At my family cottage, we had it for over 40 years before getting portable ACs. Generally we just avoided the heat waves. Cold water in between your neck and shoulders really helps circulate the cooled blood throughout your body. We ended up getting portable ACs one year because we were spending a week there and it was over 95f every day. A few years later one of us took a paid early retirement package and we used that money to get central AC, biggest upgrade for our cottage ever.
Open the windows at night and close them in the morning. If you have many electric devices, like I do, turn them off or put them into a dedicated room. With many, I mean lots of devices.
If you live in a dry climate you can create a makeshift evaporation cooler with a fan, tub, water pump, and evap material.
Set it up in front of an opened window, blow it into the house, and open a window at the other side of the house. You can easily get 20 degree F drop in temp.
Windows open at night. Curtains or blinds shut during the day.
When I worked in a restaurant kitchen, we used to soak rags with water and freeze them in the walk in freezer, then once it’s nice and frozen we’d wear the rag around our necks.
There’s large blood vessels in the neck feeding your brain, so if you’re able to cool down the blood there, it’ll spread to the whole body surprisingly fast.
I actually managed to get cold in hot humid july summer in the kitchen with that method.
If no ac then stay in the basement while I reasonably can. Drive with windows open. If my work has no ac then the business closes. The material we work with has to be temperature controlled.
Check out “radiative sky cooling”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDRnEm-B3AI
There might be some way to do something with this.
Those soakable cloth neck-wraps work as a cheap personal cooler($5).
The Coolify2 works as an expensive personal cooler(~$200).
If you have a fridge, freeze 2 litre ice-cream containers filled with water to make large ice blocks. Then put the block in a tub to melt, and sit your feet on it to stay cool(budget-mode, $cost of tap water)
At night cool your house down by opening windows and using windows fans. I have a two story house. Heat rises so I’ll place window fans blowing out in the upstairs windows and fans blowing in upstairs. In the morning close up the windows and close curtains and shades over the windows that receive direct sunlight. If you have a room that gets hotter than the others shut the door to that room or hang a curtain over the doorway. My hot water tank is in a first floor room so I isolate that room and leave the windows open. Have a ceiling fan? Make sure it’s blowing in the right direction. Most have a switch so you can alternate direction it blows the air. Not always practical but soaking your feet in cool water will lower your body temperature. Much like coolant cools a combustible engine car your blood circulates through your body distributing heat. Personally I avoid using AC while driving as much as I can. It’s my opinion that when we get used to such comforts we suffer without them. I do have a window unit but use it only on the hottest nights.
Also, close the blinds during the day, keeping the sunlight outside the house/apartment prevents it from getting warm.
However, a lot of things depends on the architecture, look at the house you see around the Mediterranean, small windowswith blinds, , porch to get more shadow, large wall, sometimes inner courtyard.
2 tips.
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Negative air pressure is your friend. If you open the windows upstairs and down and blow air out of the house it’ll suck air from the downstairs to the upstairs cooling the entire house.
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Bernoulli’s principle is your friend. Rather than having fans right next to the windows you’ll move more air if you back the fans a meter or so from the window. https://youtu.be/BhWhTbins_A?si=9LGd0_EmfPFBNnDJ
Never heard of Beenoulli’s Principle before, thanks for sharing.
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I grew up without AC in Florida.
Sit in the shade with a fan, be still. If in the shade and a breeze, and not moving around, a pretty high temperature is comfortable.
Go to places with cold AC or to cold springs to get cold, it will last awhile after you leave.
If it gets cool at night, open your window at night to let in the cold air, close it in the morning to keep that air in for the morning. But once it heats up inside, you are better off with ventilation - open windows on both sides of the house and run fans, to move air throughout the house.
If it’s dry where you are (it doesn’t work here) get wet and let evaporation cool you. Even here you can get wet and stand naked in front of a fan you will get cold.
STAY HYDRATED.
tuen on the fans, close shutters during the day, drink water
Drink lots of water, I guess? An air cooler might also come in handy - they’re way cheaper than an AC. And yes, don’t hold your yellow pee, because the burn will be intolerable.
Run cold water over your wrists when you’re starting to get hot.
And dab some cold water behind your ears.
Most important here is the dabbing.
All the coolest people dab, often and without irony.
Or any area of your body where there’s a lot of blood vessels near the surface of your skin.
I like standing in a cool shower and letting the cool water run over the front and back of my neck.
Unfortunately I got used to it. I say unfortunately because lukewarm weather (even something like 22°C) feels extremely cold to me as a result.
I have a basement where I swear it’s 10°C colder than upstairs.
Not surprised, my basement is 58-64F (~14-18C) year round, no matter how hot or cold it is outside.
I mean, given heat rises, the basement probably is 10 degrees cooler
Plus at least part of the walls will be exposed to the ground, not the air, and since past the first layer the ground stays consistently relatively cool, that helps a lot.
