Storm of the Century

Anyone else in the UK experiencing this storm? Near continuous lightning. Never seen anything like it in all my 67 years. We had some real chunky hailstones and thunder a few hours ago and then it went quiet. Half an hour ago the lightning started then the rain poured down. The rain has nearly stopped but the lightning display goes on as the storm moves gradually northwards.

Cheers

Ian

Nah, the heavy stuff has not reached us yet in Buckinghamshire, just an odd heavy shower. 

I think we are due for our share of the heavy storm tomorrow.  It will be most welcome here as my garden is starting to look like a dust patch.

Cheers

Mike

Near continuous lightning. Never seen anything like it in all my 67 years

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It's the gods setting you up with all that GW denialism =D 

boji said:

It's the gods setting you up with all that GW denialism =D 

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I wondered how long it would take someone to make that connection. LOL

Cheers

Ian

Big storm out at sea to the East of Brighton. Some rain here during the day but not a lot. The temperature has - thankfully - dropped dramatically

My gf, who is near Manchester, says that she got a sunburn moving from her front door to her backyard...and she had the redness to prove it.

I was in Howeth a few weeks ago, and the heat rivaled anything I've ever experienced. Wow.

I will resist the temptation to say "I'll show you hot and humid, come visit MS", in fact it is relative so if unaccustomed and unprepared high heat and humidity can be deadly. High humidity interferes with evaporative cooling that our body uses to regulate our core temperatures.

Several rules to consider

- properly hydrate... by the time we feel thirsty we are already in deficit, so drink before, during , and after heavy outdoor work. Drinking chilled beverages has the additional benefit of directly cooling our core.

-if you do so much outdoor work in heat that you sweat profusely you are losing electrolytes too (that is why sweat tastes salty). If you lose too much salt your body can have trouble regulating internal water transfers (salt concentration is used internally to force osmosis and push/pull water through cell walls).  Most people who eat french fries at McDonalds will not be short of salt, but healthy diets can leave us salt deficient in extreme cases.  (one night this week I was getting leg cramps from low salt, that I fixed by washing down about 5 grams of table salt in the middle of the night. ) Electrolyte drinks contain several other components, but in my experience a few grams of cheap table salt with get it done. (when I was young I remember seeing salt pill dispensers, for us to take prophylactically during hot weather.)

-try not to do outdoor work during the heat of the day, maybe start earlier or later to benefit from cooler conditions. If crazy (stupid like me) one technique I used back when I used to run in high 90's temperatures was to put ice cubes in small plastic baggies, with holes punched in them so they would leak melt water, and safety pin them to my shirt. Over the course of my run the ice would melt and help cool me

-if older, be more careful, internal temperature regulation is one of our several bodily functions that degrades with age. 

-if you feel a heat event coming on get indoors preferably to an air conditioned space and just sit still, if not an option get into the shade and rehydrate, hopefully with something chilled. Heat exhaustion is exactly what it sounds like, you get light headed, dizzy, and feel depleted.

Be careful out there.... For the last couple weeks about half the days here have been under heat advisories.

JR

Someone suggested lately a hollow block of ice with a regular desk top or upright fan blowing air through it at you works great . Its a bit messy ,but if you had a chest freezer you could freeze down a hollow block  ,of course hoisting and draining a large block of ice as it cools presents its own light engineering challenges .  The water in the air blown past the ice would tend to condense and could flow away along with melt water through  an over flow pipe in a shallow plastic basin . Its not hot enough for me to need anything like that here . Be fun to try though.                                   

Tubetec said:

Someone suggested lately a hollow block of ice with a regular desk top or upright fan blowing air through it at you works great . Its a bit messy ,but if you had a chest freezer you could freeze down a hollow block  ,of course hoisting and draining a large block of ice as it cools presents its own light engineering challenges .  The water in the air blown past the ice would tend to condense and could flow away along with melt water through  an over flow pipe in a shallow plastic basin . Its not hot enough for me to need anything like that here . Be fun to try though.                                 

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I would be apprehensive about doing that indoors as it would increase humidity that makes us less comfortable (not to mention making mold and mildew more comfortable). The nice thing about air conditioning is that it dehumidifies the indoor air at the same time as cooling it, a comfort win-win. The fan without the ice will provide a huge benefit as it assists our natural evaporative cooling.

Ice in direct contact can only be done in small doses (like ice cube sized). Too much cold in direct contact can become painful as I learned experimentally years ago.  I routinely ice my bad knee almost every day when it gets inflamed from too much activity. In that case the knee feels warm to the touch and easily melts 3-4 ice cubes (inside a watertight baggie to avoid any mess).  Afterwards the two knees feel the same temperature again and my icing is done.  8)

JR

PS: In dry climates they use swamp coolers to take advantage of the latent heat absorbed by water evaporating to cool air, in humid climes not so much.

> thing about air conditioning is that it dehumidifies the indoor air at the same time as cooling it,

I'm running the A/C more to knock-down the damp than for cooling.

I designed it "small" so-that it would run long enough to de-damp.

Still it can be "cold" before it gets dry. Industrially we would re-heat cold dry air. I'm now realizing that >half the "warm enough?" days on the Maine coast, what I really want is a dehumidifier-- knocks down the water without cooling. Then run the A/C for the final bit of comfort.

(I have a dehumidifier-- down cellar. It runs half of May-October to control the mold.)

The A/C compressor came with dire warnings not to install it indoors. Duh? Well actually I suspect I "could" have let it blow the heat in the cellar. At summer-start it is below 60F down there. I suspect a heavy summer worth of A/C heat-dump could approach 80F (limited by vast conduction to 56F ground). The A/C would "short" through the floor but that's pretty stout thermally. And it would take the dip out of the following winter's cellar cold, maybe. (If the ground stayed still, it would hold heat. I do suspect considerable groundwater seepage under/past the cellar floor.)

PRR said:

> thing about air conditioning is that it dehumidifies the indoor air at the same time as cooling it,

I'm running the A/C more to knock-down the damp than for cooling.

I designed it "small" so-that it would run long enough to de-damp.

Still it can be "cold" before it gets dry. Industrially we would re-heat cold dry air. I'm now realizing that >half the "warm enough?" days on the Maine coast, what I really want is a dehumidifier-- knocks down the water without cooling. Then run the A/C for the final bit of comfort.

(I have a dehumidifier-- down cellar. It runs half of May-October to control the mold.)

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I actually have two dehumidifiers that I run 24x7 (one day time, the other for night time) to keep indoor black mold in check (mold can't live with humidity below 40-50%). These dehumidifiers can add significant heat, no problem in the winter, but not very desirable in the summer (in MS).

My smart air conditioner "economy" settings shuts down at night when outdoor temps are falling, so my nighttime dehumidifier easily grabs a gallon of water over night while heating up the casa. In the day time hours my air co basically grabs all the free water so my day time dehumidifier just coasts not collecting enough water to empty. 

The A/C compressor came with dire warnings not to install it indoors. Duh? Well actually I suspect I "could" have let it blow the heat in the cellar. At summer-start it is below 60F down there. I suspect a heavy summer worth of A/C heat-dump could approach 80F (limited by vast conduction to 56F ground). The A/C would "short" through the floor but that's pretty stout thermally. And it would take the dip out of the following winter's cellar cold, maybe. (If the ground stayed still, it would hold heat. I do suspect considerable groundwater seepage under/past the cellar floor.)

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Just do it.... If it sounds smart it probably is. You are smarter than the average bear.

[edit] maybe... if there is adequate air turnover to move the heat required. [/edit]

I have recently started setting my air conditioner thermostat lower in the day time to get more water extraction from the air conditioner than the dehumidifier (with it's inadvertent heat) which I can during summer months.  Since doing that my daytime dehumidifier doesn't get squat moisture. My next experiment is to defeat the energy saving feature on the air conditioner, so it will run more overnight and pull water then so the night time dehumidifier can work less, introducing less heat indoors. 

[edit] OK the experimental results came in almost immediately... I could literally see the humidity increase on my temp/humidity monitor, as the fan kept running after the compressor cycled off. In hindsight, the air moving across the damp compressor coils just evaporated that moisture back into the room air. So back to energy saver mode.  :-[  I wish I could defeat the hysteresis and paying attention to outdoor temperature direction of change,  but that's life.  [/edit]

The summer economics of energy saving may suggest my not using the smart thermostat at all, and just let the air conditioner manage simple indoor temperature. Winter is different with both dehumidifiers pulling water that the air conditioner doesn't get when not running.

JR

PS: My third dehumidifier, a slick Peltier based unit that was supposed to be quiet had a fan so A) it wasn't quiet, B) broke several times (fan once and PS twice) and C) when working didn't grab much moisture... I already don't miss it.  Sad when a clever design concept fails to deliver.  I am sucker for high technology, but it should at least work better than low tech.

Here's a tip for you to cool your house down towards the end of the day.

If you have one, open the loft door and open the windows wide at ground level.  At first level, open the windows just a bit. Providing your loft is not air-tight, the loft opening provides a chimney effect and pulls in cooler air from ground level and cools down the house.  The air flow can be quite dramatic.

I should have labelled this one "Wiring Tip No5" 

Cheers from a muggy 31C

Mike

madswitcher said:

Here's a tip for you to cool your house down towards the end of the day.

If you have one, open the loft door and open the windows wide at ground level.  At first level, open the windows just a bit. Providing your loft is not air-tight, the loft opening provides a chimney effect and pulls in cooler air from ground level and cools down the house.  The air flow can be quite dramatic.

I should have labelled this one "Wiring Tip No5" 

Cheers from a muggy 31C

Mike

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The success of that strategy may depend on local climate.

My house has an attic fan that I haven't used for years.  My recollection for why I stopped was that it sucked small bugs in through the screens.  My windows and doors now stay sealed 24x7. The house I grew up in NJ, also had an attic fan I recall using in the summer to suck hot air out of the attic and upper levels.

My outdoor temp right now is still 93'F (late afternoon) but it has cooled off since last week.

To make this DIY audio interesting (I hope), some old houses for wealthy plantation owners designed a heat chimney in the central staircase of a multi-level house, not unlike we've seen in passively cooled power amp designs (with a vertical heatsink tunnels).

To boost the vertical air flow, some wealthy homeowners installed gas burners near the top of their indoor heat chimney. Adding heat there actually drove more hot air out the top creating suction to pull in more cool air from cooler ground level windows and doors.

Simple but elegant and worked (while not as good as modern central air conditioning, that also reduces humidity. )

JR