Husband went out in March and bought 2 more box fans to add to our other 2. We have 2 ceiling fans as well. Never thought I'd have a fan club, but now I do!!
In coastal British Columbia we had 105 degree temps year before last. Lasted about 3 days. We did okay with our fans. Our place was between 85 and 90, which is uncomfortable but survivable. However, in Vancouver alone, over 600 people died from the heat. Mainly elderly, I am assuming, living in condos without air conditioning and all fans sold out.
Your advice is fantastic, common sense and thank you, Bonnie! Practical purchases, right now, rather than waiting, saves lives! Jess
I love your description of your fans as a fan club. British Columbia got stuck in a heat dome, didn't you? Along with the USA's Pacific Northwest? We're all going to have more and more weather extremes in all directions, hot and cold, wet and dry. Now that we know it's coming, we might as well prepare, which you have done. I think of it as much like checking and topping up hurricane emergency supplies on the Gulf Coast where I grew up.
I don’t know if what I use will work in the UK, but in 2017 I bought a Vornado 610DC air circulator and have been enjoying it ever since. This small fan converts the AC power to DC apparently, which is something Bonnie will understand much better than I do. It has some kind of brick on the power cord. Anyway, it uses very little power and it really does circulate the air through the entire room at my house. The air circulation keeps everyone in the room cooler instead of only the ones right in the path of the fan. With this air circulation, I can run the air conditioner at a much less expensive setting.
When I was a little girl, the summer heat was not a problem for me. Kids can tolerate it much better than adults. Still, I remember the summer nights when our window fan was drawing a pleasant breeze through the windows over our beds. Nobody had air conditioning in the home in those days, and everybody had fans, usually an attic or window fan. Does anybody even make those things anymore?
My sister is having a whole-house fan installed, I think, so somebody must still be making such things. But not everyone lives in a place where such a fan can be installed.
It sounds like your Vornado is doing essentially what a ceiling fan would do, circulating the air so you have a breeze in the room and heat doesn't pool in any one spot. There's a lot to be said for something like that which doesn't need installation and can go with you when you relocate if you are a renter. The AC versus DC power issue is a technical detail. It doesn't really matter much. You just want something that quietly & efficiently moves the air for you, and it sounds like your Vornado does that.
Yes indeedy- I remember well schools without a/c in Louisiana. Oklahoma homes are built with ceiling fans in nearly every room, and they are a godsend. I just had attic insulation put in under a program for low-income folk sponsored by the electric company. For some reason there were nearly bare spots in this 50-year-old home. Seattle has had some record-breaking heat waves, and most in the Pacific NW west of the Cascades don't have a/c, either.
In our first house in Louisiana, we had an attic fan that was loud as heck, and probably why my parents didn't use it often. We kids were miserable at night, until it was turned on. It seemed to keep the skeeters at bay, too. (Blood-stains all over the bedroom walls from squashing the little buggers after they feasted on us.)
Swamp coolers in park housing in Mesa Verde and other SW areas worked just fine. When I did art shows in summer, I had a spray bottle to squirt over me to stay cool on those hot, hot parking lots. A poor girl's air conditioner.
I can't understand the Christian Nationalist types (uber-conservative Bible-thumpers) who claim that "anthropomorphic" climate change is a myth. As if using a pseudo-scientific term makes them smart.
I like the spray bottle idea. Especially to avoid being cooked by a "myth." As for insulation, if we have thin or bare spots here, we get mold there in winter. This house is okay in that regard. But modern houses here have a brick exterior, a narrow air gap that is sometimes filled with blown-in insulation (risky, can lead to water wicking, but we got away with it), a slab of dense foam, then concrete block. Lots of thermal mass. At night after one of our increasingly less rare heat waves, the inside walls of our front rooms are hot to the touch. Your house probably isn't built that way and will probably cope with extreme temperatures better than ours now that your insulation has been bolstered.
Husband went out in March and bought 2 more box fans to add to our other 2. We have 2 ceiling fans as well. Never thought I'd have a fan club, but now I do!!
In coastal British Columbia we had 105 degree temps year before last. Lasted about 3 days. We did okay with our fans. Our place was between 85 and 90, which is uncomfortable but survivable. However, in Vancouver alone, over 600 people died from the heat. Mainly elderly, I am assuming, living in condos without air conditioning and all fans sold out.
Your advice is fantastic, common sense and thank you, Bonnie! Practical purchases, right now, rather than waiting, saves lives! Jess
I love your description of your fans as a fan club. British Columbia got stuck in a heat dome, didn't you? Along with the USA's Pacific Northwest? We're all going to have more and more weather extremes in all directions, hot and cold, wet and dry. Now that we know it's coming, we might as well prepare, which you have done. I think of it as much like checking and topping up hurricane emergency supplies on the Gulf Coast where I grew up.
I don’t know if what I use will work in the UK, but in 2017 I bought a Vornado 610DC air circulator and have been enjoying it ever since. This small fan converts the AC power to DC apparently, which is something Bonnie will understand much better than I do. It has some kind of brick on the power cord. Anyway, it uses very little power and it really does circulate the air through the entire room at my house. The air circulation keeps everyone in the room cooler instead of only the ones right in the path of the fan. With this air circulation, I can run the air conditioner at a much less expensive setting.
When I was a little girl, the summer heat was not a problem for me. Kids can tolerate it much better than adults. Still, I remember the summer nights when our window fan was drawing a pleasant breeze through the windows over our beds. Nobody had air conditioning in the home in those days, and everybody had fans, usually an attic or window fan. Does anybody even make those things anymore?
My sister is having a whole-house fan installed, I think, so somebody must still be making such things. But not everyone lives in a place where such a fan can be installed.
It sounds like your Vornado is doing essentially what a ceiling fan would do, circulating the air so you have a breeze in the room and heat doesn't pool in any one spot. There's a lot to be said for something like that which doesn't need installation and can go with you when you relocate if you are a renter. The AC versus DC power issue is a technical detail. It doesn't really matter much. You just want something that quietly & efficiently moves the air for you, and it sounds like your Vornado does that.
Yes indeedy- I remember well schools without a/c in Louisiana. Oklahoma homes are built with ceiling fans in nearly every room, and they are a godsend. I just had attic insulation put in under a program for low-income folk sponsored by the electric company. For some reason there were nearly bare spots in this 50-year-old home. Seattle has had some record-breaking heat waves, and most in the Pacific NW west of the Cascades don't have a/c, either.
In our first house in Louisiana, we had an attic fan that was loud as heck, and probably why my parents didn't use it often. We kids were miserable at night, until it was turned on. It seemed to keep the skeeters at bay, too. (Blood-stains all over the bedroom walls from squashing the little buggers after they feasted on us.)
Swamp coolers in park housing in Mesa Verde and other SW areas worked just fine. When I did art shows in summer, I had a spray bottle to squirt over me to stay cool on those hot, hot parking lots. A poor girl's air conditioner.
I can't understand the Christian Nationalist types (uber-conservative Bible-thumpers) who claim that "anthropomorphic" climate change is a myth. As if using a pseudo-scientific term makes them smart.
I like the spray bottle idea. Especially to avoid being cooked by a "myth." As for insulation, if we have thin or bare spots here, we get mold there in winter. This house is okay in that regard. But modern houses here have a brick exterior, a narrow air gap that is sometimes filled with blown-in insulation (risky, can lead to water wicking, but we got away with it), a slab of dense foam, then concrete block. Lots of thermal mass. At night after one of our increasingly less rare heat waves, the inside walls of our front rooms are hot to the touch. Your house probably isn't built that way and will probably cope with extreme temperatures better than ours now that your insulation has been bolstered.