The Great 'Ways to keep cool' Hunt

amandada

Our house is north/south facing, with the living rooms facing south. I keep the blinds closed in the living rooms until the early afternoon. It helps keep the temperature down and also means that that furnishings don't get bleached by the sun

cyclingyorkie

mealone wrote: »

If you have a normal fan, freeze some water in a container then place this infront of the fan and you have cheap air con and just change the containers for continuious cold air.

Stand the container on a cloth to stop drips.

be careful - CSI featured a case like that once!

[Deleted User]

still to do following advice from this thread:

make a cooling neckband
and dig out the plant mister
also put damp flannel in the fridge

I made lovely ice lollies yesterday using plastic lolly forms from T. £1 for a pack of 4 and hm juice

I juiced some water melon and 1 granny smith. We drank the rest and it was really nice

We have a big sun umbrella up on the patio outside my living kitchen and I go under there on an airy seat. It did remind me though that it won`t be enough if the weather gets really stifling as it was still getting very hot when the sun was blazing on it. The ambient temperature is on a building up mode, so much so, that it gets hard to escape it. Lets not forget that many many people died during the last big heatwave

It looks as though we have only a few days to prepare

misskool

Have a coolish shower, just under body temperature. If you have a cold shower, the body tries to heat up as it thinks you've gone too cold.

rosieben

ceridwen wrote: »

... Just remembered to dig out my fan too - as in personal hold in the hand type fan (the old-fashioned sort - a la 18th Century - not the electric fan type..)

and a very useful thing to have Ceridwen :cool: shall we start a new trend?

Paper fans are very easy to make and can be as plain or fancy as you like; a couple of years ago I helped my dgd make one. She glitter-painted it, hung pretty beads from ribbon tied around the 'handle' and presented it to her mum - my dd loved it. We used lining paper from a roll which made quite a big sturdy fan, or you could use thin card or even a pretty wallpaper sample - sorry B&Q

There are loads of instructions on the net but here's a couple of links if anyone is interested; this one is plain and simple, and this one is fancy enough for a summer wedding. If I can find the link that we used I'll post it as it was so pretty.

keep cool peeps! :cool:

edited to add: this is the pattern we used; we didn't glue it, I punched a hole a couple of inches from the bottom and threaded ribbon in and round both sides of the paper.

[Deleted User]

oooh yes, thanks Ceridwen. I have a nice real os fan in the top of my wardrobe. I completely forgot about it. I imagine it would be ultra effective after a spritz of water or a wipe with a cold wet flannel

cyclingyorkie

when kids were little and couldn't sleep cos it was hot i'd make them wear a pair of cold wet socks.

The theory says because the feet are suddenly cold the body diverts the blood supply away from the brain to the feet - to warm them up.

putting on cold wet socks leads to complaints - but it worked!

thriftlady_2

cyclingyorkie wrote: »

be careful - CSI featured a case like that once!

What happened?

Aril

I think I've posted this one before but anyway....for grumpy hot children fill a hot water bottle with cold water. Along similar lines to the wet socks my friend wets a towel and lies that over her body when on holiday. She said it's bone dry by the morning
Aril

Austin_Allegro

'Shutting out the heat' goes against our British common sense of getting in as much light and air as possible, but it does seem to work. I keep the internal doors and curtains shut during the day (I'm out at work anyway) then keep the windows open at night to let out the warm air. Then in the morning you shut everything up to trap the cooler night air in the house.

I stayed in southern Spain for a while and my landlady used to annoy me by doing this all the time. I used to go around opening the windows wide 'to let the fresh air in' until I worked out why that was a bad idea!