Summer is in full power here in Kerala, India. Concrete radiating heat and rooms are hot even at night.
Have seen people mention things like blackout curtains, reflective or white paint on the roof etc.
Have upped hydration and am now sleeping with windows open, with a mat on the floor.
What all things do the people in your locality do? Or if you have any specific insight into cost-effective techniques or so, could you kindly share them?
Thanks in advance
Things me or my parents would do those 40⁰C+ days:
Pull down the blinds to block the sun during the day. If the air is considerably hotter outside, don’t open the windows/doors. Wait until there is no difference in temp to do so.
If access to water isn’t an issue, once the sun goes down you can hose the exterior of the house, walls and any surrounding concrete/stone surfaces. It will cool it down considerably.
If it is really hot I would sometimes put a wet towel on wherever I was feeling the heat the most (usually heads and shoulders/arms). You will need to soak it every hour or so, because it will start to dry and warm up as you wear it. You can sleep like this, too, but you may wake up from the heat under a hot towel that’s nearly dry.
Whrere I live, temps go in the 40-50°C range in the summer (and 60+ in some inland areas). Here is what we do to stay cool.
-
Cool(er) air ventilation Windows open at night, closed past morning, with blinds down when sunlight starts hitting the windows. Ensure that air can circulate through (otherwise, you might actually get heatstroke from how hot the house gets). In cass the heat makes you feel like you cannot breathe, blinds down and windows open (better than suffocating) Also, no joke, get greenhouse green screens, and set them up inverse outside your windows. Instead of trapping heat in, they throw heat out instead. Surprisingly cooling.
-
WATER AND COOLING FOOD! Water is a must, and there are foods that cool you down instead of warming you up. (avoid the later wherever possible!) Examples of cool foods: frozen desserts, lassi (yoghurt water drink, makes you sleepy) etc
-
Fans. Fans everywhere. Doesn’t matter if hot enough that it feels like a hair dryer instead. Evaporation + air is your friend (bonus tip: if you live in a dry zone, get an air cooler. It’s an enclosed fan behind a self contained waterfall. Humid air is particularly cooling. Beware metal cabinets in the same room though. They rust, bad).
-
Baths. Baths are especially cooling. Take at least 2 a day. My cousins, who live inland at 60+ temps, bathes at least 4-5 times a day. Also, their bathrooms all have massive fans :)
-
Clothes. In summer, we wear our thinnest, oldest cotton clothes possible (aka, almost seethrough). We never go out in them, but they sure make the house bearable.
-
Naps and talcum powder. Human body temps naturally decrease when napping. Talcum powder, spread on the hottest parts of the body, absorbs heat and cools you too. The powder gets soaked in sweat and is useless pretty quickly, but combine bath + fan + powder + nap (and probably no undergarments/naked) makes noon bearable to go through. Talcum powder in particular stops rashes from too much sweating, if you have trouble bathing more than twice a day like I do.
Thats about it from me. Hope it helps!
-
