What Preps are you doing this week? Part 13

[Frnc]

This A/C is using way less power than I expected - less than a third. Admittedly today is a mild test.

My room was 23.5 so I set it to 23 as a test. My thermometer now reads 21.5, so it's come down 2°. Clearly I can set it to 25 tomorrow, as it seems to overshoot a bit.

Energy used in an hour is 0.35 kWh. Machine is rated 1120 watts.

Of course tomorrow will be a hotter day, so it will use more, but I'm pleased anyway.

Only snag is when you turn it off, room heats back up even faster!

What AC unit did you get?

MeacoCool MC Series Pro 10000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner. Last night, it took 2 hours for the full rebound. Heat is coming from bricks, plaster, furniture etc. Nothing a portable can do about that unless you leave it on, but it's too noisy, cold, and expensive to leave on all night. I think my strategy today is, run it in the afternoon and evening, on and off, to keep the room reasonably cool. Turn off before bed, leave in place. Go to bed. Then, if I wake up in the middle of the night (very likely), take the hose/kit out of the window, open it more, and get the cooler air in. It won't be cool til about 1-2 am, so no point doing it before I go to bed. At least the room will be cool when I go to sleep initially. I go to bed early, so 2 am is half way through the night.

[Yorkshire Andy]

MeacoCool MC Series Pro 10000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner. Last night, it took 2 hours for the full rebound. Heat is coming from bricks, plaster, furniture etc. Nothing a portable can do about that unless you leave it on, but it's too noisy, cold, and expensive to leave on all night. I think my strategy today is, run it in the afternoon and evening, on and off, to keep the room reasonably cool. Turn off before bed, leave in place. Go to bed. Then, if I wake up in the middle of the night (very likely), take the hose/kit out of the window, open it more, and get the cooler air in. It won't be cool til about 1-2 am, so no point doing it before I go to bed. At least the room will be cool when I go to sleep initially. I go to bed early, so 2 am is half way through the night.

I got the 7000 version a few years ago now bought it after calculating the room size etc sister has the 8000 for her "garden office" and it's way overkill I took reading from hers via a smart plug .. the 7000 runs happily off my power station so it happily runs for a couple of hours for free

[GeraldTheBonzai]

May have to look into a portable air cond unit, if this is the shape of things to come. Currently 26C in the East facing rooms at the from of the house, which includes the bedroom....

[jennyjj01]

Not so much prepping. I spent about half a day at the allotment, weeding and watering. two 3 hr visits a week apart and I've now estimated that that is the bare minimum to keep any sort of control over the weeds Looks like my onions may be infected with mites beans courgettes and even some spuds are getting eaten by critters. Not hopeful of much food.
At home, my planter carrots, onions and beetroot got totally smothered by weeds
Biggest cropper, once again, looks like being the spuds in my composter.

Still waiting on quotes to replace my consumer unit and wire in my inverter. Missing out on all this free solar energy.

[Frnc]

Checking the forecast, and thinking about it, outside air could be same as inside at 10pm (23°). I might just take the side dust sheets out then.

Had a slight near mini disaster setting it up. The adapter popped out of the rectangular window kit, twice, as I was trying to get the kit in place, which requires the hose to do a 180. At least I didn't drop it, and I now know. Got to use the hose to get the position, and not strain the clips.

[Frnc]

May have to look into a portable air cond unit, if this is the shape of things to come. Currently 26C in the East facing rooms at the from of the house, which includes the bedroom....

24.7 in my room, which faces ESE. Outside is 26 according to the Met. Will put AC on soon.

I have had a few issues. The main one is getting the hose out of the window. Window is top opener, top hung. If you have a side opener, or sash, it is probably easier. With top hung, the hose has to do a 180 to get out the bottom. And mine is quite high up. So it was touch and go. And this caused an issue where the adapter came out of the rectangular window kit.

I'm supposed to use the flexible kit. But this has velcro stuck to the frame. Didn't really fancy that. And there would be nothing to hold the hose in the required 180 bend at the end. Maybe a bit less than 180. I could be wrong, not tried it. Bit late now anyway. The hose on mine is longer than most, but is barely long enough, and instructions say it can't be extended.

You need to seal the window to keep hot air out and cold in. I have stuffed dust sheets in the triangular gaps at the sides.

The other issue I have is that the room heats back up quickly, so it doesn't keep the room cool at night, unless you leave it on.

And sealing the window means you can't get cool air in during the night.

A proper air con can stay on all night, but costs about £3,000.

[GeeGee]

Preps these last couple of weeks have been road planning
Where I am every road for miles is full with the bow tops the horses etc all going to Appleby fair ..doesn't start while 4 th June so mire days to go yet
I've had to go the route several times and the delays and queues can stretch miles ..
Today I had enough supplies water food emergency equipment solar panal for the car ..in the car ..to camp out for a fortnight and because I timed it right setting off at the great hour of 5 something am I managed to miss the queues ...coming back again fortunate but I'd prefer to have it all in the car than not
Have to be really careful as there are horses and bow tops on the roundabouts verges bypass etc ...kids ...dogs everything
Beautiful sight but the planning if travelling every year at this time is imperative
Friend was stuck coming back yesterday in the heat ..no drinks no snacks and very little fuel and panicking...
Get stuck in this heat and the car can be a death trap ...

[Frnc]

Used the 'portable' AC most of yesterday up to 10pm. Kept E facing upstairs room at 22° til then (actually set to 24). Removed plastic dust sheets from sides of window before bed, but left AC hose and window kit in place.

Room heated rapidly as expected initially (I was asleep), but this slowed, and it took all night to reach final temp of 25. I was pretty pleased with that. Imagine a steep slope up, then a quarter of a circle, then a shallow slope up.

Used 4.9 kWh of electricity to run the AC.

Heat is cumulative, so today might be worse. My room is 2°warmer this morning than yesterday morning. But considering it was 32 outside, that's not bad.

Downstairs front living room is 2° cooler naturally, so I think in a future heatwave I might sleep in there. It was 23 last night.

[GillyBee]

Ordered a white blackout roller blind for the back bedroom (where most of my prep gear is). Window faces south. It sticks on the glass. Window is a full opener so it will block the sun over the whole window. Room has a curtain, but it's a cheap thin one, and a dark colour, so it absorbs heat rather than reflects it.

How is the blackout blind working out? I want one for our kitchen. Would you recommend yours?

It has been 34 degrees here today and thoroughly unpleasant. We had a bit of an incident on Sunday to scare us before it got this hot. Mr GB went down his man-cave/shed which started the afternoon cooler than the house. He did not notice when the sun moved and it began to heat up big time until he started to feel very ill.
One collapsed husband then resulted in a ride in an ambulance, an evening in A&E (again) and a litre of IV fluids before they sent us home in the small hours with stern warnings to stay cool and hydrated.

Lesson learned. Take heat seriously, especially if you are a bit older than the average or have poorer health.

[Frnc]

Ordered a white blackout roller blind for the back bedroom (where most of my prep gear is). Window faces south. It sticks on the glass. Window is a full opener so it will block the sun over the whole window. Room has a curtain, but it's a cheap thin one, and a dark colour, so it absorbs heat rather than reflects it.

How is the blackout blind working out? I want one for our kitchen. Would you recommend yours?

It has been 34 degrees here today and thoroughly unpleasant. We had a bit of an incident on Sunday to scare us before it got this hot. Mr GB went down his man-cave/shed which started the afternoon cooler than the house. He did not notice when the sun moved and it began to heat up big time until he started to feel very ill.
One collapsed husband then resulted in a ride in an ambulance, an evening in A&E (again) and a litre of IV fluids before they sent us home in the small hours with stern warnings to stay cool and hydrated.

Lesson learned. Take heat seriously, especially if you are a bit older than the average or have poorer health.

Sorry to hear that. A lesson to us all. My blind hasn't arrived for that room yet. It got to 32 in there yesterday! The blind will reflect the sun, but the sun still gets in through the glass first, so I will have to see how much difference it makes. Outside was 31 according to the local weather station.

One thing to bear in mind in heatwaves is that the heat in the house accumulates day by day. You can try to flush some of it out in the early morning, but yesterday that was not an option after about 10 am here.

Another thing to remember is not to leave windows open when it's hottest, as the air outside will generally be even hotter than indoors.

Portable AC report. My room was 22.5 in the evening. Turned it off at 10pm. There is a conflict, in that the window has to be sealed for AC, but you want ventilation during the night, and I didn't want to be faffing about right before bed. So what I did was a compromise. I took the dust sheets out of the sides of the window, but left hose and rectangular kit in, so I had a little bit of ventilation. Same as previous night.

Room rebounded to 25.3 at 1.40 am and flatlined. For the second day of a heatwave, bearing in mind the house was hotter due to accumulation, that was a good result, as it was the same temp as the day before, just earlier. For comparison, the landing was about 27°.

I had considered sleeping in the front living room in future heatwaves, but that was 25° at 10pm last night, so that idea is no longer an option.