Our almost 6 month old has a room at the front of the house which we're finding difficult to cool for her sleeping overnight. The room is westerly facing, so gets the blazing sun all afternoon. We have a fan in there (which just circulates air), and I open the window in the morning and overnight when it's coolest and the sun isn't shining directly on it. I've also gone to putting silver foil on the window to try and deflect the light/heat. Suppose we could buy an air con unit, but they're expensive, noisy and it's hardly worth it for the length of summer we have. Suggestions welcome...
This was discussed on R4 and the 'experts' (yeah, yeah, yeah) recommend you do the opposite to 'normal behaviour': windows closed and curtain's drawn during the day and open widows/curtains during the night.
I've got a mobile air con unit in my room, however haven't had to use it yet as I do what Bwood suggested - although I also run a fan to keep the air moving at night. Important thing is to keep the sunlight out.
Something I picked up from having to survive the scorching east European summers - I would also think about fitting (adjustable) shutters to the inside of the window. FWIW: we have proper 'blackout' curtains in my ASD son's room from this place.
Absolutely. Get some reflective film for the windows. Made a huge difference to Meister's boudoir. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=reflective+window+film&ref=nb_sb_noss_1 White backed heavy curtains, closed durign the day. As soon as the windows are in shadow open them up (front and back of house), open up the doors and try and get some air flowing through. Fans can assist with this. and putting ice blocks infront of the fans also helps.
Yes keep the room dark and curtains closed and the windows closed from 10-6pm and then open windows at night, assuming no break-in risk. Don't under-estimate the benefit of a fan either. It does "just circulate the air" and doesn't cool it, but the wind-chill effect means that it helps sweat evaporate and so feels cooler on the skin and helps cool the body. The other thing to add is that parents always tend to over-dress babies, even in summer. Babies are poor at regulating their own heat and so hats for example are often unnecessary or even dangerous but I'm sure in this weather those would have ditched long ago !
Got black out curtains and a black out blind up so hope that helps a little! Will keep the windows open for now as still in the shade. Hoping the reflective foil helps today as well.
Conversely it took a while to get used to the East European thing of putting babies in prams (appropriately dressed of course) out on the balcony during winter (-30 oC) to nap...
Remove the source of the bulk of the heat - the glass windows. Not always practical, I know - but that was our solution after suffering through one FNQ summer. Got rid of all the glass windows in the house and replaced them with lockable wooden shutters, the type in which the slats can be opened or closed. With the shutters on the outside of the house, we put insect screens where the glass had been - possibly that's not warranted over here though. It also helps if the bedroom door is open - creates a through-draught. In winter, we just hung heavy curtains to keep the cold out - if you can call an overnight minimum of 18C cold...
Defo keep internal doors shut too once you have let the morning cool in and then closed windows and curtains. Last Saturday we arrived home about 6pm, it was 32 degrees outside, but the house was cool because the air hadn’t been moved much all day to circulate heat.
Freeze a tub of water into ice. Put it in front of the fan on a wider shorter plate still in the tub like a flower pot. Bobs your auntie. Dont bother with shutters in the uk.
A few years ago I read an article following research by experts on this very subject (a riveting read). The gist of it was that when the outside air temperature is below 23 degrees centigrade then opening a window would have a cooling effect. Above this temperature it is better to keep the windows closed and stop the direct sunlight entering a room by closing blinds/curtains. The idea being that you stop the sun’s infrared energy heating up objects in the room and in turn stop them from emitting heat. The colour of these objects doesn’t matter as it does it effect the absorption of the infrared energy by the object.
Ah yes, ye olde 'Hillbilly AC' - containers of water precariously perched on pots next to electrical equipment in a small child's room - what could possible go wrong????
We have a window-mounted AC unit for our upstairs as the AC doesn't get there very well. It really wasn't very expensive and cools the room brilliantly. We've had it for 12 years now so looked at as a cost per year, it has been negligible. We tried every other method people recommended but it just didn't cut it.
Last summer we opened our loft hatch and left it open for a few weeks - that helped a bit. Other than that, curtains and windows shut all day and opened in the evening.
