Need suggestions how to keep cool outside in the heat, besides using a leaf blower as a fan.
2I volunteer at a food bank. Most of what we do is outside as cars drive up. A bunch of us use various versions of those little fans. I used the one I got in my last irk. It lasted all of an hour. :sad:
Anyway one of the guys went to get the leaf blower, cranked it up and a lot of people dumped water on themselves (me included) and had him blow us dry with the thing. Yea!! A little over the top but that worked really well.
But any ideas how else to keep cool when the heat index is 112 and very humid so misting doesn’t really work. Suggestions appreciated.
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Spendy solutions like a Ryobi cordless fan probably aren’t much use. Those around-the-neck blow-at-face things might help a little, but based on how many my husband has tried and found wanting, I’m not sure which (if any) are worthwhile. (There may be casualties still sitting here.) OTOH, if you have power available via extension cords, I have a new-in-box fan I could ship in your direction. I grabbed it when I thought my old, ugly fan was dead. The reports of its passing were exaggerated.
@werehatrack What we do do is take turns standing by the door with it cracked so get a tiny bit of cool air from the inside (prop it open and we get yelled at). There are outlets outside but I’d have to ask permission to use one (which I will!!!). That would be something all of us would like - although the leaf blower was awesome. I did make sure I was not first or second in line since I had no clue if anything was going to blow out at us.
POPSOCKETS! SPA KITS! POLLY POCKETS! AWESOME!
@werehatrack thr Shark Chill Pill is excellent, but it is not cheap. I have it in my purse at all times and it has saved me more than a time or two…summer heat…menopause…dangerous combo!
@tinamarie1974 Wow, I just looked it up (I hadn’t heard about it before) and it IS pricy! Very pretty though, and I saw that it gets very good reviews.
@Kyeh it is pretty amazing and worth it.
I did get mine at Costco, which was a bit cheaper.
@tinamarie1974 Oh, good!
I am not sure how humid your hot is but cooling towels are helpful if you live where it is dry
@Cerridwyn Excessive humidity was mentioned, so no. (Central Mississippi.)
@Cerridwyn @werehatrack Well cooling towels would work if they were dipped in ice water (except no ice water there - no drinking fountain and what comes out of the faucet is pretty warm. Stuck on your head or back of your neck would help with temporary cooling down.
@Cerridwyn @Kidsandliz @werehatrack
Cooling towels work fine in humidity if there is a good breeze. You need lots of fans.
(Test ground southern Florida, in sight of the coast, next to a swamp. Summertime This does work).
You may need to get or borrow power stations to run the fans.
Maybe it’s time to bring back those ice bucket challenges?
KuoH
@kuoh Yup. Except someone would have to buy bags of ice and keep them from melting over 5 or 6 hours.
When I worked for the plant vendor at Walmart I brought a long sleeve shirt - sunburn protection and to use for cooling off. I’d get the shirt and my head wet from the hose (which was cold) and then within 20 min the shirt would be dry (there were overhead fans) as well as my hair. Rinse and repeat.
I use this fan attached to my phone when I am sitting in my car and it’s very hot out. I like this model because it tilts rather than being static. I don’t find it drains my phone’s battery, so it should last longer than an hour, as long as your phone is charged.
https://www.amazon.com/Rotating-Portable-Compatible-Samsung-Essential/dp/B07XKVR29Y/
@heartny
This would be a good purpose for some of those power banks you have sitting around that you’ve bought here over the years.
@chienfou @heartny Oh yeah… power banks. Worth a try next time with the one I have already (from the most recent irk). I need to read if these can charge and blow at the same time. I think something in negative reviews said no - no doubt why meh was selling it.
When it has a battery charge it was more powerful than what someone else had that went around her neck a fan on the end of each side.
@heartny I’ll have to look into this. Thanks, although much of the time, because I am carrying boxes or packing them my hands are full.
@Kidsandliz
My granddaughter tends to get overheated. On a recent trip out west we bought one of the clip-on/lanyard type fans that she could hang around her neck or clip to her shirt front. It seemed to do the trick pretty well. Lasted for >4 hours if I remember correctly. Not sure if it does pass thru charging (which would allow you to keep a power bank in your pocket attached to it) if you went over the battery life.
@Kidsandliz
Also, the linked fan does not have built-in power. So you can plug it directly into the power bank or possibly even cobblee together an extension cable and homemade clip to clip it to your shirt, or better still, your hat brim…
Dollartree used to sell AA powered fans similar to this. I used to buy them for the ER to use on our skin adhesive. When we glued kids I could use it to dry the adhesive quicker without physically blowing on it by mouth…
Get the cheapest khaki fishing vest you can find and put those cigarette-pack sized freezer packs in the pockets. That will keep your torso cool. You will need to swap in new freezer packs as the day goes by, so keep them in an igloo.
Also, get the largest-brim/lightest-color hat you can find. This is the one I got :
@cfg83 I’d imagine though they’d get too cold against your skin or is a fishing vest thick enough to stop that from happening? The ultimate solution is to get out of the armpit of the nation to somewhere that doesn’t have weeks and weeks and weeks (or should I say months) of blazingly hot temperatures with high humidity. I’d have better local health care too.
@Kidsandliz I perfected the vest system when I was hypermiling and didn’t want to use AC in the car.
I never had any negative “against the skin” effect in the heat I was in. I had a t-shirt or polo shirt + the (thin) fabric of the vest.
If I was getting one now, then I would seriously consider this one :
You have 4 pockets on the front and light air mesh everywhere else. The upper two pockets look a tad small for the ice packs I am thinking of. You may have a big pocket for the back, which could be used for a thin flat rectangular cooling pack. I never used the back pocket when I was hypermiling.
The only drawback is that the wrong person might think you have a bomb vest. HOWEVER, no one ever has said that to me. HOWEVER, don’t get the camo or black vests. Black is bad anyway because of the heat.
@Kidsandliz @cfg83 Here is an example of the kind of “cigarette pack” ice pack I am talking about :
HOWEVER, the above ones are expensive because Igloo. I am talking about the cheap sealed ones you see in the summer aisle of CVS and such.
I prefer the rigid because they are less likely to leak all over your clothes. HOWEVER, they can leak too, especially if there is a visible seal or cap like these :
@cfg83 @Kidsandliz Hypermiling? Never heard that. My mother in her VW Karmann Ghia (a very cool car) used to use the term going gratis when you would coast on some roads or even turn off the engine. This was before the days of air conditioning.
Now 50 years later my wife is afraid of using air conditioning in the Tesla. I say it’s OK, it knows what it’s doing. Trust it! Like there would be a reason to not trust Elon Musk. Oh, ummm…
@Kidsandliz @pmarin I drove my Dad’s Ghia in better daze …
The Ghia would have been a great hypermiler platform. I also remember some lead-acid electric Ghias on the early web in the 1990s.
@Kidsandliz @pmarin PS: If your mom turned off the engine going downhill and later bump-started it at the bottom of the hill during the coast phase to keep going, then she was a Hypermiler.
@Kidsandliz Ok, found ice pack in the wild today for $1.49 …
Whoppers are for scale.
@cfg83 @Kidsandliz
You know how car salesman and similar work outside and wear suits?
They’re not the only people who use what I’m going to describe so do the sort of people doing landscaping and mowing during the summer on landscaping crews and people working construction sites
You don’t need to get an actual fishing vest you can actually buy vest designed to hold the blue ice type bricks on Amazon and other sites they make specifically for this specifically for the kind of situation you’re talking about
And then you just popped the frozen bricks into the vest
If you’re too hot you get new bricks
If you’re too cold, you put a T-shirt on underneath to give a little insulation between the brick and your skin
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You can make a significant difference to yourself if you intend to do this long-term and so it’s worth a little investment to you and the other people
A lot of the stuff can be had cheaply on eBay if one is patient
First get those pop-up shades everybody needs to be in the shade. No questions asked none if you need skin cancer or sunburn.
Everybody needs to be able to sit in the shade and any perishable food needs to be in the shade as well
Then you need to have enough fans to cover everyone
Get hats and vest that are dunkable so that you can keep getting them wet and letting them cool
Walmart sells a brand of hats to do this and you always see them right next to checkout or on the seasonal stuff aisle during the summer they’re not too expensive
As for cooling towels, I dislike the ones that are commercially advertise as being such
You can get better ones from AutoZone for far or less money just go to the section where they have the towels for polishing your car and look for something that’s 22 to 24 inches long and not too thick
You will be dunking it repeatedly in water in order to allow it to evaporate if it’s very humid you will need fans. That’s just something you gotta have.
Get those power stations that are about the size of a car battery to power the fans. You will probably need more than one if there are a lot of people there working for the food bank
But you will also need a lot of pop-up shade or similar so this is just one more thing you need
You need a couple of really high-quality coolers. I’m not talking about yeti I’m talking about a yeti knock off. There are good ones we had at Walmart. You need to know what to look for.
They need to be heavier than the kind of coolers that are so cheap because the walls are solid
You already need coolers for any perishables you are providing, and those need to be quality for obvious reasons
Then you need a cooler for all your blue ice so that you can swap out when things get too warm obviously the blue ice needs to be pre-frozen
Cover the blue eyes with loose ice cubes from the gross restore or the gas station
Then you need another high-quality cooler and which she will mix ice cubes from the gas station with cold water. This is done before you leave the house.
More ice less water is good in the beginning
Over the hours, the ice in the second cooler will start to melt, and it will keep the water cold and that water is what you keep dunking your cap and your cooling towel and whatever else in
If you have a place where you can change clothes, you can even dunk a T-shirt, obviously that you are not wearing and bring it out and then go inside and change it out with your existing sweaty T-shirt
And keep going back-and-forth to keep a T-shirt that will keep evaporating
Also, all of you need to get those vacuum insulated tumblers that are at least 40 ounces in each of you probably needs at least two of them maybe more depends on how many hours you’re out there
You keep refilling those with ice and cold drinks or with just very cold drinks if they were reasonably well-made, what’s inside them will stay cold for longer than it takes you to drink it, but you may need to have more than one in order to always have a back up, ready to go
There are other ways to manage this as well
One of the best things you can do is stop and talk to people doing landscape or construction during the summer months and ask them what they do to stay cool they will have all sorts of ideas that us peons have never thought of
On a similar note, we need to bring back stove pipe hats. In those hats will have little hammocks for freezer packs.
/showme On a hot day, the Cool smug cat is wearing a khaki colored stovepipe top hat that is missing top but has freezer pack inside hat that is resting on cat’s head. Other cats and dogs are unhappy in the heat.
@cfg83 Here’s the image you requested for “On a hot day, the Cool smug cat is wearing a khaki colored stovepipe top hat that is missing top …”
@mediocrebot Too cool for skool!
One of the things that has to be fixed is an ideal freezer pack. There are circular ones for ouchies, but we need something better than those. I guess they could be squishy, but I think a rigid kippah might work better. If it is rigid, then maybe the interior of the hat would have an internal brim to hold the freezer pack just above the head.
@cfg83 @mediocrebot
You will need a chin strap!
@chienfou @mediocrebot I forgot to mention that you have to take crap-on-head balancing classes.
The good news is that this will enhance your posture/etiquette skills and lead to a strong (if also compressed) neck in old age. A strong neck in old age will allow you to keep that heavy skull in the vertical.
Move to Canada in the summer?
@kittykat9180 I have seen all but the extreme northernmost parts of Canada
got into the upper 90’s
@mycya4me
I was quite cold in the Yukon in early September when I visited a few years ago.
@kittykat9180 I have a friend that lives in Winnipeg. They have a Large extreme of temps from the upper 90’s F to -30 F
Their Colder months Last much longer Much shorter Warmer months. So I am NOT surprised! Maybe you want to try Nov-Feb…when it is really cold. also check the temps in Yellow Knife.
@kittykat9180 @mycya4me in the PNW where the “Heat dome” of a few years ago kicked in, we hit a record (by far) 116 degrees, but parts of British Columbia hit 122. And lots of western Canada was on fire, as bad as we get here.
Never been to Yellowknife but was in Yukon Territory and Whitehorse. Would love to re-do that trip; it was awesome.
VAN GOGH! MANGO! TANGO! AWESOME!
@mediocrebot Dang, bot, you got me. But do you have any awesome suggestions for cooling, to counter-act the heat pollution of the AI data centers that fuel you?
PANS! GLANDS! CRAYONS! AWESOME!
@kittykat9180 @pmarin I have a neck band that has some of the Water absorbing gel in it. you soak it. it expands! Keeps the neck Kool, Plus a wear a Hat, on the hot days I have one with a Brim all around the hat.
@kittykat9180 @mycya4me @pmarin
I remember that PNW heat dome (how could I forget?). We mostly stayed in the basement family room with the AC running. At one point, I ventured out on the front porch and the thermometer read 120F ! (It was late afternoon and the sun was shining directly in on the covered west-facing porch.)
At the same time, the Olympic trials for track and field were being held in Eugene. It was impressive to watch the athletes perform in those conditions!
@kittykat9180 @mycya4me
Upper 90s is comfy where I live.
Some degrees over 100 isn’t so comfy.
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We had extraordinarily cool weather for June and early July during all the soccer madness
And I’m happy for that because as far as I know, none of the players are fans had heat stroke
But I did get a kick of all the European YouTube influencer videos talking about how hot it was. In the high 80s low 90s.
A typical June would’ve been 10° hotter. They just got lucky.
Yeah, I know if I went to Northern places or high altitude it would be the reverse and I would be the one suffering and other people would be laughing at me.
Ok. I can’t help what I’m acclimated to. And several onces upon a several times ago I was acclimated to serious cold weather. Like Maine in winter.
And, besides, it would be perfectly OK with me if I went north or hit a cold spell and bitched about it being 28° and other people laughed at me. I bitch about it when it’s 28° where I live.
And anyone who laughs at me for being uncomfortable has the right
@f00l @kittykat9180 A few years before Covid. I did a job in Boston, Mass. late July, Yes the temp was upper 90’s But very low humidity, so being from the South, I was enjoying it. Yet the locals were complaining how hot it was! I told them it was hot a bit warm… With them having low humidity, I suggested that they come to the South & see what real Summer weather is like!
I don’t suppose you can build a 2-layer tent?
It would be a cooling tent you would either take turns getting into, or it would be a wide 3-wall tent that at last provides shade and some insulation as people drive up to your table.
I say insulation because ideally you’d have a swamp cooler inside the tent creating an artificial environment (keeping the warm humid air outside using an air gap between tent layers). A dehumidifier might function inside a closed tent if you had an extension cable.
For a 3-wall tent (one giant door is always open) you’re not keeping anything; you need a leaf blower aimed at you using the 3 walls to bounce wind back like a mini tornado/wind tunnel (hope you don’t have paperwork).
The other option is to have a giant kiddie pool (embrace the humid) and work in your swim trunks as people lug ice or store cold beer with you.
@pakopako if it’s that hot, why bother with swim trunks *?. *note: always use sunscreen. Make sure you have someone to rub it on properly.
I’m so cool, I condense.
@capnjb
What I do in Florida is drink tons of ice water. It cools you from the inside out. Get an insulated tumbler and load it with ice water ahead of time. The longer you plan to be there, the more water you bring.
Counter-intuitively, long sleeves can keep you cool, too. Keeps the sun from hitting your skin directly, and holds your sweat to give it a bit more time to actually evaporate instead of just rolling right off. Thin cotton/polyester blends usually work best.
@Weboh I’ve got a few long-sleeved fishing shirts that are like UPF 50+. They are super light weight, breathable and do keep cool when I am… um… fishing
@Weboh definitely go for the long sleeves. you can buy multi-packs of pull-on “performance” sleeves from amazon pretty cheap to add sleeves to any clothing. makes a significant difference, pulling the sweat off your skin but then holding it longbenoughbfor evaporative cooling
@Turken @Weboh
In the deep South humidity, evaporative cooling is a crap shoot…
@capnjb @Weboh @Kidsandliz
Our local Sam’s Club had a promo on these. After a week or so, the in-store price had gone down from $15 to $13. I bought several, really like them, and recommend them. They seem to be quality construction and are really good at wicking the sweat away.
Watch and online price might also drop.
https://www.samsclub.com/ip/Habit-Men-s-Long-Sleeve-50-UPF-Fishing-Shirt/20021360660
@capnjb @Kidsandliz @phendrick @Weboh
SWMBO uses those when she gardens…
@chienfou @Turken @Weboh
An impromptu swamp cooler set up won’t give you true air-conditioning in the south, but it might give you 10° and that’s worth something
I’ve been in garages, waiting for my car to get fixed or whatever on brutal days in high humidity
A lot of these garages have these enormous fans like 5 feet higher or something that run the air over water
And boy, can you feel the difference if you’re sitting in front of that fan?
These things are huge and expensive. They certainly don’t fit in an average vehicle, so I don’t think they would work for her purposes unless the venue where they do the donations was willing to store it.
And even then, only a few people would be sitting in the path of the fan flow so very many people are working outside. People would have to take turns and who got to sit in front of it.
Furthermore, these fans are probably expensive. I’ve never priced them out, but I think they’re pretty common place as industrial level devices in workshops that don’t air-conditioning or an auto repair shops.
But even in jungle conditions, you can get something out of evaporated cooling so long as there is flowing air
I lived in Florida kind of in between the coast and a swamp. (I could walk to either in just a few minutes) for a few years, so I’m not naïve about how much humidity there is
And a human climate, the hard thing to find in nature is the flowing air wind or the breeze
That’s where you need the fans
I appreciate all the suggestions.
My current solution is go inside in the A/C and use the small fan I got in an irk (the misty fan) to cool off then go back outside. Not ideal but better than nothing. Blowing hot air on me doesn’t help (eg doing it outside) and because the humidity is a billion percent with real feel temps of 106-107 often, the mistying portion of the fan does nothing useful.
@Kidsandliz got any cans of compressed air? They might be dangerous to store in such hot areas, but because they use cold pressurized CO2, unloading a can in your face will at least be refreshing (don’t inhale)