Southerners with no air conditioning

[FaithManor]

Slave children fanned them.

So true!

 

As for "the good ole days", while most people adapted, the reality is heat is hard on infants, young children, pregnant women, and the elderly and good many from every one of those categories died during scorching heat waves. A/C has saved many, many lives.

 

But, for those farm families that had an ice house, they had a good thing going way back when. Not only was it a marvelous place to cool off, but they could keep their drinks cold, take cold baths, and chip off ice, put it in their bandanas, and allow it to melt as they worked.

 

While some, especially the upper middle class and wealthy, could take naps and rest during the worst part of the day, the lower classes could not. During the industrial revolution, workers dropped like flies in those sweat shop factories. Pregnant women, even if they could allow themselves the luxury of a rest period, dropped like flies, and well, the cultural hang ups about clothing which meant females were clothes from neck to the tops of their shoes in long sleeves and dresses that took six or eight yards of fabric to make, well....dehydration and heat stroke were extremely common.

 

Also, when the pollen count is high, I am so grateful to be able to have the air and NOT have windows open. I can't imagine how badly people with ragweed and other similar allergies must suffer without air conditioning when that stuff is blowing around outside and the windows of the house have to be kept open for ventilation.

 

Faith

[KungFuPanda]

And I wonder though, does the heat in the south tend to be dry? Here it tends to be extremely humid on top of hot. So it feels like being in a tropical rain forest. And I know that because I went to a zoo that had a tropical rain forest exhibit and that is exactly how it felt! LOL

I doubt it is much more humid, but I'll believe you it's humid. I just wasn't sure.

 

We have insane humidity here.

I found this humidity record for Maryland. The average yearly afternoon humidity is 54% and morning is 77%. The percentiles go into the 80s in July and August. You just puddle here when it's hot. This summer it has rained EVERY FLIPPIN DAY, so the numbers are much higher this year. My glasses fog up when I leave the house :-/

 

Still, it's consistently MUCH cooler here than it was in GA near Savannah.

[celticmom]

And I wonder though, does the heat in the south tend to be dry?  Here it tends to be extremely humid on top of hot.  So it feels like being in a tropical rain forest. And I know that because I went to a zoo that had a tropical rain forest exhibit and that is exactly how it felt!  LOL

 

Where I live it is very, very humid. This is true of everywhere in the South that I have visited. I honestly wonder how they kept things from rotting from the humidity before a/c. If something metal is in a location that is protected from rain but not climate controlled it will often rust.

[Pawz4me]

I also have found that when it is over 40 oC it helps to mop the floor.  You get use to it. running an air conditioner just heats up the planet. :coolgleamA:

 

I'm guessing you have a dry heat?  I assume you mop the floor to add humidity?  Nobody on the east coast of the US would willingly add any humidity to the air right now.  It would just make things that much more miserable.  But I can understand that it might help if it were a dry heat.

[Melissa in Australia]

Well if you mop the floor it makes the floor cooler and they you can lie down on it. We mostly have dry heat. very dry! Sucks the moisture right out of you. Usually the hotter the day the stronger the wind. The really really hot days can have almost gale force hot north winds.   But we can and do get humid to, it just depends if the wind is blowing from the direction of the desert or the coast. We live right on the coast and can  sometimes get the air so humid in summer that we are in a sea fog.

[MyThreeSons]

Seriously, how do you do it? We are w/o ac for a while and it is going to be mid 90's with 80 and up percent humidity for next few days.

We are on our third Summer with no central A/C in the house, and no A/C in the van. Ds does have a window A/C unit in our guest apartment, which is where he hangs out most of the time. (And where I slept last night, as he is in Colombia for a week.) And dh has a window unit in his office down at the barn. I have an oscillating tower fan that's in the front room where I spend most of my time.

 

I cook very little in the Summer. I will buy a big pack of chicken at Sam's, and cook it at one time, then use it in dishes throughout the week. We also do lots of salads and sandwiches.

 

I go to the library or Barnes and Noble to cool off.

 

My brother-in-law and his brother came and checked out A/C last week. We are low on coolant. It costs $540 for a "bottle". We'll keep making do.

[Jan in SC]

We had a summer lake house in central SC with one window unit that my parents refused to use, unless my grandparents visited. Those were my favorite weeks of the summer!

 

Apparently, lying completely still and not thinking about the heat was an effective way to deal with it. At least that's what my parents told us!!! (I never bought it! 😃)

[Mommyof4ks]

I do not know anyone around here without a/c. Our city gives out window units and fans to low income and elderly people, so there is no reason not to have something to stay cool. Wow, I cannot imagine! Our a/c was broken for two days, and we stayed in the pool all day.

[ChristusG]

I could not imagine not having A/C down here in FL....I don't know anyone who doesn't have it.

[beaners]

Well if you mop the floor it makes the floor cooler and they you can lie down on it. We mostly have dry heat. very dry! Sucks the moisture right out of you. Usually the hotter the day the stronger the wind. The really really hot days can have almost gale force hot north winds.   But we can and do get humid to, it just depends if the wind is blowing from the direction of the desert or the coast. We live right on the coast and can  sometimes get the air so humid in summer that we are in a sea fog.

 

I can do low humidity.  We just spent a week in Texas (practically Mexico) and the temperature was in the 100s but not uncomfortable if you were in the shade or got splashed by the kids in the pool. We were outside in that almost the whole time.  We are back home now, and temperatures in the mid-90s with high humidity are terrible.  We lost 3 of our ducklings to the heat yesterday, which was awful. We aren't expected to have any storms to break the heat until Saturday.

[Halftime Hope]

My parents lived in Miami until last summer when we moved them.  They lived in a 60s bungalow house with windows *everywhere* on the lee side of a lake, so they depended on the breezes that generally came off the lake in the late afternoon.  Until then, it would be hot (upper 90s was the highest, generally in the upper 80s or lower 90s) and humid (often 90-100% humidity).  

 

Over the years many things in their home just molded or rotted from the humidity.  The solid wood furniture would get "climate stains" and need to be washed.  Leather would grow white mildew spots; paper the same.  The plaster above the sliding glass doors facing the lake rotted from the humidity.   The climate definitely took its toll on their household goods.

 

Tips for keeping cool:  Wear woven cotton broadcloth clothes.  Knits are just miserable; they don't breath and they stick to damp bodies.   Fans circulating the air are a godsend.  Tile floors feel cool to the feet even when it's terribly hot.  Pressure cookers are your friend.  Cool showers, lots of them.  Chilled drinks and chilled wet cloths around your neck. 

 

The first thing mom cooked when they moved and had A/C was a batch of her favorite pickles.  Under the circumstances, she hadn't canned in years.

 

When dh and I emptied their house after they moved, in two weeks flat, we stayed in a hotel with A/C so we could get a good night's sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

[GSOchristie]

We live in NC, and it hasn't been that hot this summer, but usually it is sweltering from May to October. It is pleasantly warm in March and April and November. It is very, very humid, too, so if you do anything outside you are dripping within one minute. I don't know if I could stand no air here. If we leave our windows open even in the spring and fall, it is 85-90 degrees in our house by night. We live in a new neighborhood so there is no shade anywhere. I don't personally know anyone without AC.

 

My dh grew up in Florida in the 80's and 90's with no air. He said it was miserable, you would just lie in your bed and sweat.

[SLT]

And I wonder though, does the heat in the south tend to be dry? Here it tends to be extremely humid on top of hot. So it feels like being in a tropical rain forest. And I know that because I went to a zoo that had a tropical rain forest exhibit and that is exactly how it felt! LOL

No, it tends to be very, very, very humid in the southeast. Here in NC, we average 90-100% humidity in the summer. On top of 95 degree temps, we heat index into the low 100s. It is miserable.

[Paige]

I grew up in the south and my grandmother didn't have a/c until I was a teenager. She had a house built around 1910. It wasn't that bad at her house in the summer and I spent several weeks with her every year. I remember every single window in the house would be open and there were fans in every room. People would sit right next to the fans. She also had a huge fan built into the window at the top of the stairway that sucked air in and down the stairs. She did not cook in the summer,and she had a huge covered porch with a swing. If you could swing quickly, it would feel like a breeze. She also took us to the pool every day. Her house had tons of plants inside it and I think they helped the air quality and she was serious about her landscaping outside. She had several shade trees and we could also go out and play in a big, cool, dirt pit. It was packed dirt- not like a pig sty, but the ground would feel cool there if you laid down.

 

When we lived in the north, we didn't have a/c and it didn't bother me until I had babies. Well, we had one window unit but it didn't work well. The worst part was living in the country where neighbors could burn brush and trash. When my preemie babies came home, we couldn't open the windows in the summer because our neighbor was always burning and they could not breathe with the smoke. I had to leave the house with them during the day and at night we slept in the basement. Now, we are back in the south and while the heat doesn't bother me much, we run the a/c most of the time because of allergies. My kids cannot have the windows open or they're up all night wheezing. We live in one of the worst areas of the country for allergies and the kids have never been so sick. We lived in a different area of the south that is hotter and more humid but we were healthier and could go outside more.

[Mrs. Darinski]

 

 

Be nice if the jet stream dipped a little and brought us some Canadian air, instead of this moist tropical stuff.

 

You want our air?  :huh:  I am in Central Ontario.  Trust me - it is moist right now.  :drool5: Well, tomorrow's high is supposed to be 86 degrees F with a humidex feeling like 106F(or metric  30C feeling like 41C)  If you want it you can have it.  ;)

 

I keep trying to look on the bright side - at least we don't have to shovel it.  :)  Thankfully, we have a window AC that keeps us comfortable.  Come wintertime, we will have lots of snow to 'enjoy', so I am trying to fix this as a 'happy time' in my memory.  The beach swimming has been great!!

[shukriyya]

I grew up with long, hot, humid, muggy summers. We never had AC. We had a couple of large fans and one or two smaller oscillating ones. First thing in the early morning, the windows and doors would all be flung open to let in the morning breezes and cooler air. Around 10 in the morning the house was then closed up, curtains drawn, doors closed. We used the fans a lot. There were endless cool showers, days at the pool and nights spent soaking up the cool, dark air and avoiding the giant June bugs. Dinners were cold and eaten later, often out of doors since the house held the heat. The attic was stifling with one small window per room. Mattresses were dragged onto the screened-in upstairs porch which was magical.

 

Lives were slower back then, there wasn't the compulsion to do, do, do and thus the opportunity to slow down which is what is required when it's super hot. And as others have said there were lots of trees lining the street for shade with houses built to take advantage of cross drafts.

[Joyofsixreboot]

Midwest no a/c.  Water of some kind~pool, sprinkler, water guns.  Library.  Box fan and we sit outside in the shade quite a bit.  I do not turn on the oven for anything!  Today the heat index will be over 100.  We'll be going to the pool, having dinner outside and attending a/c Bible School tonight.  Oh, and move slowly.

[Mbelle]

I am born and raised in GA.  My grandparents, and for many years, my cousins did not have A/C.  We just got used to it.  Flashforward several decades.  We bought an old southern house built in the teens with no A/C.  Those houses are built to withstand heat and it is fine until it gets above 90 and then it is just miserable.  We lived one year without A/C and it was a scorching summer.  The upstairs..used to be attic..is where the kids bedrooms are.  That summer they had to come sleep in the living room the entire month of August.  If it weren't modern times with crazy people we would have all slept on the porch.  

 

Deee in Oz..my husband is from Oz .. from a cooler region so no A/C is fine, but his parents have moved to Queensland and quite far up.  When we go there at Christmas time and the only A/C is in the master suite it is pretty miserable.  I usually end up sleeping on the floor to get cool.  I have no idea why they live up there, sure wish they would move back to southern Aus.