The hotness [status]

When I got home yesterday evening, most of the house had gotten up to 88 degrees, although it didn't feel quite as hot as the day before, I think because the humidity was lower?

We had managed to install a window AC unit in our bedroom a week before the heat arrived, so the bedroom has been cooler. In every new heat/housing situation, it takes some time to figure out where to set the thermostat, and in this case the threshold seems to be at 75 degrees. That's pretty low compared to the 79 degree nighttime setting in Arizona. It could also be related to getting older and losing heat tolerance. If I overheat at night to the point where I wake up, I become filled with rage, which is not pleasant to deal with.

But I'm also wondering about hypercapnia. At some point earlier in the pandemic, a friend of mine got a CO2 monitor and found that if there wasn't good air circulation in her bedroom, the high CO2 bothered her. In general I leave the bedroom window closed, out of respect for S's suspicion that neighbors on that side of the house have a pesticide habit. Because this house has radiators for heating, that turns the room into a blind-end box. Far from ideal.

The CO2 monitors still cost around $200, but I might just go for it at some point. The pandemic really did shift my mindset on indoor air quality.

I woke up at around midnight, turned on the box fan in the back bedroom window, and opened up as many other windows as I could. It's now almost 6 am, and the temperature in the house has cooled off to...85 degrees. With an overhead ceiling fan going, it doesn't really feel all that terrible. Probably not a great day to bake a cake, however.

I can only wish the basement in this house didn't have its special blend of asbestos and mold. Otherwise I'd totally turn into a basement dweller in this weather.

In better news. [news]

There was an article in yesterday's NYT about indigenous communities in Ecuador who are switching from gas-powered to solar-powered canoes as their primary form of transportation (link, but paywalled). Apparently the communities noticed detrimental effects of the gas-powered canoes on local fish stocks, and in addition, traveling via gas-powered canoes is prohibitively expensive because of the price of gas.

Electric boats are really lovely. They are quiet. And in an environment like the Ecuadorean Amazon, it only makes sense to shade an electric boat with an array of solar panels. It's great that communities there were able to figure out a way to make the change.

Today there's an article in the local paper about a developer breaking ground in neighboring Troy for an apartment complex that will be zero-emissions. I'm just glad to learn there are people with the vision and will to see that sort of project go forward, in spite of countless hurdles. I didn't know about the existence of the Passive House Institute U.S. (Phius) CORE certification program.

While there are a lot of terrible things happening in the world these days, it's also important to identify sources of hope.

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I also read an article about why it seems like appliances don't last as long now, as they did historically. It was interesting to learn that many appliances are manufactured using plastic components that are more difficult to repair or replace, because the plastic components contribute to a higher energy efficiency rating, in compliance with government-mandated standards.

Apparently if you are appliance shopping, you are probably best off with either the very basic budget models (fewer moving parts to fail in general), or the very expensive models (actually have repairable/replaceable parts). The mid-tier appliances are the ones with the most issues.

There was more to the story on appliances, but these were the most interesting tidbits.