BS: Thank goodness for Air Conditioning!!

Subject: RE: BS: Thank goodness for Air Conditioning!!
From: Charmion
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 10:49 AM

I agree with those who believe that air-conditioning is keeping folks inside, but I think it's only half the story -- the other half is television. When we flop on the sofa in our lovely chilly basement and turn on the box, I remember summers in Manotick (Ontario village full of late-Victorian houses) in the late 1950s -- older folks sitting on the verandah of an evening to escape the unbearable heat in the house, and all windows open at night and shut tight and curtained during the day.

In Manotick, before the Second World War, the kitchen range often provided what passed for central heating, by means of stovepipes that snaked all through the other rooms of the house (cue the horrified Fire Marshal). In spring, the family would take down and clean the stovepipes, replacing only the one that connected the kitchen range to the chimney; the rest were put up in late fall. Most houses built before about 1935 had a summer kitchen, an unwinterized room equipped with a woodstove, a work table and little else. The summer kitchen was for preserving season, because stoking the kitchen range to boil the canner all day from August to late September would render the house even less livable than it was already.

Subject: RE: BS: Thank goodness for Air Conditioning!!
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 11:10 AM

Nudity is keeping me inside...

British heatwave, and here I am standing starkers in front of my PC & monitor table,
with a Honeywell turbo fan balanced at knee height on a guitar amp,
aimed upwards at my tackle and belly..

We do what's necessary to survive...


[note to other gentlemen - Do not operate the fan without it's safety guard securely attached...]

Subject: RE: BS: Thank goodness for Air Conditioning!!
From: Senoufou
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 12:12 PM

Went back to the big Tesco's today, and those poor tarmackers were still toiling away in the heat. They've only done half of the car park and the access road so far.
Our car thermometer said 30 degrees.

Inside the store it was freezing cold, and one of the tarmac chaps was looking at the sandwich rack beside me, so I had a word.

He was only a young lad (about 19yrs old I should say) He wore a complete plastic hi-viz suit, and sweat was pouring down his face and literally dripping off him. He looked completely exhausted.

I told him how much I admired his efforts, and praised him for working so hard. He beamed at me and when he replied, it was obvious he was a Scouser. He said they all were, a team of fifteen men, most of them Irish Liverpool blokes who travelled around the country with all their heavy plant, surfacing roads and such.

Bless his heart, he said he didn't really want the sandwiches, but only came into the shop to stand in the cold air-conditioning for some relief from the blazing heat of the burning tar machines.

My husband shook his hand and I gave him a hug.
We thought he was absolutely lovely.

Subject: RE: BS: Thank goodness for Air Conditioning!!
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 12:28 PM

One summer in the early to mid 1980s I worked alone in a photographic darkroom
printing from antique glass, and old large format film, negatives
for a museum photographic exhibition.
it was consistently over 80F and stifling,
with no air conditioning or air flow at all...

It was a real effort trying to keep sweat rolling off my face onto the photo printing paper
as I was exposing it under the enlarger...
...and not an ideal temperature for wearing heavy duty rubber gloves
whilst working with the chemicals...

I remember suffering very unsightly uncomfortable heat rash and dermatitis that summer...

Subject: RE: BS: Thank goodness for Air Conditioning!!
From: keberoxu
Date: 04 Aug 18 - 01:27 PM

It's the humidity that makes the heat unbearable.
Maybe with the storms that just blew through here
and dropped all this rain,
we may get some relief?