This European heatwave has been going on for weeks and shows no signs of abating. It’s really wearing me down. Any tips for staying cool when you don’t have air conditioning? I’ve tried the whole shutting the windows and blinds thing they recommend but that just makes it worse. I already feel uncomfortably hot at the best of times as a side effect of my medication. So an actual heatwave on top is literal torture. It’s so bad in the UK that supermarket refrigerators have stopped working due to the heat, and the news says its going to be the longest heatwave in 50 years.
if you have a freezer, freeze plastic bottle of water and hold it for couple of minutes during the day (the bottle would sweat though, so be mindful where you put it) when you feel hot (hands are very quick heat transfer device, and most comfortable with different temperature, feet also work, so if you are sitting you can put legs on top of it and sort of roll it around), if it’s uncomfy you can use cooled bottle, but it heats up much quicker *(forgot to mention, single t-shirt will insulate frozen bottle enough to not be uncomfy). also you can fall sleep with cooled bottle neat legs or face, but thats depending on how much you move around.
it freezes in around 2 hours so you can juggle two bottles (don’t fill it fully leave small air bubbl for ice expansion). probably fancy ice packs work better but eh
a follow up to this, use a salt water mix. frozen salt water will hold a cooler temp for a longer time. plus, with a couple of zip ties or a length of small rope, you can affix them to a box fan or oscillating fan to create an “ac” similar to the bucket version posted in this thread (and you don’t need any extra equipment or tools).
just be careful to not cover too much of the fan face so it doesn’t restrict airflow to the point of burning out the motor, plug it into a surge protector or gfci plug, and place a towel beneath it to absorb the exterior humidity as the bottles sweat.
stay safe!
I’ve sort of done this one summer by putting those ice box freezable blocks (no idea what these are in English) in a small plastic box just in front of the fan and then pointing it at the bed, it did cool us down pretty well until the ice blocks melted.
Thanks, I’ll try that.
for sleeping, you can also wrap a bottle in a old t-shirts/blankie/towel, it will both reduce the coldness of it (so you can use frozen one), and make it last longer and make it softer. when i’ve had longer bed i also could put it behind the pillow, and then rotate the pillow several times to have a cold side when i tried falling asleep *don’t work so well when your head is on top of it though, so not useable with shorter beds, probably flat ice packs would kinda work, depending)
*as a note, the blankie will get wet from condensation, so do air it out in the day or it can get smelly/moldy over weeks