Life in San Diego is not always sunshine and unicorns, and sometimes it’s too much sunshine. It’s been hot the last several days, and very hot here in the valley. We’ve had high temperatures in the upper 90’s in El Cajon, with no functioning air conditioner. This means the house becomes very uncomfortable in the afternoons. I’ve been on vacation and was able to escape to cooler places, but felt guilty because I had to leave me pets to sweat it out.
In the battle to beat the heat, I’ve tried a couple things. Technically, we do have a/c, but it mostly doesn’t work. When it does, it works briefly and then blows a fuse inside the unit, which requires a call to maintenance, followed by a week or so wait until it can be serviced. When the tech arrives, they are amazed at the monstrosity I point out as the a/c. It’s a heat pump, it’s terribly inefficient, and terribly expensive to use. Even when it does work, it doubles our electric bill with even two days of use. I prefer to use it as a last resort, if it happens to be working. I have tried a DIY air conditioner constructed from a styrofoam cooler, a fan, and plenty of ice. The theory is that as the fan blows over the ice, air is cooled, and will exit the cooler to help cool the room. This did not work as well as I had hoped, and the amount of ice needed was becoming hassle.
Without the a/c, I do my best to keep the house cool for as long as possible. In the morning, I open all windows and place fans in front of the open doors to draw in the cool air. I can usually leave most windows open until 11:00 or so. The east-facing windows I try to close by 8:00, when the sun is no longer blocked by the trees. On hot days, the sun is just hot, even at that hour. After I close up the house, I keep one window open and aim a fan so that it blows the heat out, as a sort of exhaust. I’m not sure if this is helpful, but it works great in my head!
A couple weeks ago, we had a string of days where the temperature hit the upper 90’s with one day at 100. It feels like the heat accumulates and the house gets harder to cool in the evening as the hot days drag on. It was miserable by the third day so I bought a kiddie pool. It took me about fifteen minutes to blow it up the old fashioned way and then another ten or fifteen minutes to fill it with water. Sitting in just that one foot of water, i began to feel 20 degrees cooler. It was amazing and I sat there for almost an hour, occasionally lying back to get the full cooling effect. The next night I sat in my beach with only my feet in the pool. This also helped to cool me and I felt better about reading on my table.
It’s been hot, but it’s not usually humid and heat waves are usually short-lived. We take the bad with the good. I try to remember the blazing hot days when it’s chilly, and I begin to complain. I also try to remember how hot summers could be in Kansas, and how in 2011 there were 50 days where it was at least 100 degrees. Now that miserable.
Take the 52 west 