when you are hot.  The problem is I try not to open the fridge during the hot part of the day.

Instead of cooking meals that will heat up the house, try having sandwiches, especially at dinner time since that is the peak overload on the electric Co.

Keep blinds and drapes closed.

Drink lots of water with ice.

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Hi Anne,

I never encountered the clothes in the fridge approach before. It makes sense.

I have a small (really too small, but not much space for something bigger) table beside the front door, so if I need to cook something that will take long, I use an electric fry-pan, or my instant pot outside. Nowhere near as good as a summer kitchen, but under normal circumstances, our weather doesn't justify one. When I cooked noodles the other day, I cooked enough for 3 meals. Spaghetti the first night, stir-fried veg the second. It was a bit weird to put stir-fry with spaghetti noodles, but soaked in a little soya sauce, they tasted just fine.

This is solar cooker season for me! In NM I had a good one, that didn't move (too unwieldy) I'm currently using a quick metal cone type. Anything you can do in a crock pot, you can do in a solar, plus other things, but that's a good start for solar recipes. Keeps the kitchen MUCH cooler!

Love the idea of chilled clothes! Kind of the opposite of putting on clothes straight from the dryer. Makes a lot of sense.

I start my outside work pre-dawn, and move to indoor tasks when it gets hot.

Broad sun hats, hand fans, and good air flow on my clothes helps me a lot. More that I wrote on the subject is here: Clothing suggestions for hot humid sunny weather outdoor work

A weird one: All tropical countries tend to use a lot of hot spices in their food, the natural healing folks use cayenne pepper to thin blood that's too thick. DO NOT do this if you are on a blood thinner or have any health issues it may affect! But for the rest of us, starting in spring, eat hot spices and peppers, makes the summer feel cooler as your body can circulate the heat out easier with blood that flows easily. Stopping it in fall keeps you from freezing in the winter, from the same effect.  

Stay cool, y'all!
:D

i’m a fan of nighttime work, especially when the moon is fairly full.

Hi Pearl,

Thanks for the comment on the solar oven.  Mine is still put away. We had so much rain earlier in the year that I forgot to drag it out.

Good grief.  We adjusted to the heat by moving to a part of the world where it almost never gets as hot as 30C.  We're expecting to be above 40C today with a "feels like" in the 50C's (over 122F).  

What we are doing is to make sure we have lots of variety of liquids and a bottle of mineral water for each person in each room to make sure it's easy to drink.  I made a big bottle of ice tea.  We have sports drink to hand if we stop sweating.  Taking care of the human is the first priority.  

Next is the animals.  We fill up their water a few times a day.  Everyone has shade, food, and water.  We're also preparing for power failures as the system is unuse to this much demand in the warm part of the year.  Before the heatwave, over 10% of the population owned some sort of air conditioning system.  It's now about 30% of the households and would be more if they hadn't run out in the shops.  

From there, we make a list of "must-do" and "should do" and "would like to do".  We are doing the Must-do first.  

Thankfully there is no appetite for solid foods when it's this hot, so no need to cook.  Although I have a strong bacon craving and am trying to figure out if I put the fry pan in the car and the bacon in the pan, would it cook enough?  Or burn?  

We have sports drink to hand if we stop sweating.

R, Have you ever tried "switchel"? It was the old-timers' electrolyte drink.

Here's a link to the recipe I use: How to Make Ginger Switchel Sometimes I add just a wee pinch of sea salt for the sodium.

I don't generally buy sports drinks, because many of them (here in the USA) contain bromides and artificial colors.

I have to cover my potatoes and even pumpkin plants with cloth and cardboard today. My pumpkin plants look really sad even at 10 am and I just watered them at 6:30 am. Today is the recording breaking day with 112F. The last record was 109F. It was 103F yesterday and my potatoes are starting to turn a bit yellow. I don't want to harvest them before July here in zone 8. The climate is not just turning hotter and dryer, but much more unpredictable. Say we had no rain and over 92F in April so all my butterhead lettuce started to bolt in April. We had not much rain in February and very very little snow this winter. Then it became cloudy for like 2 weeks with shower even in May and June when I just planted out my tomatoes. Many trees are dying here in the PNW. A couple of branches of one of the Douglas Fir tree in my neighbor's property just fell down for no obvious reason in June. I strongly believe the PNW will turn into a gigantic desert like the Sahara in less than 20 to 30 years if they continue to practice large scale industrial chemical farmings. Let's call it Amerihara. LOL

I have a lot of trouble adjusting to the heat. I think I melted myself too many times working at a wilderness summer camp and my internal alarm bells go off sooner. Plus, it seems the transition time from spring to summer heat happens so fast here in recent years it has gotten more difficult for me still. It's easy to forget bodies need time to adjust to working in the heat. I tend to forget and expect myself to be at full capacity, so I really have to slow down and manage my expectations til I get some degree of acclimation. Doing work either early in the morning or in the evening is what works best for me.
We moved our stove outside and have been finding meals we can make in quantity and just pull from the fridge to eat cold or at room temperature. We were really hoping that move would allow us to avoid using an air conditioner this year, but we had to get a window one since our cat has asthma and heat is dangerous for her. It is definitely making me think what trees or maybe vines I could plant south and west of the house to get some more shade in the future.
Cold infusions of things like mint and basil help with the hydration. If it really gets hot, my go to drink to stay hydrated is blended up watermelon, lime juice, a bit of salt and maybe basil or mint. I bet cucumber would work in place of the watermelon. Keeping a spray bottle of water in the fridge helps if I start to overheat. I can mist myself and cool off much more quickly.
Hope everyone is staying safe in the heat and cool as possible!

Stacie Kim wrote:

We have sports drink to hand if we stop sweating.

R, Have you ever tried "switchel"? It was the old-timers' electrolyte drink.

Here's a link to the recipe I use: How to Make Ginger Switchel Sometimes I add just a wee pinch of sea salt for the sodium.

I don't generally buy sports drinks, because many of them (here in the USA) contain bromides and artificial colors.

I agree.  Switchel is great for prevention.  
We use the sports drink for when things get too far.  Like a, "let's try this before going to the hospital".  It's good for that kind of situation.  It also works wonders for some livestock when they are dehydrated.  

I'm up at 5:00 this time of year, work outside for about 4 hours, then in for the day. It's 113 here today, not typical, but summer's here are hot. We open up the house at night and run a swamp cooler and close up in the morning. We try not to move much during the day, once I overheat, I'm done for. I like to siesta but sleeping has never come easy for me. I try to at least lie down and rest for a couple hours. Honestly, it's the boredom that gets me. I'm a very active person but I just can't do heat. I'm trying to spend the time planning and reading but I still get antsy.

Stacy Witscher wrote: I'm trying to spend the time planning and reading but I still get antsy.

Sewing! I had a pair of shorts in my drawer that were given to me. They fit, but the lower pockets were at a ridiculously awkward angle. So I sat down today and unpicked the first, straightened it and shifted it a little towards the front, pinned it and machine sewed it. Clear improvement, so I sat back down and did the same to the second. I'll post pictures under my "Pockets" thread.
There are other things I theoretically could work on indoors, but most require use of saws/drills that aren't indoors and I just don't want to go out there!

Doing a lot of clothing mending here too.  Replacing buttons,  adding patches,  Replacing elastic...

Small bits of work,  but complex enough to prevent  boredom

I did my pile of sewing work already. There are few things that I'd like to attach snaps to, but I need to go buy them. I like to crochet, but I don't want a blanket on me right now. Maybe I'll do some small pieces like hats and scarves. I've already done all of my filing, sorting through piles etc. Next I'm going to update some recipes. I'm trying, it's just not the same as being in my garden.

One of the joys of living rural when dealing with intense heat is testing out new 'breathable' fashions with only the birds and the bees as critics (not that they have nothing to say! :-) ).  The go-to apparel in this weather is an extra large-tall cotton tee shirt with or without the benefit of boxer shorts.  Slip on garden clogs pull the whole ensemble together.   But the most recent pair of boxers was ..... well ...... 'binding' in a manner that caused frequent discomfort.  By removing the crotch portion with a scissors and mending the frayed ends, it became more like a blue-checkered mini-skirt, the likes of which I won't be modeling any time soon.   Still, the relief at not being visited by local law enforcement for such attire is worth the remote location and weekly drive to town.

I am up at 4:00 am today.  Trying to beat the heat.

I go to Goodwill each spring and buy long sleeve shirts to use similarly to above. Criteria, must be all white, all cotton and at least two sizes too big. Although I also live very secluded I leave my boxers intact. The shirts never come in the house, I just leave them on the garden fence to be laundered by the sun and rain, assuming it does rain. A lightweight  wide brim hat completes the outfit. If necessity calls for work in the afternoon it is punctuated with cold showers from the garden hose, I really want to figure a way to catch that water to use later. Maybe I'll just get one of those plastic kiddie pools next time I see on at a yard sale.  

Bulk of outside work however generally starts pre-dawn and winds down if possible, by 11 AM. Lunch is followed by a nap inside or in the shade.  Drink lots of water too of course.

We broke down a few years ago and got little window air conditioner for the upstairs. The downstairs is largely underground and that one little air conditioner seems to cool or at least dehumidify the whole house.  All south and west windows are covered with outside curtains of that "coolaroo" shade cloth, I find it is better to stop the solar gain outside rather than to trap it between the window and an inside shade.

Couple years ago we got a 750 gallon stock tank to use as a cool tub. I'm right now considering using that aluminum bubble wrap to make a floating cover to stop solar heating during the day and removing it at night for radiative cooling.

When it's really hot and I'm working outside one of my techniques is to use a garden hose that has sat in the sun for a few minutes to lightly spray my long sleeve white cotton t-shirt. Might need to repeat after an hour or sooner.

Another brutal day, high of 116. But my house is 84 without ac, not too shabby. I’m losing plants and the pool is like a hot tub. Hopefully it lets up soon.

I live at a little elevation so it is noticeably cooler here on the mountain rather than down in the valley, something like 8-10 degrees cooler. But still it has been in the upper 90's Fahrenheit here and the weather people say the heat index is over a hundred most days. Tonight it looks like rain so hopefully it will cool off a bit.

I designed and built my house to draw air, we have ceiling fans but no AC. It still stays below 80F, and most of the time it is somewhere around 70F.

Right now I am building a house, in an open area, in the sun. I wear cotton clothing, and a light cotton wide brimmed hat, I sweat buckets but I am acclimated to working 10+ hours in near 100F Degree heat. I do consume gallons of water, but the sweat I produce is like AC in a light breeze.

I have had a theory for several years. If you'll notice, our body hair and sweat combines to become an evaporative cooling system similar to a swamp cooler. I have noticed that I stay cooler with a beard than when I was clean shaved.  Most of the places on the human body that have concentrations of hair also have major blood vessels beneath the surface.

Just a theory.

I find I adapt pretty quickly if I just let myself be miserably hot, which is kind of unavoidable with no ac and a house with more windows than wall.  It was 40° on Saturday and it was gross. On Sunday I was thinking, "Hmm I think it's a little cooler today." But when I checked the thermometer, it was 43°.  Today, 42° and it didn't feel that bad.  

I sweat a tonne and drink about 8 litres of water in a day. Normally I don't salt any of my food, but when I'm working in heat like this I'll have a bit of salt and make sure I'm spreading my potassium out through the day too. This time of year, cherries are a good thing to snack on. I can usually work until 1:30 or so, then just hang out in the shade or take the dogs to the river. Temperature peaks at about 3:30 and by 6 or 7 o'clock I can get a bit more work in before calling it a day.

Another thing I noticed first while living in a much drier climate than I was used to, was that just drinking water wasn't keeping me hydrated. I started eating a bowl of cucumbers for breakfast every morning and that made a big difference. I found out later "gel water," found in melons, cucumbers, and lots of other foods is absorbed by your body much better than just straight water. So I'll eat lots of juicy fruit and veg on hot days, in addition to drinking lots.

Try taking mega vitamin D3 and electrolytes before getting overheated. I tried it and felt much more comfortable in the heat and sweated less. I had heat stroke in the past 3 times so I had a hard time tolerating summer heat over 100° F. after that. Now I tolerate the heat much better after taking the supplements

Anne Miller wrote:A trick from years ago was to put clothes in a plastic bag in the refrigerator so they will cool you when you are hot.  The problem is I try not to open the fridge during the hot part of the day.

Instead of cooking meals that will heat up the house, try having sandwiches, especially at dinner time since that is the peak overload on the electric Co.

Keep blinds and drapes closed.

Drink lots of water with ice.

When I was a police officer near Las Vegas I would take my lunch break at home and as soon as I walk into the house I took off my vest and put it in the freezer.  After 45 minutes it was rather chilly and made the next hour a bit more tolerable.  I would also keep a cooler in the patrol car with the 3"x5" gel ice packs and rotate them into the front of my vest over my breastbone to help cool my body during the heat of the day.  Even in 115* degree days they would stay cool almost an hour.  A dozen would last the last half of my day and my extra bottle of water (partially frozen to start the day) would stay colder longer.  Clothes in the fridge is a good way to refresh yourself after your lunch break.

Lunch in the summer was usually a cobb salad (if I ate at a restaurant) or a cold sandwich at home.  The more ice water you can drink the cooler your body will be, and having to urinate multiple times a day also expels heat from the body.

Now, with my home in the high desert, on cool nights I open the windows to cool the house off and when I wake up at 6am I close the windows and go back to bed, allowing the cool air to stay in the house.  I also open the garage doors an inch or so overnight on cool evenings to cool off the attached garage, it makes a big difference and keeps the garage a comfortable temperature until about mid-afternoon.

Here in the desert I have a couple pop-up sprinkler heads piped up to the top of a couple trees in the yard.  One in back in an area where we sit and relax, another over the chicken run.  During the heat of the day I will sprinkle the chicken area until the ground is wet and the wet trees and wet ground not only cool the area they attract insects for the birds to eat, free protein.  In the late afternoon if we plan to sit outside in the evening I will water the back yard and the cool ground and wet trees will cool off the backyard at least 10* and make it comfortable.  The plus side to this (as if it wasn't a plus all by itself) is that when a wild fire was approaching the neighborhood last year I immediately connected the hose to each sprinkler and let them run all afternoon to completely wet all the trees and bushes to greatly reduce the risk of fire.  Both areas are the closest trees to the house so knowing they were all cool and wet was very comforting as my roof and siding are metal and preventing fire near the house will limit the risk of heat starting the framing on fire.

When I work outside in the summer I have a wool hat, similar to a cowboy hat, and on hot days I will soak iit with water to keep my head, and my body, cooler.  Yes, it smells a bit like a wet dog when it is when but after a bit I no longer notice the smell and when the day is done i don't smell like a wet dog, usually I just smell sweaty and dirty and I always take a shower after working so it really doesn't matter.

Finally, if you are in a dry climate, I have a window swamp cooler (evaporative cooler) that I no longer use in the window and is now mounted in a garden type wagon.  I can roll it wherever I am working, connect a hose and an extension cord, and have cool air blowing in my direction.  It works great in the garage too, even with the doors closed because the desert air is so dry it take about 4 hours to fill the garage with enough moisture to finally feel a bit humid.  Humidity is a good thing in the desert.

I don't know if this has been mentioned somewhere, if a person gets to feeling bad as if they might have heat stroke, get them into a bathtub full of cool water and maybe even have a fan or two running in the room.

This might be good even if you are just plain hot.

Health authorities have long suggested that water at room temperature is best for anyone. Just trying to help.

Sometimes when it's really hot I take my shirt off and lay with my bare back against the concrete floor in our unfinished basement.  Floor is hard, but cool.  I can almost feel the heat being drawn right out of me.