Dutch people.
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@0xabad1dea I'm from America... wtf is happening over there??
@CrissCrossCannibal it's getting into the 90s with high humidity, which for Dutch people feels like getting into the 110s with high humidity would feel to people from warmer American states.
The weather here is very mild and every time it gets Actually Hot or Actually Cold people start keeling over because they don't know how to take proactive care
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@0xabad1dea Unless your house is equally hot as outside (RIP) it's probably better to keep windows closed during the day.
@Newde @0xabad1dea
26° yesterday evening after an hour with the windows closed when it finally got cold enough to go for a walk23° today at noon with doors and windows open and 27° outside.
With the windows open, inside is like any other shadow. Windows closed is like a greenhouse.
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@Newde a Dutch house with closed windows in a heat wave is going to be SIGNIFICANTLY hotter than outside.
(assuming you don't have AC running, which most won't.)
@0xabad1dea @Newde living in the UK, brick houses… it's like a pizza oven if you don't pay attention.
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@0xabad1dea I am in the US in my 50s and I have finally absorbed and accepted this just this year.
If I open my curtains I also open my windows so I’m not exactly in a greenhouse, but I’ve finally figured out that leaving the curtains and windows closed during the day keeps my apartment cooler. Also, a fan in the window that is blowing in is dumb but I used to do that a lot too. I had a mom who was obsessed with fresh air and I think that’s how I got stuck on this.
My electric usage is much better this year than it was last year at the same time. The bill is higher because our electric company sucks, but I am using less which is still a win for me.
@maggiejk @0xabad1dea It's not dumb if you have two fans on each end of your house and you take care to put them both in the sense the wind is naturally trying to blow.
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Dutch people. Peoples of the North, who lack a strong cultural awareness of how to handle heat waves. Please heed my words
1) Pull all the curtains closed. Reflect sunlight away from the windows. Tape up a bedsheet or something if you don't have curtains or blinds (not that rare in the Netherlands)
2) Open windows on opposite walls of the house, prop open the interior doors with something heavy, get a cross-breeze going. (Yes, the curtains may get flappy. I tucked the end of a long one under my bed mattress to mitigate this)
3) Take a quick shower with water that is only slightly warmed (neither ice cold nor steaming hot). Do this two, three, four times a day if you have to.
4) Similarly, drinking water that is ice cold may sound good but it's liable to give you stomach cramps when you're very hot. Your drinking water shouldn't be more than slightly cool.
@0xabad1dea "2) Open windows on opposite walls of the house, prop open the interior doors with something heavy, get a cross-breeze going. (Yes, the curtains may get flappy. I tucked the end of a long one under my bed mattress to mitigate this)"
This may be true for an open-plan house, but I disagree if you have multiple rooms and corridors... Better then to isolate the rooms getting heat by closing the doors to them! After ventilating the whole house in the early hours, we close all the doors and windows during the day and stay in the cooler rooms. E.g. our living room is currently 10 deg C cooler than the outside air tempertaure so no way opening any windows will help there... but our kitchen is easily 5+ deg C warmer than the living room towards evening and leaving that door open makes everywhere feel hot.
Then overnight, when the outside air cools off, we can open everything up and ventilate.
Mind you, I say this sitting in the upstairs office which is 33 deg C - because that's where the monitors are. Mini fan to the rescue...
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y'all I know that if you have AC (most houses here don't) then obviously the windows should stay closed, or if you have good insulation (lol, whoever rated our apartment was clearly doing some creative math to avoid falling beneath the current legal minimum) that not opening the windows might work out better, assuming you did close the curtains.
But right now Northern Europe is full of people sitting in greenhouse ovens who tell themselves that opening the windows would be counter-productive because outside is where the heat is
I have spent most of my life in places with hot, humid summers like we're having in NL right now and I know what to do when there's no AC. I'm cool and comfortable at the moment in a house with no AC and poor insulation because I'm very proactive about getting the curtains closed and windows open early in the morning before sun hitting glass starts to heat up the house.@0xabad1dea I put rescue blankets, those thin silver/golden ones, on my windows from the outside, that keeps the heat better outside than curtains and it doesn't block the light completely.
Edit: English term is space blanket apparently
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Dutch people. Peoples of the North, who lack a strong cultural awareness of how to handle heat waves. Please heed my words
1) Pull all the curtains closed. Reflect sunlight away from the windows. Tape up a bedsheet or something if you don't have curtains or blinds (not that rare in the Netherlands)
2) Open windows on opposite walls of the house, prop open the interior doors with something heavy, get a cross-breeze going. (Yes, the curtains may get flappy. I tucked the end of a long one under my bed mattress to mitigate this)
3) Take a quick shower with water that is only slightly warmed (neither ice cold nor steaming hot). Do this two, three, four times a day if you have to.
4) Similarly, drinking water that is ice cold may sound good but it's liable to give you stomach cramps when you're very hot. Your drinking water shouldn't be more than slightly cool.
At night, after a day of hot weather in New England, my dad would put box fans blowing out of two upstairs windows and then open only one or two windows downstairs. Between the natural buoyancy of warm air and the suction from the fans, he would send all the hot air out and suck cooler night-time air in. This only works if it gets cooler outside, of course.
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Dutch people. Peoples of the North, who lack a strong cultural awareness of how to handle heat waves. Please heed my words
1) Pull all the curtains closed. Reflect sunlight away from the windows. Tape up a bedsheet or something if you don't have curtains or blinds (not that rare in the Netherlands)
2) Open windows on opposite walls of the house, prop open the interior doors with something heavy, get a cross-breeze going. (Yes, the curtains may get flappy. I tucked the end of a long one under my bed mattress to mitigate this)
3) Take a quick shower with water that is only slightly warmed (neither ice cold nor steaming hot). Do this two, three, four times a day if you have to.
4) Similarly, drinking water that is ice cold may sound good but it's liable to give you stomach cramps when you're very hot. Your drinking water shouldn't be more than slightly cool.
@0xabad1dea i do those things already open Doors early morning close Windows put tree in front of the home nut realy hot today again.
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@0xabad1dea and exterior window coverings are also essential (can't highlight it enough, it has to be stuck on the outside, be it with tape or more permanent solutions - or you risk creating a greenhouse effect -, using something like kids' drawing paper, the one that comes in big rolls, it works as shading, if you don't have it, something else, the more opaque the better, like packing cardboard, can be used). It does wonders on the outside of the windows, preferably with a small air gap in between to manage higher outside temperatures, stopping sunlight from coming directly into contact with the windows' glass, reducing the temperatures drastically (I live in southwestern Europe and most windows have external roller shades because of it, some of those shades are even insulated themselves to protect the windows behind them).
Alternatively, a living trellis (it's not just a skill on Elder Scrolls games eheh) right in front of the windows reduces temperatures and gives some good shade.@jt_rebelo @0xabad1dea Those silver/gold rescue blankets taped onto the window from the outside working very good and don't block the light completely.
But they block the heat radiation. Wikipedia says the silver side blocks 99% IR radiation, the gold side 97%. -
@zwils @0xabad1dea Or partly fill the sink and put your firearms in flat.
@barnesmaurice @zwils @0xabad1dea Or your forearms, even.
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@0xabad1dea FWIW, we've had some success in keeping a room cooler with reflective window film, like sold for cars. The temporary alternative is just to tape up some kitchen foil to keep the direct sun heat from getting in.
The reflective film was good enough to stay even after getting a portable AC, because we like our bedroom cool for sleeping and it has sunlight on windows from 04-12 during most of the year.
@maswan @0xabad1dea Does the foil reflect IR as well? Reflecting the visible light helps, but anything the foil absorbs will end up as heat inside (if the foil is on the inside).
The problem with glass is that it lets through the IR from the sun, but blocks the IR from the room, trapping the heat inside, so if there is any way of blocking the sun outside the window, that's really good.
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@maswan @0xabad1dea Does the foil reflect IR as well? Reflecting the visible light helps, but anything the foil absorbs will end up as heat inside (if the foil is on the inside).
The problem with glass is that it lets through the IR from the sun, but blocks the IR from the room, trapping the heat inside, so if there is any way of blocking the sun outside the window, that's really good.
@ahltorp Yup. It has a much better reflection/absorption ratio than curtains or room. The room is noticeably cooler with it on than before.
The aluminum foil is probably technically better, since that is a good reflector over the entire spectrum, but it kind looks shitty and maybe you don't want permanent blackout "curtains" either.
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Dutch people. Peoples of the North, who lack a strong cultural awareness of how to handle heat waves. Please heed my words
1) Pull all the curtains closed. Reflect sunlight away from the windows. Tape up a bedsheet or something if you don't have curtains or blinds (not that rare in the Netherlands)
2) Open windows on opposite walls of the house, prop open the interior doors with something heavy, get a cross-breeze going. (Yes, the curtains may get flappy. I tucked the end of a long one under my bed mattress to mitigate this)
3) Take a quick shower with water that is only slightly warmed (neither ice cold nor steaming hot). Do this two, three, four times a day if you have to.
4) Similarly, drinking water that is ice cold may sound good but it's liable to give you stomach cramps when you're very hot. Your drinking water shouldn't be more than slightly cool.
@0xabad1dea
3.a) when there's no AC, i find it helps to wear a light stretchy dress shirt when taking a cool shower, and then keep wearing it after the shower, because it'll hold a lot more water against the skin (so more heat can escape by evaporation).would i leave the house looking like that? ideally, no.
but does it reduce the chance of heat stroke? possibly!
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Dutch people. Peoples of the North, who lack a strong cultural awareness of how to handle heat waves. Please heed my words
1) Pull all the curtains closed. Reflect sunlight away from the windows. Tape up a bedsheet or something if you don't have curtains or blinds (not that rare in the Netherlands)
2) Open windows on opposite walls of the house, prop open the interior doors with something heavy, get a cross-breeze going. (Yes, the curtains may get flappy. I tucked the end of a long one under my bed mattress to mitigate this)
3) Take a quick shower with water that is only slightly warmed (neither ice cold nor steaming hot). Do this two, three, four times a day if you have to.
4) Similarly, drinking water that is ice cold may sound good but it's liable to give you stomach cramps when you're very hot. Your drinking water shouldn't be more than slightly cool.
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Dutch people. Peoples of the North, who lack a strong cultural awareness of how to handle heat waves. Please heed my words
1) Pull all the curtains closed. Reflect sunlight away from the windows. Tape up a bedsheet or something if you don't have curtains or blinds (not that rare in the Netherlands)
2) Open windows on opposite walls of the house, prop open the interior doors with something heavy, get a cross-breeze going. (Yes, the curtains may get flappy. I tucked the end of a long one under my bed mattress to mitigate this)
3) Take a quick shower with water that is only slightly warmed (neither ice cold nor steaming hot). Do this two, three, four times a day if you have to.
4) Similarly, drinking water that is ice cold may sound good but it's liable to give you stomach cramps when you're very hot. Your drinking water shouldn't be more than slightly cool.
@0xabad1dea 5) organize an ecoterrorist group to stop every coal plant and datacenter you can reach -
y'all I know that if you have AC (most houses here don't) then obviously the windows should stay closed, or if you have good insulation (lol, whoever rated our apartment was clearly doing some creative math to avoid falling beneath the current legal minimum) that not opening the windows might work out better, assuming you did close the curtains.
But right now Northern Europe is full of people sitting in greenhouse ovens who tell themselves that opening the windows would be counter-productive because outside is where the heat is
I have spent most of my life in places with hot, humid summers like we're having in NL right now and I know what to do when there's no AC. I'm cool and comfortable at the moment in a house with no AC and poor insulation because I'm very proactive about getting the curtains closed and windows open early in the morning before sun hitting glass starts to heat up the house.@0xabad1dea for me it's that time of the year to leave all non-bedroom and non-East facing windows open during the night* because the low of the day is before I get up to close. I'm only closing them once the breeze stops or the breeze is hot.
Edit: during the night.
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@jt_rebelo @0xabad1dea Those silver/gold rescue blankets taped onto the window from the outside working very good and don't block the light completely.
But they block the heat radiation. Wikipedia says the silver side blocks 99% IR radiation, the gold side 97%.@CyberPunker but they heat up like crazy, so if they are in contact with the windows the glass might super-heat and even break. That is why I talked about leaving an air gap between whatever anyone might use to cover their windows and the windows themselves.
@0xabad1dea -
y'all I know that if you have AC (most houses here don't) then obviously the windows should stay closed, or if you have good insulation (lol, whoever rated our apartment was clearly doing some creative math to avoid falling beneath the current legal minimum) that not opening the windows might work out better, assuming you did close the curtains.
But right now Northern Europe is full of people sitting in greenhouse ovens who tell themselves that opening the windows would be counter-productive because outside is where the heat is
I have spent most of my life in places with hot, humid summers like we're having in NL right now and I know what to do when there's no AC. I'm cool and comfortable at the moment in a house with no AC and poor insulation because I'm very proactive about getting the curtains closed and windows open early in the morning before sun hitting glass starts to heat up the house.@0xabad1dea
Well, here in Austria all newspapers remind people to keep darkening thicker curtains and roller blinds etc. closed during the day and to aerate their rooms only during the colder night hours.
Not that nights are much colder in the city anyways though
What they forget to recommend is to stick mirror foil to the window-glass (helps a lot!) and to cover your windows outside with stuff like thin thermal blankets during very hot days (using velcro tape for removability is ideal). -
Dutch people. Peoples of the North, who lack a strong cultural awareness of how to handle heat waves. Please heed my words
1) Pull all the curtains closed. Reflect sunlight away from the windows. Tape up a bedsheet or something if you don't have curtains or blinds (not that rare in the Netherlands)
2) Open windows on opposite walls of the house, prop open the interior doors with something heavy, get a cross-breeze going. (Yes, the curtains may get flappy. I tucked the end of a long one under my bed mattress to mitigate this)
3) Take a quick shower with water that is only slightly warmed (neither ice cold nor steaming hot). Do this two, three, four times a day if you have to.
4) Similarly, drinking water that is ice cold may sound good but it's liable to give you stomach cramps when you're very hot. Your drinking water shouldn't be more than slightly cool.
@0xabad1dea As my late husband was Italian, I learned all this in Italy but being English born I'd add, have a cup of tea, it may be counter intuitive but it does cool you.
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Dutch people. Peoples of the North, who lack a strong cultural awareness of how to handle heat waves. Please heed my words
1) Pull all the curtains closed. Reflect sunlight away from the windows. Tape up a bedsheet or something if you don't have curtains or blinds (not that rare in the Netherlands)
2) Open windows on opposite walls of the house, prop open the interior doors with something heavy, get a cross-breeze going. (Yes, the curtains may get flappy. I tucked the end of a long one under my bed mattress to mitigate this)
3) Take a quick shower with water that is only slightly warmed (neither ice cold nor steaming hot). Do this two, three, four times a day if you have to.
4) Similarly, drinking water that is ice cold may sound good but it's liable to give you stomach cramps when you're very hot. Your drinking water shouldn't be more than slightly cool.
@0xabad1dea Excellent advice! I do all of those things (and drink room temperature water). I would also add drinking hibiscus tea or other non-caffeinated beverages as well.
