how did our ancesters deal with the HEAT

[Trish]

we are going to be having our 2nd heat wave tomorrow, sat and sun high 90's close to 100 and HUMID. We do not

t have central air but we do have window units and ceiling fans. We still whine about it so I was wondering what people did before ac or fans and they sure wore a lot more clothes than we do. Did they go down to basements or root cellars, did they lay in cold creeks lol.

 

You open windows a certain way to create a "cross-breeze." You leave the curtains closed and shades down. In my childhood we would take a cool shower. Sleep downstairs. Stay in the shade. My mother would take us to the library. Yeah, not exactly "ancestral" times, but pre-air conditioning!

[FaithManor]

My maternal grandmother always said that healthy people built up a tolerance. But her emphasis was on healthy. During heat waves of this magnitude, if rain was not plentiful, wells ran low and sometimes dry since they were hand dug. Modern wells are 150-200 ft. deep, down to the rock bed so they access underground acquifiers and when the water table is low, they still produce water. Not the case back then, hand dug, they were very shallow and ran dry easily. So she said that water had to rationed. Creeks and ponds ran low but if there was dew on the grass, that helped the grazing livestock. Otherwise, farmers even had to bring the animals into the paddock so they couldn't just drink all day at the water hole because they'd quickly run them dry.

 

The strong lived, the weak died. She said during intense heat waves without rain, it was not uncommon to lose elderly people, those who had been sick during the winter, and young infants. She said it was due to the fact that with water rationing, many women's b.milk supply dried up, the cows and goats dried up leaving nothing for supplementation, and many infants didn't want to nurse anyway because they were so hideously uncomfortable laying against their mother's skin that they wouldn't want to nurse often. Two of her baby sisters did not make it through their infancy due to heat and drought. Her mother would have died one summer due to heat stroke during her pregnancy...a neighbor sacrificed the last large chunk of ice he had in his ice house to save her. The country doc and grandma's aunt, broke it into pieces with a hammer, and packed her in the ice. When she was well enough to travel, she was taken to the lake and left with a relative to spend the rest of the summer basically sitting in the water - the cost of paying for a room nearly bankrupted my maternal great-grandfather. The pregnancy went almost to term, but the baby boy only lived 24 hrs. The doctor said it was because of the heat exhaustion.

 

So, yeah....people may have been more tolerant, and houses may have been built for ventilation, but, many settlers didn't have root cellars and the like - cheap lumber houses thrown up quickly when they had to concentrate on clearing and planting in order to make good on their claim to homestead the land. Many didn't have ice houses to cool off in or to make ice cream and iced drinks. Many people had wells run dry. It wasn't pretty.

 

I'll take my two window air units. Even though this place is big, the entire downstairs is cooled by them because of the heavy beam construction with brick and river rock exterior and the fan at the top of the basement stairs pulling cool air into the first story.

 

Faith

[Soror]

I was thinking something similar Faith, some still don't have air and in heat waves some of those die, especially the sick and elderly. We are in a drought here as well and the local creeks are dry, thankfully we have a river but it is a further hike. I was reading somewhere else about some study in Pakistan I believe and it talked about how the mortality rates decreased a fair amount in places with ac.

 

I do think we are too spoiled to it and for many it is hard to deal with it(especially for those in the south) because houses just aren't designed to cool well without ac(both in structure and placement). Likewise new houses aren't built to deal with humidity very well either.

 

We are working here on decreasing our dependency as much as possible because (1) I'm cheap and (2) I prefer to be more self-sufficient.

[Parrothead]

One thing I didn't see anyone mention was that they would travel out of the cities. At least the wealthier of the bunch. Summer houses in the country, on an island or in the woods.

 

We had two days of summer temps here last weekend. Then it rained for 6 days and the temps fell back to the 60s. Today and tomorrow we are supposed to get to 80 and 83. Then back down to the 70s. Our leaves will start changing to fall colors in about 6 weeks. We won't have summer this year.

 

If here was within driving distance (either car or on a horse) people came to escape the heat.

[kubiac]

Here's a modern lady who lives in Australia:

 

When I updated this page in March 2008 we in Adelaide were experiencing a record-breaking heatwave, as well as being in the third year of serious drought. I noted:-

As so far I have resisted using air-conditioning, I am using a variety of strategies to keep myself and my house as cool as possible, and the garden thriving in spite of very necessary water restrictions. I'll let you know if I succeed in getting through this horrendous time without refrigerated air-conditioning. But I am already horrified by my dependence on electricity during the heat. I simply could no longer manage without my fridge/freezeror the fan. It's a sobering realisation!

I made it! without an air conditioner! At the worst times I lay on my tiled floor & let the tiles drag the heat from my body. But the garden, especially the trees, & the fans were usually sufficient. Hot nights, when opening the house up didn't reduce the temperture inside by much, were the worst.

Edited June 29, 2012 by kubiac

[Moxie]

My BIL is from Bangladesh. When he moved here he was cold all of the time. I think you just get used to some things.

[JumpyTheFrog]

Faith, thank you for your detailed post. It's a sober reminder of how even though we Americans can seem like wimps in many ways, our modern conveniences have allowed many people to live that otherwise would have died.

[JumpyTheFrog]

I grew up near a summer resort town that used to be one of the places people from NYC would escape to in the summer.

 

Also, nobody has mentioned that having slaves do the hard work in the summer made it easier for some people to survive the heat. They could stay cool while someone else paid the price of working in the heat. (I wonder if the slaves were allowed time off to swim or if they had to work all day no matter how hot?)

[TravelingChris]

Not sure how hot the area where my dad grew up got- Warsaw but my mom lived in the steppes of what was then Poland and now is Ukraine so I know that area got hot. So I will talk about my mom.

 

Her house was built with thick stucco walls so cooler than some of the current construction. The kitchen was in a separate building. Electric fans were popular and I assume ice was used generously.

 

I visited a palace in Bavaria that had a unique cooling system- a cascading stream going under the house in the middle of the structure and there were giant windows to take in the cool air into the house.

 

The British government paid extra to their employees who were stationed in DC before air conditioning. Not only was the heat a problem but the area also had malaria as a hazard.

[WistfulRidge]

I admit, I would die without A/C. I have zero heat tolerance, to the point that in the pre-AC portion of my life I had several episodes of heat exhaustion, bordering on full out heat stroke (no matter what I did!) every year. Even now I feel like a bit of a bad mom because DS1 won't get to play outside today because it is already 90 degrees with very little breeze...

[justLisa]

Not sure how hot the area where my dad grew up got- Warsaw but my mom lived in the steppes of what was then Poland and now is Ukraine so I know that area got hot. So I will talk about my mom.

 

Her house was built with thick stucco walls so cooler than some of the current construction. The kitchen was in a separate building. Electric fans were popular and I assume ice was used generously.

 

I visited a palace in Bavaria that had a unique cooling system- a cascading stream going under the house in the middle of the structure and there were giant windows to take in the cool air into the house.

 

The British government paid extra to their employees who were stationed in DC before air conditioning. Not only was the heat a problem but the area also had malaria as a hazard.

 

That is were DH was born :D

[Lisa in Jax]

How precious that you have this bit of history from your family! :001_smile:

 

I know I'm way down thread but I just had to reply. It is very cool that you have those memoirs!

 

I agree. I'm very glad he wrote them. :)

 

Lisa

[idnib]

Most of my family still lives in a place that has:

 

--No A/C except for the very rich

--Temps above 95 during most summer days, can reach into the 120s

--Lows in the 80s or 90s

--Humidity of at least 80%

--Power outages of 4-8 hours/day, usually during the hottest time, due to corruption and lack of infrastructure

--People who wear long sleeves and pants and sometimes hijabs or even full burkas, often all black(!)

 

Mostly, they hate the heat (not an overstatement). People often sleep outside in courtyards in their homes or even in front of their houses. Children play in dirty water to keep cool. They run the fans when they can and wait for winter, when they're freezing because it's 60 degrees! (That's when I visit.)

 

They eat a lot of spicy food (makes them sweat), lots of cold yogurt, lots of fruit.

 

Wealthier people (but not rich enough for A/C) go to the mountains in the summer.

 

Basically, they suck it up.

[Jen in PA]

The house I grew up in was built in 1863, and had a small outbuilding that had been the "summer kitchen." I think the concept is pretty similar to grilling so that the house doesn't heat up. The house next door had a cold cellar -- a great hiding place for us when we were kids!

 

We do not have ac...... and I honestly don't want it, although DH would probably be happier if we got a window unit or two. I do a lot of what has been mentioned in other posts in regards to keeping crossbreezes going, keeping the blinds down during the day and the windows wide open at night. I keep cooking to a minimum and do it all early in the morning. I do as much housework and yardwork as possible before noon. It's 94 degrees here (and climbing), and DS and I have been out working in the garden, and DD is out riding her bike right now...... I think that it doesn't phase us because we are used to it, but that DH has more of a problem after spending the day in an office with ac.

[Dustybug]

I haven't read all of the replies, but I grew up without AC. We spent more time outside because we lived in a trailer (big metal heat conducting box!) and it was cooler out than in. We had a small above ground pool that we would dunk ourselves in, clothes and all when we got too hot.

[PeacefulChaos]

I was actually just thinking about this topic earlier today. It's currently 104 here (and humid) and it's supposed to be like this all weekend. And we're having our church service and a picnic outside on Sunday (with no pool/sprinkler/etc)!! :svengo: Half of me hates the idea and almost doesn't want to go, and the other half just says suck it up and deal with it.

I personally have always had AC. I grew up with it, we had it in our first apartment, we had window units in our first rental home, and we have central air now. The window units could be tough, but they really did keep it ok in the house. We had one in the living room downstairs and one in the bonus room upstairs which both managed to cool the house ok. The bedrooms could get a little warm, but with fans we made it work. The summer electric bill was awesome (around $40/month) though the winter one more than made up for it at $500/mo (electric heat), so we never really got to enjoy the benefits of the cheap summer bill. :)

Now I guess I am a little spoiled with our central air - I prefer cold for sleeping.

 

We keep our house around 80 in the summer, and I find that it helps the kids adjust to the outside temps better. The problem we have is going to an air conditioned restaurant and we're all freezing. How cold do they keep those places?

I have actually noticed this some, myself. Last summer we did have a small garden, and we went out every morning (well, mid-late morning- 9/10ish) and I would weed some while the kids played and then we'd usually stay out until close to lunch time. I would find myself freezing for half of the day inside because I was used to outside temps!

The same actually happened the other day - we were outside all morning at the park and it took most of the afternoon for me to NOT be cold inside. Currently I have a blanket on inside, but that's because I just drank my blended iced mocha. :D We keep the air conditioner around 72.

What else could they do, really? Find water, some shade, rest if they were able/allowed.

 

I have a close (US) friend who worked (not high finance) in India for 3 years. She said she tried to avoid any buildings with AC unless necesssary. She swore she built up a tolerance. She stayed hydrated, and slowed down when it was on the brink of getting to be too much etc. My friend swears that any time spent in an AC building (certain hotels, embassies etc) set her staminia too far back, so she made a point of avoiding AC whenever possible.

 

She says she was not above dumping water or down her back or head when able. She laughs about sometimes putting ice cubes in her bra. Certainly not haute couture, right? lol

 

Where I live, it could be 100+ degrees, and even with high humidity, the ocean is still refreshing, That does help! Just dipping in the toes helps! Having a cool shower, or squirting yourself with the hose when watering the garden also brings great relief. lol I did that today. Good thing I didn't actually have to be anywhere later needing to look presentable. ;)

Water is a HUGE help. My ILs have a pool and when we've gone out there in past summers (they live nearby so it's a regular occurrence) I can get in the pool for a bit and then sit out in the shade and not feel hot for quite a long time. I'm just sitting, obviously, but I'm sure it works similarly if one is working - it just wouldn't last as long. :)

I remember as a teenager (having never been one to drink much water) going inside and getting a cold glass of water when it was hot out. I was shocked because I literally felt cooled down - much more so than if I had drank my regular faire.

:iagree: My dad works in 100 degree weather, and he starts at 6am, so he is done by 2 or 3. It does not feel as hot when you start out early and ease into the heat too. We tend to go out around 10am, and by then it is too hot to ease into it.

When DH was in construction he went out at 5 and got home around 2. Sometimes, on extremely hot days, they even cut it shorter than that.

My maternal grandmother always said that healthy people built up a tolerance. But her emphasis was on healthy. During heat waves of this magnitude, if rain was not plentiful, wells ran low and sometimes dry since they were hand dug. Modern wells are 150-200 ft. deep, down to the rock bed so they access underground acquifiers and when the water table is low, they still produce water. Not the case back then, hand dug, they were very shallow and ran dry easily. So she said that water had to rationed. Creeks and ponds ran low but if there was dew on the grass, that helped the grazing livestock. Otherwise, farmers even had to bring the animals into the paddock so they couldn't just drink all day at the water hole because they'd quickly run them dry.

 

The strong lived, the weak died. She said during intense heat waves without rain, it was not uncommon to lose elderly people, those who had been sick during the winter, and young infants. She said it was due to the fact that with water rationing, many women's b.milk supply dried up, the cows and goats dried up leaving nothing for supplementation, and many infants didn't want to nurse anyway because they were so hideously uncomfortable laying against their mother's skin that they wouldn't want to nurse often. Two of her baby sisters did not make it through their infancy due to heat and drought. Her mother would have died one summer due to heat stroke during her pregnancy...a neighbor sacrificed the last large chunk of ice he had in his ice house to save her. The country doc and grandma's aunt, broke it into pieces with a hammer, and packed her in the ice. When she was well enough to travel, she was taken to the lake and left with a relative to spend the rest of the summer basically sitting in the water - the cost of paying for a room nearly bankrupted my maternal great-grandfather. The pregnancy went almost to term, but the baby boy only lived 24 hrs. The doctor said it was because of the heat exhaustion.

 

So, yeah....people may have been more tolerant, and houses may have been built for ventilation, but, many settlers didn't have root cellars and the like - cheap lumber houses thrown up quickly when they had to concentrate on clearing and planting in order to make good on their claim to homestead the land. Many didn't have ice houses to cool off in or to make ice cream and iced drinks. Many people had wells run dry. It wasn't pretty.

 

I'll take my two window air units. Even though this place is big, the entire downstairs is cooled by them because of the heavy beam construction with brick and river rock exterior and the fan at the top of the basement stairs pulling cool air into the first story.

 

Faith

So I quoted this just to say I loved reading it. Not that it's a 'great story' in an entertaining way but I just love hearing about the past, kwim?

Faith, thank you for your detailed post. It's a sober reminder of how even though we Americans can seem like wimps in many ways, our modern conveniences have allowed many people to live that otherwise would have died.

:iagree:

[LibraryLover]

I don't know why this bothers me, but I have two different ages in my post. We bought our first house when we were 26. It did not have AC. When I was turning 28, we had our first baby. So, first AC was when pregnant because I felt like I was dying. As I said, it was from Rent-a -Center, because we couldn't find one to buy. Not that I have OCD tendencies or anythig. ;)

Edited June 29, 2012 by LibraryLover

[DianeW88]

Well, let's see...as a child, I grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, and we did not have air conditioning until I turned 8 years old. We spent every single day at our neighborhood pool. Most subdivisions had their own, and each family bought a membership, then practically moved in from June to September. :lol:

 

When my dad came home from work, we piled into our 1967 Pontiac Catalina...which had an AC that might be as powerful as my home central air is now :lol:...and headed out "on a drive". Nine times out of ten, we'd end up at the Tastee Freeze. All in all, it wasn't too bad.

 

When I moved to Denver with my dh in 1988, hardly any homes had central air. Nobody in our subdivision did, although a few families had swamp coolers. We stayed cool the same way...swam during the day, kept the windows opened at night, and used fans. The fact that the humidity rarely went above 5% in Denver helped a whole lot. :D

 

Here in Utah we have central AC, but it's still nice to sit outside in the shade, even on the hottest of days. I never want to move back to "Land of Ugly Humidity" again. :lol:

[TravelingChris]

I did grow up with a/c- first with window units, and they did work and then with central later on as we moved to other apartment units. Then, while in college, I stayed in Chicago during the summer a few years and then all year round after college for a year. I don't think our apartments all had window units, though I remember they didn't work to well in an extreme heat wave. Then we moved to coastal LA county. I think we may not have had a/c. Since we were near the beach, it really didn't get hot very often and in fact, the whole summers were rather cool. We moved to OH with central air. Then back to LA with central air. Then we moved to OH and bought a house with no air. I lived there for two summers and was pregnant with my third there who was born in Aug. I spent entire days at the library, shopping mall, movie theater, etc. I couldn;t tolerate it and vowed never to live without A?C again. So what happened. We moved to Sacramento with A/c. Then Albuquerque without A?C but a swamp cooler- fortunately that didn't work only a few days so those days were at any place that actually had a/c. Then we moved to Belgium where there was no A/C but we lived in the woods and built into a hillside and it wasn't too bad. When nearby in France they were having 100 plus temperatures, in my area of Belgium in the woods it never went above 90, MOst of the summers the highs were max 80 and not even that very often. My houses in FL, VA and AL had A/C. VA had inadequate A?C, particularly for the kids. I let them sleep iin lower floors when it was hot,. Here in AL, the A?C unit is completely adequate even with the temp being 103 right now. (I have a home weather station). I thank God for letting us find this house which was previously owned by an engineer and everything mechanical, electrical, drainage, etc, was done to perfection. (It helps me deal with my youngest who is also a perfectionist engineery type)>

[Soror]

Growing up we had window ac and it generally wasn't turned on until sometime in June when temps were 90+ for a good while. I remember being a hot a lot in the summer as Mom and Dad waited so long to turn it on, often I'd sit around in a bathing suit and when we were older we had a pool. Our house had a lot of shade though, which certainly helped.

 

Dh grew up with constant temp control and he has had a harder time adjusting to using the ac less with higher temps. He works in a metal building as well where the ac doesn't work hardly at all for his dept, it is often 90-100+ inside where he works w/ crazy humidity due to chemicals along with no breeze obviously and then he often has to climb up to work on various equipment, which is then even hotter. He then drives home in his little black car where the temps get to 130+ inside and the ac doesn't hardly work, by the time he makes it in he is toast. Thankfully his hrs are earlier though, he works 6:30am-3pm usually. In heat like this by the time he makes it in he wants a cool drink, and lays under the fan until he cools down.

[Violet Crown]

My great-great-grandfather was the governor of one of the desert territories. I've been in the 500-year-old governor's mansion, and its thick adobe walls, wraparound portico, and breezeway construction keep it nice and cool.

 

Don't know what the commoners did. :D

[Ibbygirl]

I just remembered something my mom told me about when she was growing up. She lived in Tampa, Florida which has hot humid summers and she had no AC either growing up. I remember her telling me that in the summertime, in heat of the day, my grandma used to take the kids to the movies because it was air conditioned.

[melmichigan]

We did not have AC growing up. I think it's freezing in here with the AC set at 80 and the ceiling fans all on medium. When my cousins come up from down south they think it's roasting because they are so used to having the AC set really low and staying inside. I think you just get used to dealing with the heat. We spent a lot of time in the pool or the sprinkler. From what I understand much of my family always lived on the river and spent a lot of time in the water.

[Jeannie in NJ]

I have never lived in a house with central air, however when we go over to local relatives houses I do love their central air. In our house, I do like to sleep with a window unit on but I hate having window or wall units on during the day. They give me headaches and make me feel antsy. I love having windows open but today is so hot that I had to turn on the wall unit especially because we had workers in remodeling our kitchen and bathroom and I didn't want any of them to collapse from the heat. Now they are gone for the day , as soon as it gets below 90, I am turning off that noisy wall unit and hope for nice breezes from outside. My cats hate the wall unit and will go upstairs and lay on my bed with no ac on.

[Laurie4b]

In our area, the local historical museum says most homes had a "summer" kitchen -- a screened porch where canning and cooking can be done without heating up the rest of the home. And many in the old days slept in the screened porch area as it was too hot inside during the humid Summer.

 

HTH

 

The kitchen-in-a-separate building was also true in the northeast, where I grew up. Besides heat, another reason to have a separate kitchen was to keep the house from burning down.

 

Additionally, the walls in the houses were THICK--like a couple feet of stone and plaster. That actually kept things cooler. My gps lived in a house built in the 1700s--so this is my actual memory--now summer nights, we sweated upstairs!

 

Like others have mentioned, that old house had a cellar, which was cool during the summer, but no one wanted to go down there. Dirt floors and critters of various types.

[WiseOwlKnits]

I'm convinced it wasn't so hot back then. No concrete. No cars putting out smog. No asphalt. All that stuff that heats up the air even more in the summer wasn't there. I'm sure it was still hot, but I don't think it was as hot for the most part.

[Firefly]

No A/C here... I'm not a fan. I have to bring sweaters to restaurants and the grocery store or else I freeze. We're on the coast in CT and it's rare that it gets super hot. We have a pool or could hike to the beach if we needed to, but I prefer the beach OFF season once the tourists are gone.

 

Our house was built in the late 1600's and had two kitchens-- the second is now my office. I really marvel at the way things were built. Our house faces south for maximum sun exposure/passive heat in the winter, yet shaded with plenty of trees and venitilated with a ton of windows to help keep cool in summer. And yes I agree with others, the plaster walls do help, too.

[pixeldog]

I hate AC as well (for all of the aforementioned reasons). We have shade trees around the house, ceiling fans and a couple of window fans. I make sure that the "sunny side" curtains are drawn and we get plenty of cross breezes through the house. I do my gardening/outside chores and walking in the early morning and take a cool shower afterward to start the day fresh. We take cool showers after dinner, as well so that we start and end the days cool from head to toe! A few "icy-pops" throughout the day helps, as well!

 

Actually, this is one of the reasons why we homeschool year-round.....when it's blazing hot outside we chill out and get some work done at our leisure.

 

Lastly, our latest home-improvement project was to put out a swinging porch bed. We turned our son's bed-on-stilts into a porch swing (four ropes, one at each corner). Two people can lounge (without touching 'cause it's just too hot) on the shady porch and get the breeze (especially in the morning and evening). We'd planned to screen in the porch next year, but I think I'll try hanging wet sheets and see how that works!

 

Great thread! :)

[Mimm]

I'm from Houston, TX and I'm just shocked at how many people hate AC! :) I always considered it completely non-optional in that climate (not that the 100 degree days we're having here in Missouri are any better). I lived down there when my daughters were born and my biggest fear was accidentally locking my keys in my car in the summer. You walk into stores in Houston and the AC hits you like a wall. A welcome wall of lovely icy air. :)