Surviving the heat -and a quilt finish!

We have had record temperatures in Perth this past week. It is early yet in the summer season to have such a long run of over 40C temperatures. Our family home is not air conditioned - by choice. We are concerned to live simply and economically, to use less power and to adapt to our climate so we can actually live outside whenever possible.  We may be forced to have air conditioning with the way the summer is starting earlier and going on longer, but for now we are OK. That means that we are frequently looking to improve the ability of our home to cool down and stay cool during hot weather, using passive design features. It also requires a certain mode of active operation on our part-opening or closing windows and blinds, etc. As I have mentioned before, our home is a typical 1970s "leaky box" and was not designed with modern passive solar theory in mind. It does pretty well though!

My experience this week has been that our house will gradually warm up over a week of very hot weather. We might start with an internal temperature of 25C at 7 am on the first day which goes over 40C outside, and the house will rise to about 27C internally before the evening, when we open up the windows and try to get it cooler again.

The next day it is 26 or 27C at 7 am inside and will rise to 28 or 29.

The following day it will be 27C at 7am inside and will rise to 30. This is a bit warm but tolerable, especially when you consider we are still at least 12 degrees cooler than outside

In order to try to achieve these results we use:

1. Insulation in the ceiling -DH tells me that the garage under the roof, which he now uses as a workshop, is not insulated-the only part of the roof like this. We need to fix that!

2. A grapevine over the northern walls and windows to shade

3. We painted a west wall a bright light colour to reflect the heat

4. This week we added a home made shade blind over an eastern bathroom window-DH staples 90% shadecloth to two battens and attaches them to the wall on the outside. We still get light in the room, but the glass doesn't have direct sunlight on it anymore. One added bonus to this improvement is that the window is part of our ensuite, and the early morning light was very strong and hard to keep out of our room. This makes it a couple of shades darker.

We also go down to the beach early if we can. DH has a swim and I walk on the beach, then home to where it is cooler and we tend to stay there if we can.

I did some baking on the day before the heat wave, so we had food prepared for a couple of days. I made sweet potato and roasted garlic pie and some sourdough bread. When it is hot you don't really want to put the oven on, or even to go outside to barbeque!

When they were gone we started making easy cool things like gazpacho and pasta with a non-cooked sauce. YES I do have a kitchen Christmas Tree: don't you? I have six trees -why stop at one?

I found a book by Nigella Lawson "Nigelissima" in an op shop for $2 and it is superb! Lots of wonderful ideas to try.

Of course a run of hot weather was a perfect opportunity to retreat to the sewing room and get that quilt finished! YES it is done and hanging up.

Now, what shall I start next?

I am thinking of a scrappy quilt to soak up the scraps piling up in various baskets in the sewing room- just got to decide on which one.

We DID have to go out a bit during the hot weather though- final practices for a wonderful combined choir Christmas concert at Winthrop Hall. Lots of hard work paid off yesterday. It was a wonderful experience. DH and I are both in the choir.

Getting to the serious end of Christmas preparations this week! If you are in a cold climate, enjoy getting warm and think of us keeping our cool!