Happy dog days of summer, readers!
Heat waves continue and worsen in parts of the world, and temperature records have been breaking all season. Beating the heat is on many people’s minds — including ours. We published Dr. Gulrez Shah Azhar’s suggestions for how to stay cool in the absence of air conditioning – as he did growing up in a part of India where temperatures soared into the 100s. And we asked for your tips and tricks. You send us a heat-relief wave, involving ice, chilled pickles and an Arctic immersion — via TV.
Here’s a sampling of the advice from our very cool audience.
Mother Nature is your friend
William J Carter from Bon Accord, Tobago, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, says: “Great article on how to beat the heat. Geographical location helps tremendously because while I live in the tropics quite close to the Equator (10 degrees north approximately) our nation is a twin island one and there are fairly frequent breezes! (Now that’s not a hack but those fortunate enough to travel can come visit!)
My suggestion would be to seek out bodies of water, lakes, beaches and rivers. The latter are popular places of recreation in some areas of my country.”
Break (out) the ice
Many readers turn to their freezer for a cooling hand.
Tamsin Clarke from Australia writes, “What we’ve done is to take freezer blocks [cold packs like the ones used in a cooler] out of the freezer an hour or two before bedtime, lay towels on the bed and put the freezer blocks on the towels. Cover them with another layer of towels and put your pillows on top. By the time you come to bed, both your bed and pillows are nice and cool.” Make sure you use lots of towels, she advises, “to soak up the condensation that forms on the freezer blocks. Otherwise your bed and pillows will get damp.”
Jennifer Lefevre from Atlanta used a cousin of the technique. “When we were kids living in an unairconditioned house in Naples, Florida, in the ’70s, we used to freeze wet towels and take them to bed with us at night. Sort of the opposite of a hot water bottle for a cold bed.”
Patrick Kenny from Honolulu agrees. “My best trick: Go to sleep with an ice pack under your pillow. Gel ice packs are best. If [you get] hot during the night, swap for a second (or third) one.”
Take a cube and fan it
Marnie Lansdown from Castle Rock, Colo., grew up in Salt Lake City. “During the summer, I often slept on the couch on the first floor. We would buy a block of ice, put it in a cake pan and set it right behind a floor fan. The fan was set to blow right on me, with the idea that having an ice block behind it would make the air a bit colder. Is this a real, scientific thing? I have no idea. But it did — possibly only in my mind — make the air feel cooler.”
“I use blue icepack used in coolers and a small fan,” writes Debra Combelic from Longmont, Colo. “Take a frozen ice pack and stand it upright in a shallow dish (to catch condensation) and put in front of a small fan. The air is cooled as it flows around the ice pack. It lasts long enough to fall asleep — and then some!”
Anand Karipineni from Fremont, Calif., suggests, “Place big trays filled with [cold] water and spread around the room. This water evaporates and keeps the room temperature lower.”
Editor’s P.S. This is called “evaporative cooling” and the U.S. Department of Energy has lots to say about it — and about swamp coolers, which our readers endorse.
Barbara Morrissey from Spokane, Wash., and several others mentioned that it’s possible to create a scaled-down swamp cooler. “I made a very small swamp cooler by hanging cold wet towels on a drying rack behind a box fan so it blows coolness from the towels. into the room. Works very well for a small space, but you need to keep the towels SOAKING WET.” She adds an important note of caution: “Turn off the fan when adding more water to the towels.”
Try it in front of your TV, she suggests. For added coolness, she says, “Then I watch High Arctic Haulers!!”
Creating shade
Barbara Morrissey also took a longer-term heat-combating strategy. “Years ago I planted shade trees all over the place,” she says.
Elizabeth Maland from San Diego also invested in shading “the side of my house that gets direct sunlight.” She says, “I started with roll-out awnings and added black-out blinds to the side of the house that gets the direct sun from sun-up – and gets indirect from noon on.”
She also says she gets up early when it’s hot, “and open up the house with fans to draw in the air from outside when it is at its coolest. Once the sun comes up and it starts to warm up outside, I shut all the windows and doors, leave a fan blowing in each room, pull the curtains and seal in the cool air. The house can stay comfortable into the afternoon.”
Robert Foster from Pensacola, Fla, says his number one hack for staying cool during a recent heat wave was his floor fan. “It blew directly on me all night long in addition to all day long for all 10 days.”
Lettuce use apparel creatively
Dorothy Zerbe from Oshkosh, Wisc., echoes one of the strategies from our earlier story: “Wear a wet scarf around your neck or head. Re-wet as needed.”
Jean Cottel from Eugene, Ore., also uses “an inexpensive neck wrap that gets soaked and stays cool around my neck for hours. Plus, I carry a spray bottle and spray it and my ears regularly. It’s like being a head of lettuce in the produce aisle.”
And speaking of vegetables … Kimberlee Wheeler, a self-described “librarian and heat survivor” in rural Butte County, northern California, proposes: “Eat ice cold pickles. We’ve tried pickle halves, and the juice is also restoring. I think it’s another spin on eating a cucumber with salt, but it truly hits the spot. Apparently baseball players are known for drinking pickle juice here among our local recreation league teams. A cold pickle cools the body.”
(Editor’s note: Our previous article cited the “dissolved electrolytes” in cucumbers, and the author noted: “In India we’ll sprinkle black salt on a cuke, adding to its restorative powers.”
René Lauderback Robinson from Tulsa, Okla., says, “One method I use to keep cool is corn sacks I store in the freezer. I buy deer corn at a big box or sporting goods store, then use it to fill a fabric bag sewn to whatever size suits me – 9 x 13 is good for a small pillow; 3 x 16 or so works well to drape across the back of the neck. The sacks stay cold for a long time, and of course there’s nothing to melt. Because deer corn is not popping corn, the sacks can also be warmed in the microwave for a minute or two and used in place of a heating pad in winter.”
From lap to toe
“While studying, I place a large bottle of frozen water on my lap. As it melts, I drink it. During study breaks I get into a bathtub full of cold water.” says Liz Corbin from N’djamena, Chad. She says a friend of hers “would fill a wash basin with water and ice and keep her feet in it while she studied.”
Lorraine Riddell is also a fan of foot cooling. She lives in Spruce Grove, Alberta, but used to live in Ottawa. “My first summer in Ottawa in the ’70s was in a south-facing apartment with no air conditioning. I used to sit in the living room with my feet in a large pan of cold water. It really helped.”
Vajra Kilgour from West Harem weds those two ideas. If you have an “old-fashioned cast-iron claw-footed bathtub,” he says, “fill the tub with cold water. It’ll keep the tiles in the bathroom cool all day, it’ll make it quick and easy to soak that bandana that will keep your head cool, and you’ll have a nice little wading pool to cool yourself off in.
Kevin Tso from San Jose, Calif., sent several thoughts, including tips on meal prep in hot weather. “Use the microwave oven to cook if possible,” he says. Or “after cooking on a stove, turn off the stove and put a pot with a small amount of tap water on the burner. When the water heats up from the residual heat, pour the water down the drain. This will remove some of the heat from the burner that would otherwise heat up the house.”
Let’s hear it for wet hair
Daniel Fleisher from Baltimore praises the bath. “If you don’t have power at all,” he writes, “Your best bet is to draw a bath of cold water and immerse yourself as long as possible. When you get out, leave your hair as wet as is practical. Hair is a gigantic evaporative wick.”
