Minor things that bother you

[1995hoo]

the mesh liner means no need for underwear.

You're an adult now.  If you don't want to wear underwear, then don't wear underwear.

I find going totally commando uncomfortable.

[jeffandnicole]

Heh. I'm hot enough that I've thought about wearing swim trunks around the house because the mesh liner means no need for underwear.

You don't have to wear anything. Just keep the blinds shut.

[gonealookin]

Trying to sleep downstairs where it's coolest would be tricky (there is a couch and a recliner down there).

Few houses at Tahoe, and I'm sure in most mountain communities, were originally built with air conditioning, although I see people installing the units on the outside of the house all the time (our HOA is OK with that subject to neighbor consent).

Many homes including mine are "upside down" compared to the usual layout, with the living room and kitchen on the upper floor and the bedrooms below.  It works pretty well both summer and winter.  In the summer, the few days that get quite warm, just sleep with the windows open and you're usually pulling a blanket on about 3 a.m.  In the winter, the heat goes to where you spend most of your time and you can always add an extra blanket or two at night.

[1995hoo]

I've slept better than I thought I would the past two nights. That's not to say I've slept "well," of course. But I didn't have a horrible time of it (unlike my wife, who is a very light sleeper anyway).

Have any of you ever used a portable evaporative cooler? Home Depot sells them and the prices are reasonable. Of course I know they would not make it feel like AC would. But I'm wondering whether they are a reasonable option to augment the various fans we have running. Evaporative cooling has traditionally been popular in the Southwest (the hotels at the Grand Canyon have it instead of AC, for example), and that's part of what gives me pause—I figure the results in the dry desert climate might well be very different from a humid July on the East Coast.


Edited to add: I looked at the portable AC units where you run a tube to the window, but there's no realistic way to fit one in the master bedroom with the way we have the room set up. Hence why I'm long at other ideas (that might be cheaper, too).

[JayhawkCO]

Have any of you ever used a portable evaporative cooler?

Not in my house, but this is a fairly common "accessory" in developing world hotel rooms. The place I've seen them most frequently honestly is in airport waiting areas in small airports.

[Scott5114]

Have any of you ever used a portable evaporative cooler? Home Depot sells them and the prices are reasonable. Of course I know they would not make it feel like AC would. But I'm wondering whether they are a reasonable option to augment the various fans we have running. Evaporative cooling has traditionally been popular in the Southwest (the hotels at the Grand Canyon have it instead of AC, for example), and that's part of what gives me pause—I figure the results in the dry desert climate might well be very different from a humid July on the East Coast.

Evaporative cooling works because of a quirk of physics where water needs to have the energy of water at 212°F to exist as a vapor, but the air is sucking up liquid water at much lower temperatures, and basically sacrificing some of its own heat to do so. The faster the water evaporates, the greater the cooling effect.

(AC works by pulling the same trick mechanically, by forcing a fluid to repeatedly evaporate and condense  through pressure. By controlling on which side of a wall this happens, you can force the fluid to carry heat from cold areas and release it in hot areas. Run the same contraption in reverse and you have a heat pump.)

So you will not notice very much effect at all if you try to use one in a humid environment, because water evaporates much slower there. It may, in fact, make things worse because you're essentially running a humidifier. It works fine in the desert because you're basically raising the relative humidity from something like 5% to something more like 35%, which is still comfortable.

(Right after I moved to Las Vegas I spilled a little bit of a drink on the kitchen floor. The towels hadn't been unpacked yet, so I had to spend a few minutes rummaging through boxes to find them. By the time I found a towel and returned to the kitchen, I was quite surprised to find that there was nothing left to towel up.)

[Max Rockatansky]

The more dry the air is the better a swamp cooler will work.  They work great out here in my semi-arid area but probably not so great out east.

[1995hoo]

Thank you to both of you. Especially Scott for the detailed explanation. That is very helpful. Some of those units are quite inexpensive, which suggests they're probably not much use in the long run, but the idea of trying something for three or four days that costs less than $100 had a potential appeal that I'm sure anyone can understand. Sounds like it probably makes more sense just to get some of those cooling towels at the sporting goods store. I could use those things anyway even when the AC is working because I get so sweaty from mundane things like vacuuming and mowing the lawn.

[Rothman]

The more dry the air is the better a swamp cooler will work.  They work great out here in my semi-arid area but probably not so great out east.

They're used all over Florida and I haven't heard people complain about them...

[Max Rockatansky]

The more dry the air is the better a swamp cooler will work.  They work great out here in my semi-arid area but probably not so great out east.

They're used all over Florida and I haven't heard people complain about them...

Didn't work so great for me on Cudjoe Key.  I could get the one in the main room to hover at 85-87F in the main room sustainably but rarely any lower.

[Rothman]

The more dry the air is the better a swamp cooler will work.  They work great out here in my semi-arid area but probably not so great out east.

They're used all over Florida and I haven't heard people complain about them...

Didn't work so great for me on Cudjoe Key.  I could get the one in the main room to hover at 85-87F in the main room sustainably but rarely any lower.

Congrats on being the first.

[freebrickproductions]

Sure, but at least with a printed book, you could tell your teacher that it was wrong, and if they were any good they'd work it out themselves and correct your grade. These days, if the questions are randomized, who knows if there's even any way to prove what the questions you got were.

TBQH, I could probably report it to the professor and Pearson, given how consistent the issue was I could easily document it before the semester ends. However, given that most of the people seeing this issue are probably broke and overworked college students, and the amount of documentation it would probably require (at the very least screenshots and the student completely working-out the problems on paper to show how the program was wrong), I could see why it's been able to fly under the radar.

When I was doing my class on surveying, the professor discarded the online Pearson homework halfway through because it had way too many errors.

I griped with my sister about it last night and she just remarked, "Well, it's Pearson..."

[kkt]

the mesh liner means no need for underwear.

You're an adult now.  If you don't want to wear underwear, then don't wear underwear.

I find going totally commando uncomfortable.

Again, you're an adult and can make your own decisions about your underwear.

[Scott5114]

The more dry the air is the better a swamp cooler will work.  They work great out here in my semi-arid area but probably not so great out east.

They're used all over Florida and I haven't heard people complain about them...

You have far more confidence in Floridians' understanding of physics than I do.

[kphoger]

I just did one of those I'm not a robot things that Meta makes me do sometimes.  I had to click on all the squares with a stoplight in them.  One of the squares had part of a visor but no signal aspect.  There's no way to know what they think the right answer is there...