Coping with hot weather

As I am now completely bedbound (can't turn on the side, for example), I suffer greatly in the heat and while my partner is away, I have all the fans in the house blowing air at me. One fan has a remote so i can regulate the flow and direction.

I also have a small air cooler which is meant for camping/RVs etc. It has a water container into which ice can be put and a fan which pushes the air through the cold water so the air gets cooler. Of course, it is not ideal and not as good as air conditioning because the water in the container gets warmer and evaporates.
 
As a chunky person I struggle with the heat so have been doing some of this for years when I didnt have ME as well

if there's some sort of breeze only have windows open on the cooler side of the house - keep them shut in the afternoon open up in evening and morning when cooler. Keep my blinds closed most of the time


if it is really really hot I have a tepid/cool bath before going to sleep - not too cool as too much of a shock to body - but lying in there for a few minutes brings the core temp down really well and I leave the water so I can get back in during the night if Im struggling
and lying on bed after bath withatower fan going to dry off

recently discovered these koolpak physio packs - take it from the freezer use wrapped in a scarf on the back of my neck at night to help keep core temperature down enough to sleep
Amazon product ASIN B001RXNF92

also can be used as warm packs as well so ideal for UK
 
Luther Blissett said:
They were/are practical scientists :)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-hot-drink-on-a-hot-day-can-cool-you-down-1338875/

I believe this is one reason why spicy foods are popular in hot places like Mexico and India?
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Interesting ...it does look like the cooling effect does come with the requirement to have a lot of exposed skin and to be in a dry rather than humid atmosphere though which makes sense in terms of evaporation etc. They don’t seem to understand why this happens with hot drinks though and the stuff about the ‘thermo sensors’ seems quite speculative. It also doesn’t look at cold drinks side by side in different environmental conditions. I think what I get from this is unless you are in an arid dessert it’s not a good idea to drink a hot drink to cool down?

The spicy food thing is more likely to be based on pain conditioning and cultural, since capsicum heat is mainly detected by pain receptors in the mouth and throat. Mustard and pepper are similar. So unlike taste receptors the heat part can be dialled down by the brain the more you are exposed to it. I suspect that the fact that chillies grow better in hot climates may be the reason they are popular in those regions?
 
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Sorry to be a spice bore but I found these articles quite interesting mainly because it allowed me to celebrate that my memory hasn’t completely gone to mush in this hot weather):

Spread of chillies from Central America across the world (mainly due to Europeans trying to find alternative to pepper due to ottomans blocking trade routes from India)

http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1628191_1626317_1632291,00.html

Pain receptors for chillies

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-it-that-eating-spi/
 
I’ve just brought the cooling towels mentioned above, in bamboo as it’s eco friendlier.

Does anyone have rave reviews for the expensive dyson fans? I have an £80 Honeywell tower fan that’s reasonable but not so powerful. Outlaying £3-400 on dyson is only something I could do if it was much better.
 
Wonko said:
I have them, they weren't really bought to keep flies out, but to keep my rather dim cat from falling out (she used to climb out onto the outside windowsill, sit down to look at the people pointing at a cat on a 3 inch wide sill 40-50 foot up , and then find out she was falling, there having been nothing to sit on, she did this on more than one occasion, so something had to be done).
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Have you considered strapping a slice of buttered toast to your cat's back? Apparently cats always land on their feet, and buttered toast always lands buttered side down, so with the toast strapped to her back when she fell off the window ledge she'd start spinning and become a perpetual motion machine, which apart from anything else (scientific breakthrough, viral youtube video etc etc) would serve her right.
 
TiredSam said:
Have you considered strapping a slice of buttered toast to your cat's back? Apparently cats always land on their feet, and buttered toast always lands buttered side down, so with the toast strapped to her back when she fell off the window ledge she'd start spinning and become a perpetual motion machine, which apart from anything else (scientific breakthrough, viral youtube video etc etc) would serve her right.
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Unfortunately :wtf: she did land on her feet (it's a high enough drop to allow that), she has damaged joints because of it - she generally landed on grass but, and this was a long time ago, I would assume after several days of hot weather the concrete would probably have given her a softer landing.

ETA - with toast fitted on her back she would obviously land on her head :devilish:

@Trish

It's not all my neighbours, it's mainly 2 (out of 18) flats, with another few chipping in occasionally. The main problems outside come because of a decision the housing association made about a year ago, it seems specifically to piss me off. 10 yards away there used to be a right of way through a fence (dropped curb and everything lol) onto another "road". Because this "road" was used to deal drugs, the dealers of which were never any problem to passers by, they blocked the through access off, to distance it from their estate. So now we have cars of people turning up right outside, on the housing associations estate, instead of around a corner, not on their estate, with loud music going, attracting crowds of "people" who coz they are drunk, stoned, and generally young, are a bloody nuisance. The other aspect to blocking it off is instead of being able to cut through to the main road when I go out I now have a 200-250m walk to get to the same place, which is a problem.
 
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It's bloody freezing!!!

(Met office says outside temp is 16C, my thermometer says inside temp is 24C, which is conventionally considered to be warm, but I'm cold, virtually shivering)

A cold front is apparently an effective way of dealing with hot weather, but not a good one right now.
 
Oh @Wonko, I feel for you. Time to hide under the duvet with a cat and a hot water bottle!

I seem to have a very narrow window of acceptable ambient temperature too. Anything outside the range of 21 to 23 C on my bedroom thermometer can be a problem, and even within that range my head can be too hot and my feet too cold. So I have a fan directed at my face and my trusty microwaved teddy bear at my feet.
 
Wonko has just reminded me of another useful tool, the indoor thermometer :)

I've got a 'HTC-1' (whatever that means). It has a nice large display, tells temperature (C or F), humidity, time and date, and has an alarm too. It's lightweight, has a stand and a keyhole hanging thing, so can be free standing or hung on the wall, large enough buttons to not be fiddly, a button to switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit, and a AAA battery will run for years on it.

iu
 
My epoxy resin, that was supposed to be here on Thursday, to repair a free evaporative cooler, was announced as 'irretrievably damaged' by the courier last night. This is after amazon stating that delivery had been attempted twice, when the courier said it was still in a distant hub.

Amazon still want me to wait until Tuesday for it, when the courier has said they will not deliver, as it's irretrievably damaged.

I imagine that it was insufficiently packaged and got caught in the hubs sorting tracks/machinery. I do hope that Evri didn't have to shut down a conveyor gunked together by high strength epoxy :nailbiting:

On Tuesday I have no doubt amazon will simply start the refund process, so possibly another several days before I get the money back so that I can order again.

Meanwhile the price of it has gone up from £17 to a few pennies under £19, when even the original price was pushing it for repair of a low end broken 'free' cooler. It's a VonHaus - a company that deliberately has inferior things manufactured as people buy them as they are relatively cheap. Tat often is.

So my chances of getting this cooler working in the next week or so seem....slim.

In the meantime I have no doubt all the steam coming off my head, and flames coming from my ears, will cool me down.

ETA - and it gets worse. Amazon made me wait until today before allowing me to 'do' anything, they aren't going to, despite their system saying undeliverable. They then graciously accepted there was a 'problem', and still did nothing. They did provide a link for me to use so I could take action, but things like cancel order, ask for a refund, or even 'speak' to a person, all unavailable. Even a sub option of report a problem only offered me tracking.

I am now trying a 'chat' with amazon marketplace, to ask for a refund, quoted response time is 3 days, to even have it considered. Before which they they want the damaged item back.

So - maybe January 3267 before this tank gets fixed, by which time the epoxy could well be £47.6 Trillion a tube vs my £17 something refund.
 
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On the plus side I have just managed to produce my first batch of spherical ice cubes, so that's nice, and more on topic lol

More difficult than you'd think, my first attempt only produced one sphere, the rest were definitely not spherical.

All down to the speed they are whirred at when standing in the freezer I expect :laugh:
 
Mij said:
@Wonko

Why spherical ice cubes? Just for fun or are they special in some way.
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They are very special to me, they cool drinks, an important thing, and they cool them ,allegedly, faster than cubical ice cubes - something to do with the surface area being larger. They are also significantly bigger than standard ice cubes so may last longer.

Obviously I have to research this, it will probably take many drinks to do so.
 
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