You simply dampen a sheet with cold water and then hang it over an open window. 'So opening windows at the top and opening the windows at the bottom will create a chimney effect - cool air being sucked in and hot air leaving through the top floor.'-James Drummond In this case, the leaf is a wet bed sheet and the tree is your home or apartment. The principle is the same as leaves evaporating moisture to keep a tree's temperature down. Nicknamed 'swamp coolers,' you can make your own if you have a window or two. Old-school 'swamp coolers'Īmericans living in the hot, dry southwestern states have a way to keep your pad inhabitable that was figured out long before the advent of air conditioning. The caveat is that on really humid days the wet air can't take up any more moisture, so tree sweating slows down considerably. If they’re as warm or warmer, it won’t help much." "If these objects are cold, then you emit energy towards them and feel that as a reduction in temperature. "Part of the balance of how you warm up or cool off is the temperature of the things around you," Way says. Even in the shade you'll feel the building's heat, so it's unlikely to provide much cooling effect. The heat energy is radiated outwards, which is why you can often feel the heat of hot sidewalk or concrete building before you even touch it, Way says. (Canadian Press)Ĭoncrete, asphalt and stone absorb the sun's energy constantly, becoming progressively warmer as temperatures peak. Shade from leafy trees is often cooler than shade cast from concrete buildings, because trees can actually cool themselves and the air around them. "If you looked at a building with trees around it through an infrared camera, a camera that shows you the heat signatures of objects, you'd see that the trees are significantly cooler than the building," says Danielle Way, a plant physiologist and assistant professor at Western University in London, Ont. It helps to cool the tree down, among other things, and keeps the surrounding air slightly cooler as well. Essentially, it's tree sweat: water moving through a tree is evaporated into the atmosphere through the leaves. The reason is that trees, being alive and sensitive to temperature just like humans, can cool themselves off.ĭuring the day leaves transpirate. Shade cast by a tree is usually much cooler than cover coming from, for example, high rises in the downtown of a city. If you can find a big, leafy tree on a hot day, then you’ve potentially hit the shade jackpot. Here are a few lesser-known but effective ways to keep yourself and your home cool during the searing days of summer. Many should probably be left to the nether reaches of the internet, but some are for real. There's a multitude of novel, and in some cases downright outlandish, tips and tricks to stay cool during heat spells. The humidex explained: The flawed Canadian way to calculate summer discomfort. Heat wave shatters temperature records across B.C.But Canadians without air conditioning need not simply sweat and fret about the heat. saw record summer temperatures during its own heat wave. Temperatures in the high thirties are oppressing parts of Eastern and central Canada this week, and earlier this month B.C. The Canadian summer: BBQs with friends, patio cocktails after work and the occasional sweltering heat wave that has the sweating masses desperately searching for clever ways to cool off.
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