Keeping the house cool

Wow, last week was a scorcher! Daily temperatures over 100 degrees can wear on a person. We don’t have central air conditioning in our house so we have, in the past, relied on a swamp cooler. In the mobile home, it was essential to have it. On a 100-degree day, the mobile would quickly be hitting over 120 degrees without some type of cooling. The cabin isn’t so bad so we have moved from a swamp cooler to a window air conditioner. I try to hold out as long as I can before putting it in. 

Thermal mass in a house is a great thing. When it heats up, it releases that heat back into the house. The same with cold. Since the cabin is log, it has a lot of thermal mass and, as long as I can get the temperature back under 65 degrees at night, the day doesn’t get too hard to handle. I use a system with 20-inch box fans forcing the hot air out and pulling the cool air in from the north and west side of the house at night. If I can get the temps into the 60s by morning, it won’t go much over 80 and we don’t mind if the temp gets to 80 degrees in our house. It is less of a shock to the system when one does have to go outside and it is pushing 100 degrees.

By the end of the weekend though, I was having a hard time getting the temp in the house below 75 degrees at night, which meant it didn’t take long for it to hit 80 degrees. Saturday afternoon, it hit 87.5 degrees in the house. That was a little much. I did fashion kind of a red-neck air conditioner: I froze some bags of water into ice and then put them in front of a fan. It helped, as long as I was sitting right in front of it. 

Monday was considerably cooler, so the house cooled down well on Monday night. In fact, on Tuesday morning it was about 66 degrees in the kitchen. It was wonderful, but there I was walking around complaining because it was too cold. But I’ve dodged putting the air conditioner in for a while longer. 

I bought a couple of blocks of ice on Monday and I am going to refine my design for the red-neck air conditioner. I just want to see if it works. I do have a couple of old ice chests that might work really well. Just need to cut some holes in them and mount a fan. We will see. 

I remember, growing up, we didn’t have air-conditioning either and our house was a big two story affair with no insulation — none, zilch. Our bedrooms were upstairs and some nights it was close to 100 degrees when we headed to bed, after working outside in the heat most of the day. One summer, we actually moved our beds outside under the trees and slept outside. We got a few mosquito bites, but still slept better than inside that oven of a house. Eventually, Mom was able to buy a second hand swamp cooler from a bar in Basin that had been gutted by a fire and we slept inside after that.

Lemon Bisque 

15-16 graham crackers

¼ cup butter melted

1 can evaporated milk refrigerated overnight

1x 3 ounce box lemon jello

¼ cup boiling water

1/2 cup sugar

3 tablespoons lemon juice

fresh grated lemon peel

pinch of salt

Place a large mixing bowl in fridge to chill, crush graham crackers, add melted butter and mix well. Pour half the crumbs into a 9x13 baking pan, spreading evenly. Pour boiling water over the jello and mix until dissolved. Add the sugar, lemon juice, grated lemon peel and salt. Whisk until well-mixed, chill until slightly thickened. Whip chilled, evaporated milk in chilled bowl until soft peaks form. Gently mix with the jello mixture. Pour over crumb crust, smooth out and top with reserved crumbs. Cover and chill for at least two hours.