108 degrees today!

[timtheboatguy]

The temp hit 108 today in Missouri and the forcast calls for tripple didgets for the next several days. Installed a forward bimini on a pontoon and modified the cover to fit with the new top, I was wiped out. Can't wait to get back out there tomorro!  8)

[Mike]

At least tou wernt installing a enclosure   Burning up inside  tim
Whaton the advenda for tomorow.
Not that hot here at all ive got to make a cockpit cover ill be in the ac and cut some plywood.for some  os xbairs.  But i eont. Be baking. 

[bobbin]

That's not just hot, that can be dangerous.  I was in the south and they were stessing the importance of drinking enough water, exercising in the coolest hours, and using care when out in it.  Wowza!

[Grebo]

Tell me about it.  :(
Recorded temp was 40'C yesterday, so in the sun ???? Humidity was 84% last night with 29 / 30'C   :'(
You can't possibly drink enough to keep up with the sweating.
Nasty time to be working outside.

Suzi

[sofadoc]

I was in the south and they were stessing the importance of drinking enough water, exercising in the coolest hours, and using care when out in it.

Until I was about 12 years old, we had no A/C.
At night, I would arrange 6 box fans in a circle on the floor, all plugged in to one extension cord, which practically glowed (these weren't those cheap plastic piece o' crap Wally World fans). Then I would soak a bed sheet in cold water, wrap it around me, and lay on the floor between the box fans. Looking back, I realize that the wet bodywrap surrounded by an overloaded extension cord was a recipie for disaster.
Some say that if you grow up in hot weather, you get used to it. I never got used to it.
If I could pick Texas up and move it some place cooler I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Last year, on a Carribbean cruise, they kept warning us about the intense heat at ports such as Cozumel. It isn't any hotter there than it is in Texas, it's just hotter year-round.
     

[mike802]

Last week it got up to the mid to high 90's here, granted nothing like 108, but it went up from the 50's over night.  It really wiped me out.

[bobbin]

Sofa., when I lived in VA I noticed that older homes all had porches that ran all around the home.  They were two storey affairs with a big overhang on the rooves.  Several of them had trellises that supported vines (Aristolochia durior, aka"Dutchman's Pipe).  Most of those older homes were ringed with tall, overarching shade trees, too. 

I worked with two lovely older women who grew up well before the advent of AC.  They told me that style of porch was called a "sleeping porch" and they would hang wet sheets from the ceilings near the railings and they'd sleep outside the house on the second storey of the porch.  In the morning, they'd take them down, close the windows, draw the draperies or close the inside shutters, and capture the cool inside the house.  I was impressed with the practicality of such a simple solution.  But they assured me it was still pretty hot!

We do not have AC (but I have considered it for my shop).  I added awnings to the south side windows of our home in 1994-5 and was surprised that they can drop the interior temperature by nearly 10 degrees.  The addition of the deck canopy on the west side of the house improved interior comfort on the days that are oppressive here (90+).  I think the simple low-tech. solutions are being lost.  Not that I think AC is bad, but if you can use the low-tech stuff to improve comfort for several weeks the overall cost of AC will be cut dramatically.  I do know that the use of awnings can cut an AC bill by as much as 30%. That "ain't chicken feed" these days!

[byhammerandhand]

Don't like awnings so I planted trees.

I am a big fan of whole-house attic fans.  Put one in both current and prior homes.   I turn them on in the evening to exhaust the attic and draw cool air into the house during the night, then shut it off when cool or in the morning.   the other day it was 63 at night and 90+ during the day.   I chilled down the house at night, closed the windows and it never got above 75 all day long, with no A/C on.  I would highly recommend for a shop or home.   If your shop is away from home, you can always run it on a timer.

In the desert SW, they have what they call "Swamp Coolers"   I was in Juarez for a week when it was 115+ and it kept the sleeping quarters somewhat comfortable.

[bobbin]

"Don't like awnings"???  Heresy, I say!  Awnings say, "summertime" to me.  Funny how things like that say different things to different people, huh?

You have the glass that reflects sunlight, I hope...

I have often wondered about whole house fans, Hammer..  We don't have one and the husband has mentioned it but we've never really "moved on it".  Good to read your experience with it. 

[sofadoc]

Awnings, attic fans, and swamp coolers are all just "pretty playthings" in Texas.
They work OK.....as long as you have a big ass ozone-depleting A/C unit cranking with them.

The oldest, tiredest, most overused phrase is "It's not the heat, it's the humidity".
While that phrase may be run into the ground, the bottom line is....it's true.
Awnings and attic fans do nothing to reduce humidity, and swamp coolers actually RAISE it.

Around here, I've observed that any energy savings realized by awnings is quickly offset by the cost to install, and repair them every year or 2.

[bobbin]

Is that comment about the time frame for awning repair based on your own experience?  It sounds like a lot of baloney from a struggling awning company who hasn't bothered to diversify their offerings.  JMO.  The awning industry is full of companies who struggle (and whine) rather than figure out how to find niche markets and market their awning line to the general AC addicted public. 

None of what you've said is in synch. with what I have heard and read from other trade sources.  Installation/take-down is pretty "down and dirty"; it ain't "brain surgery" and for  installers it's simply about "time".  As for maintenance of awnings:  when constructed with UV poly. 138 lapped seams should do 3 yrs. before restitching is required (5 yrs. in NE where the season is shorter).  If the seam is stitched, turned and topstitched a restitch is forestalled by another 2+ yrs. (if you even want to bother since the important seam is not in direct contact with the sun; I would restitch in an area with a longer awning season!).  If the seams are heat welded the fabric will wear out before the "seams" do.  With care seaming  (and one restitch) will span the guarantee on the fabric.
 
I think you misunderstood me, Sofa..  My comments had nothing to do with "humidity" they were about temperature!  In NE, 90+ is always about humidity.  No way to abate humidity without AC!  But humidity is more bearable when the ambiant temperature is lowered, and that was the point about wet sheets hung around the perimeter of a sleeping porch. 

As the price of energy rises the more people use the "old" technologies to off-set discomfort in more "manageable" seasons (what we call the "shoulder season" with respect to using a wood stove) the more they will be able to afford AC at the height of the seasn when it's most important (when we pay big bucks for heaiting oil).  My point is more about how to "suck it up" when it's marginally uncomfortable so the cost of comfort in the most important season is offset and less crippling financially.  Along with the "energy drain"!

For me, is the opposite. It's really cold here for a lot of months. It's nice to be able to load a couple of splits and take the chill off a cold, clammy evening when it's not quite/just past "boiler season".  But I wouldn't waste wood and get a big fire going any more than I'd flush dollar bills down the commode!

[sofadoc]

I think that one reason that some of you realize a more significant savings with awnings and such might be the electric bill itself. I'm sure that in areas with high electric rates, you have to conserve everywhere you can.
My shop electric bill tops out at around $100 during the hottest part of the summer. So if awnings saved me 20% during the summer months, you're looking at maybe $100 a year.
It's rare for an awning stitch job to last 3 years around here. So factoring installation, and periodic repair, it would be several years before awnings would even begin to pay for themselves.
My only personal experience, is from fielding phone calls from local businesses asking me to re-sew the awnings that they just had installed less than 2 years ago.

Much the same way that you "tough it out" during the summer months, I do the same during the winter.

I've always said "It's never been so cold in Texas that I couldn't get warm......but it's been so hot that I couldn't cool off" :D

[Mike]

Bobbin. Dont you use tenara on awnings?
And on the humidity it is fight ad s mid i gree up in southern cslifornia abd although it got bit it was a dry heat the. At 20 i mived to massachuesettes and it was nit as hot but humid in the summers making sleep with. O ac as a kid tuff i was always turning my llos to the cool side.   
Im thinking of making window aenings for my gouse cor looks. Ut it would be cooler slso. Locking thr morning sun on the front of my home.

[bobbin]

No way, Mike.  We have panels heat welded together on big lateral arms.  On smaller awnings we use standard 92 poly. (I don't agree w/that I'd use 138; I do on my own projects).  For the life of the product, Tenara would be overkill. 

[gene]

Here in SW Ohio, a guy down the sidewalk from my studio came by with a thermometer. Outside in the parking lot in front of my studio, it said 110 degrees.

We had a brief storm roll through late this afternoon - winds of 90 miles per hour. Not much rain. That thermometer dropped to 82 degrees.

gene