Permsteading.com

So it's almost thanksgiving and 88°. Aside from screen doors and electric cooling how would one go about cooling off?

It would help to know where you are located? Trees would be a Long term help, but it will take some time for them to mature. If you have a Basement you can use it to cool the house down a bit with fans, or just go down there for awhile. Does it cool off at night where you are? I know some places down south don't cool off much at night. If it does cool off at night open the house up at night and close it off and shut the drapes during the day, if the house is insulated to should retain the cool air for awhile. If it never get cool, if it stays Hot day and night, well, I don't know what else to say, Turn on the air conditioning, or go out some place that does have it.

I'm not sure if this link is on Permsteading but here it is. http://www.builditsolar.com/ There is a section on passive cooling that might help.

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Co ... ooling.htm

That's great information Devil. I was thinking this morning about other ways to cool your house. Older homes are easier to work with because of their designs, High ceiling, and double hung windows work well. You open the bottom window on the windward side of the house and open the top window on the Lee side of the house. The draft created works with nature and the air comes in, the heat raises, and is pushed out the other side. Something else you can do is install an attic fan. Attic fans can be equal to about 1/2 ton of air conditioning. You turn them on when the sun goes down and they exhaust all the hot air from the attic. That hot air can be well over 100* and acts like having a hot frying pan over your head. By sucking in cooler air from outside and exhausting the extremely hot air from your attic it has the effect of really helping to cool off the house. If you live in a modern ranch house built on a slab you may just have to put up with the heat or run your air conditioner all the time. Sad but true. We live in a modern ranch home but I have a basement which helps, and I live in the woods. I virtually never run the whole house air conditioning which we installed when we built the house. If it gets over 90* for over 3 days in a row then I start to think about turning on the air.