Tips for surviving the Hot Summer days without AC

However, once you follow some of these tricks mentioned here, it would be possible to stay cool and comfortable in your home without AC during the warm summer months. You can avoid the heat and save money by skipping the AC.

1. Plant Trees: It is an ingenious conspiracy of passive cooling. Plant trees, if possible, on the east and west side of your home. It was an old tradition to protect one's home from the rays of the rising and setting sun.

2. Follow Architectural Traditions: If you can afford to build your home with wide eaves, awnings, and high ceilings, the hot air can float far above the head. We can also build houses to offer extra protection against the heat, like cross ventilation, using principles ignored by most modern architects. A house¡¯s attic and basement could play an important role in this regard-- ¡ªthe former as a crucial component of a ventilation system, the latter as a place to spend leisure time.

3. Change the Rotation on Your Ceiling Fan to Counterclockwise: It helps to produce a comfortable breeze or 'wind-chill' that cools the skin, blades should rotate in a 'reverse' counter-clockwise motion, because it would pull hot air up and push cool air down to the floor.

4. Choose Cotton: Avoid silk, satin or polyester sheets in summer. Use light colored bed linens made of breathable lightweight cotton.

5. Use Creative Ideas: Think whether any change in your sleeping arrangements in the room can bring you nearer to the passage of air. Use box fans or exhausts; they push the hot air out of the room.

6. Don¡¯t Let the Heat Come in: Keeping shades, curtains, or blinds closed can lower the temperature inside your house by up to 20 degrees.

7. Build Your Own Cooler: Place a metal mixing bowl full of ice in front of a fan. Tilt it a little so that the air hits the ice cubes and releases a cool breeze.

8. Unplug: Al lights radiate heat even when they¡¯re not in use but are plugged in. So unplug what you can.

9. Turn off the lights: Even the most energy-efficient light bulbs radiate heat. Use maximum natural light on superhot days and exchange incandescent bulbs for CFLs.

10. Lie low: Hot air rises, so put your mattress on the floor; it can help you stay cool while you slumber or rig up an indoor hammock, which will increase airflow.

11. Focus on the Temperature in Your Body, not the House: It is what we often forget. Apply a cold cloth to strong-pulsed areas like your neck and wrists. Be smart about your clothing choice.

12. Heat-proof Your Bed: Fill a hot water bottle and put it in the freeze; create a bed-friendly ice pack by placing it at the foot of your bed.

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