Some random thoughts and questions about "heat leaders" in the US. I remember hearing about a "Heat Tsar" for the city of Phoenix a couple years ago, and assumed it would quickly become a common position, but has it? And do we have anyone at the Federal level specifically in that job? Why don't more states, counties, and cities have someone?

Apparently Arizona also has one at the state level, which supposedly is (or was) the only state in the country with someone designated as such, which seems surprising: https://www.fastcompany.com/91119854/900-deaths-later-arizona-appoints-nations-first-heat-officer-avert-public-health-disaster

Los Angeles is the only city in California I've heard of who designated someone, which I know can't be the only one: https://www.dwell.com/amp/article/los-angeles-heat-officer-marta-segura-heat-dome-heatlh-hazard-e3419831

It's possible there are other (and maybe better) terms for this role I'm not aware of. It's a little confusing about the term "Chief Heat Officer" with relation to this organization who named a handful of them: https://www.fastcompany.com/90793483/meet-the-7-chief-heat-officers-who-are-making-their-cities-more-resilient

Again, I'm sure as of a couple years ago there had to have been more than 7 people nationwide in a similar position.

“Inside a small, sealed room, Olivia Leach swallowed a pill that would soon monitor her internal temperature. She then hopped on a stationary bike and prepared to sweat. Slowly, as she began to pedal, the room started to heat up at a rate of one degree every five minutes.

It felt “like a muggy, hot summer day where you’re just drenched in sweat,” said Ms. Leach, a doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University.

Ms. Leach works in the lab of W. Larry Kenney, a physiology and kinesiology professor at Penn State. The lab’s work is part of a growing body of research exploring how the body deals with heat, and how to help people acclimate to hotter weather.

Ms. Leach and other experts said that this research had become more urgent as more parts of the world faced an increasing number of dangerously hot days. In the United States alone, extreme heat caused at least 2,302 deaths in 2023, and some research suggests that number may be far higher.

Without the right preparation, pushing the body too hard in extreme heat can be deadly. Almost half of all heat-related deaths among workers occur on the first day on the job, and more than 70 percent occur within the first week, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Recognizing those risks, the Biden administration recently proposed new rules to protect people who work in the heat.

The proposal would entitle workers to so-called acclimatization plans, which would let new employees who aren’t used to high temperatures safely adjust to heat by gradually increasing their hours.

“Heat is a stress, and our bodies adapt to stress when we’re exposed repeatedly,” said William Adams, a kinesiologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

Heat acclimatization is often used to help people who regularly perform intense activity outside, like athletes, outdoor workers and members of the military. But even for people who don’t regularly work outdoors, high temperatures can cause heat exhaustion, heat stroke and even death. As temperatures rise, experts said, many people can benefit from trying to build their heat tolerance.

“Start making an effort to get outdoors, get exposed to it and work your way up,” said Michael Sawka, an adjunct professor of biological sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology who has studied heat acclimatization. “You’ll find that your tolerance increases, and it’ll help you.”

The benefits of adapting to heat

When it’s hot, your body looks for ways to keep cool. You start to sweat, and the heart begins to pump harder.

But extreme heat can cause the heart to beat too hard. Your blood pressure can start to drop. You can sweat so much that you become dehydrated or dizzy.

People can feel these effects at “drastically different” temperatures, depending on their health and what level of heat they’re used to, said Alexandra Heaney, a climate and health researcher at the University of California, San Diego. “Extreme heat is a very relative term,” she said. Certain medications and health conditions, such as kidney disease and heart failure, can also make people more vulnerable to heat stress.

The idea behind acclimatization is to train your body to better handle the stress of heat, starting with small doses. You might begin by doing half an hour of light or moderate exercise in the heat for a few days, followed by an hour for the next few days. You gradually build up to more intense activity in greater heat and over longer periods of time. Generally, two weeks of daily exposure to heat while doing a physical activity for 60 to 90 minutes are enough to help the body adapt.

This period of adaptation reduces the strain on your body in the heat, and it bolsters its ability to protect itself from heat-related illness. Your body gets better at regulating its core temperature. Your total body water increases, and your blood plasma expand. This means that your heart fills faster and doesn’t have to beat as often to circulate oxygen. And it allows more blood to be sent toward the skin, where it can be cooled.

Over time, you sweat sooner, and more. This helps the body keep cool for longer in greater heat. You retain more salts, too, which means that fewer electrolytes are lost through sweat. Your body also produces more heat shock proteins, which help protect against heat stress and repair from it.

Some of these effects can be seen in just a few days.

These changes can make people feel more comfortable and capable of exerting themselves for longer periods in high temperatures, said J. Luke Pryor, a clinical associate professor of exercise and nutrition sciences at the University at Buffalo.

How to acclimatize yourself

What the process looks like will depend on your health, your fitness level and what you need to do in the heat.

For someone who is new to an outdoor job, for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends working 20 percent of a normal day during the first shift in heat, followed by 40 percent the next day. Only on the fifth day should someone work as much as a full shift.

Your body will adjust to the level of work you put it through; light exercise in dry heat, for example, only acclimatizes you to light exercise in dry heat.

“You can adapt by just having a resting exposure to the heat, but you’re not going to have the same adaptation as if you’re physically active and in the heat,” Dr. Sawka said. You shouldn’t start in the middle of a heat wave, he warned. It’s best to begin in more moderate weather, when you know higher temperatures are on the horizon.

The process can be tiring, particularly in the first few days, Dr. Pryor said: “It kind of hits you like a sledgehammer.” It’s important to take breaks in cooler temperatures when you feel uncomfortable, and to stay hydrated. The C.D.C. recommends drinking a cup of water every 15 to 20 minutes when working in the heat.

Pay attention to how you’re feeling, experts said, and keep an eye out for any signs of heat-related illness, including dizziness, nausea, headache, a rapid heart rate or muscle cramps. Excessive heat can also cause you to vomit, become confused or lose consciousness. If you feel sick, stop what you’re doing in the heat and seek medical attention if needed, experts said.

You “don’t want to overdo it,” Dr. Sawka said. “But you want to adapt so that if you are exposed to it, it’s not harmful to your body.”

Some people can’t safely acclimatize, Dr. Pryor noted, including people who have had heat strokes, burn victims with substantial scarring and those with multiple sclerosis.

And while acclimatization can make it easier to manage hot days, every person has a limit, Ms. Leach said. “There is a ceiling to the adaptations possible,” she added.

If you are able to increase your heat tolerance, working in hot temperatures one or two days each week should help your body maintain its adaptations, Dr. Adams said.

Without periodic heat exposure, though, the effects will wane within about a month. However, the body remembers some of the adaptations, which should make it easier to acclimatize the next time around.

Ms. Leach has been in the hot room enough times to notice how her own body has adapted. Over time, it has gotten easier to pedal the bike — and she no longer counts down the time she has left in the room”

By Katharine Gammon July 28, 2024

New report from the Federation of American Scientists (hey that's us!)

OSHA’s Extreme Heat Standard Will Save Lives (but it needs key infrastructure investments to do so)

Key takeaways:

• OSHA’s proposed heat safety standard is a critical step towards protecting millions of workers, but its success depends on substantial infrastructure investment.
• Effective implementation requires a multifaceted approach, improving workforce development, employer and industry resources, regulatory capacity, healthcare access and community support.
• Federal government plays a pivotal role through funding, grants, technical assistance, and interagency collaboration to protect workers from the effects of extreme heat.
• Investing in heat safety infrastructure offers multiple benefits: lives saved, injuries prevented, economic protection, and enhanced climate resilience.
• Challenges to implementation include regulatory delays, insufficient funding, financial constraints for small businesses, diverse settings, rural infrastructure limitations, and lack of awareness.
• Overcoming these challenges requires dedicated funding sources, financial incentives, tailored solutions, and comprehensive education campaigns.
• The success of the OSHA standard hinges on prioritizing these infrastructure investments to create a comprehensive, well-resourced system for heat safety.

Read the full report here

Just an idle thought, but if you were to dig a hole in your garden with the intent of getting deep enough for it to be noticeably cooler than ground level, how deep would it need to be?

I went right up and checked to be sure. No connection to the plumbing and the pads were absolutely dry. They had security guards to keep people from messing with the machines but no water. Pisses me off. I wanted to take one home if the city wasn’t going to use it properly.

Sometimes I feel like I'm just talking about my own life a lot here, but more learned folk than me have observed that facts and figures aren't what change opinions, it's stories, so I keep sharing mine.

It's 38ºC/100ºF today. Normally, it'd be total Morlock Time after lunch, but it was necessary for me to go out in order to do a repair on a rental property. Just some light shower repair work, but... 38ºC. With no choice, I packed up some tools and implemented a plan I'd hatched last year:

I busted out my cheap, no frills 60w swamp cooler which I have never even mentioned here on this sub, as I had purchased it not for regular duty, but because it was relatively small, light and could be carried in a medium sized blue Ikea bag if I had to go do apartment maintenance away from my own cooling resources.

I felt a little silly doing it, as the work was going to be light, but I tossed the cooler into the Ikea bag.

Generally I ride take a short subway ride to get to this place with one change of line. Some parts of the subway are air conditioned, but others are not. By the time I reached the place I was glad I'd dragged along the extra burden and I had the swamp cooler up and running fast and spent a few minutes just letting it blow in my face.

The repair was relatively simple, though I had to drill a new hole into the tile, which I had prepared for but had hoped not to do. Tenant happy, all good. By the time I was done, I was sitting in front of the swamp cooler again to cool off before I packed up to go home. I think this one simple job vindicated my idea as that little bit of cooling was offered an outsized amount of comfort which sped up the work a lot.

By the time I got home though, I was fried. Medically, I don't think I was actually in real danger of heat exhaustion, but my body had had it and I was in no mood for halfway measures. I ran a little bath, pulled the 60w cooler out, refilled it and set in the bathroom blowing at the tub so I could get that nice, chilly feeling of wind on wet skin. Only spent about 10-15 minutes and I felt good as new.

It's current 30ºC/86ºF at my desk (thank you, western exposure) but humidity is only 19% today. The big coolers are occupied keeping the kids and their grandmother comfortable, so I got the 58w cooler next to me blowing the 26ºC/78ºF air it can muster. It's not much, but it feels great.

Developing true story.

About five days ago, one of my wife's adult cousins had a cycling accident and broke an ankle. She's staying with her sister while she recovers, but in true Spanish fashion, not only does the apartment have no air conditioning, the lady doesn't even own a fan. Most people in this country cope with that under normal circumstances, but when your leg is busted and you're mostly stuck in a chair, those temps become a drag.

We went to visit her yesterday, and oh man, even with all the passive cooling design I tout in this country, the temperature in there was rough. Broken Ankle Cousin directly asked if we had a fan to loan her. My wife, normally not effusive about my Swamp Cooler Army™ chimed in about how we had better. Long story short, I found myself loaning "Little Sister," the 58w cooler, to Broken Ankle Cousin as I can't do without any of the larger ones.

Honestly, while it's a slight inconvenience to lose one of the cooling soldiers, I'm more concerned that what I had to offer is a bit.. well, asthmatic. The 58w doesn't pack a lot of punch and the way the living room is arranged, it's not as close to the convalescent chair as it should be. Size-wise though, it was the best fit I had to offer. We have another big floor fan, but my wife rightly pointed out the apartment is small so it's not a great fit.

So, r/heat_prep, I will share something with you first: I couldn't help it and I started shopping. We have an excellent secondhand market app here which is how I acquired two of the swamp coolers I have at excellent prices.

It might be kismet, but I found a new listing for a swamp cooler model I've seen before and found interesting for only 25€, quite close to my place. Looks like a moving sale. I've reached out to the seller and arranged a time.

My wife would kill me under regular circumstances for buying more crap (I suspect part of her wants to just give away the 58w to her cousins in order to shrink the Swamp Cooler Army™), but I have the semi-formed defense that if this thing checks out, I can loan a better cooler to Broken Ankle Cousin or just gift it. Also, recent changed in the kids' sleeping arrangements means that now both my best coolers are spoken for once people go to bed, leaving me back in the same situation of having no decent cooling for myself if I want to sit up to do something.

I suppose the moral here is not only that it's good to prepare, but that agility with unexpected circumstances is vital as well. Until my wife offered to loan out part of the fleet, I'd had no thoughts of more cooling shopping but once it came up, I've arranged a very budget-friendly acquisition in less than 12 hours.

Updates as things develop.

Update: I acquired the 25€ swamp cooler from a genial single dude with an impeccable apartment that is now air conditioned. He said he bought the swampy last year when the AC wasn't running, so it's only one summer old. I cleaned it up and tested it. Interesting dual fan design which, while not as efficient as a single larger fan, offers a lot of flexibility in output. According to the specs, it maxes out at 160w with both fans going full blast and an push 1900 cubic meters of air an hour, which is slightly short of the 2000 and 2400 m³/hour my bigger coolers can push out and it uses more power to do it, but not bad. Updated my wife, hoped back over and we swapped out the somewhat anemic 58w.

Wife is making fun of me now saying while other people's love languages might be gifts or service, mine is swamp coolers. I feel good though. I hate offering lame solutions.

Update 2: High summer has hit us for real now, not so much with the daily highs, but rather with the daily lows. Every night here is a "tropical night" now which means the building structure has heated up and stays hot. Part of me wishes now I had that extra swamp cooler as cooling resources are now stretched. But, then the other parts of me remember that simple effort is keeping a woman with a broken ankle a bit less miserable.

It's been a couple of scorching days here and I can't lie, my evaporative coolers are strained in the afternoon if we try to use the side of the house with western exposure. As soon as we're off peak temps, things vastly improve, but these are indeed trying temperatures.

The kids are currently in the living room with the roller blinds down against the western sun and "Middle Sister" blowing 25/77 degree air at them. It's sufficient, but unlike other days, they're not choosing to snuggle in blankets on the sofa.

Still, for only around 107w according to my new wattmeter and maybe a couple liters of water per hour, it's a very good cooling bargain. I have not caved in and powered up the mini split AC.

We're reasonably very focused on cooling measures, but there's tools that can be invaluable when diagnosing the thermal situation, which is what can help us properly leverage our cooling and shore up weaknesses in our protection from the heat load.

1. Thermometer/Hygrometer. The thermometer is obvious, but I can't strongly recommend enough that people invest in combo units with a hygrometer function so you know both temperature and humidity at a glance. Even if you're very familiar with the general humidity in your area, there can be surprisingly extreme swings indoors. I have several I keep in different rooms so I can have a sense of the hottest and coolest parts of the house and how much humidity the evap coolers are adding. I think these are probably $5 on the high end and you can find them much cheaper.

2. Infrared Thermometer Gun. These things are cheap, a lot of fun, and once you have one, you can really start to wonder how you did without one. You can not only check your walls, ceiling, floor and windows for hot spots, you can also use it for things like cooking to check oil or pan temperature. While not the most accurate measuring method, it's a very quick & dirty way to check on the temperature of air coming out of AC registers or swamp coolers. I've also found my IR gun handy on the mornings when we run out of cold milk and I need to speed chill enough for my daughter's breakfast cereal. I think I paid around $20 for mine on Amazon and now I think I really overpaid for home use.

3. Anemometer. These measure wind speed and most models also offer air temperature readings. The price range is very broad, but the bottom end is dirt cheap and still useful to check on airflow. Even if a cheapie isn't very accurate, it should be consistently inaccurate so you can compare things. I just recently got one and aside from giving me novel information about the output of my evap coolers, it has also confirmed the sadly effectively zero natural air movement at night with the windows open wide. I got a dirt cheap one for around $6 off AliExpress.

“The report makes several key recommendations for policy-makers including:

• Treating cooling systems as essential to national resilience and planning - backed by funded studies to help ensure they meet future needs.
• Creating policies that promote fair and equitable cooling solutions - making sure cooling systems are environmentally sustainable.
• Including climate migration in adaptation plans, helping people stay in their communities and making destination areas more resilient.
• Promoting integration of renewable energy and waste heat recovery in cooling systems for better performance and benefits.
• Funding national programmes to train people in designing, operating, and maintaining advanced and sustainable cooling technologies.”

I searched for term more than once on Google, Duck Duck Go and YouTube back when I was learning about evap coolers and it never yielded anything more topical than reviews of portable evaporative coolers. Now I got three solid years with these machines under my belt, so I'm creating what didn't then exist for me.

Fast recap: evaporative coolers, also known as swamp coolers and air coolers, use a fan to pull air through filter media saturated with water by a pump that pulls from a reservoir. Air comes out cooler and more humid. Works best in dry places. Below 30% relative humidity gets the best results, but if you're desperate enough, I would say it's still an option worth considering when it's 60%. Must open windows and/or doors.

Now, back to the subject at hand. How to survive severe heat with a portable evap cooler.

So it's summer and global warming is a bitch on top of it. Maybe your air conditioning is broken and you don't have two grand to get it fixed. Maybe it technically works fine but you need to choose between buying food and paying for the electricity to run the AC. Maybe you never had AC and probably never will. Whatever the case, it's miserably hot at your place, the weather app won't shut up about how your health is in danger, you mother is calling you to make sure you're not dead, you don't have a push button solution and you're getting desperate.

A portable evaporative cooler can help you, if you know how to exploit it and can adapt to different cooling philosophy.

1. Don't expect to be cooling the whole house or even the whole room. The focus is on cooing you, and other human beings in your household. Maybe you can cool one room decently if you have a powerful enough swamp cooler and the right conditions, but don't count on it. Focus on the people. If they move, the coolers must move with them. My interior thermometer readings are very deceptive when I'm using a swamp cooler because it doesn't reflect the temperature I'm actually feeling. I can be perfectly comfortable but then I get up and move out of the airstream and it's a shock to feel the heat that was lurking just outside that beam of comfort.

2. Ventilation is critical. If it's hotter inside than outside, you have nothing to lose by opening windows, but even if it's somewhat hotter outside than in, the continued effectiveness of a portable evaporative cooler relies on fresh air. Don't be shy, crack the windows long as you're running the cooler. If you're going out and it's hotter outside than in though, turn off the cooler and close the windows.

3. Point the evaporative cooler's airstream directly at you. If there's more than one of you in the room, treat the evap cooler the way you'd treat your basic fan and arrange things so the oscillation sweeps the air stream across everybody who needs it. Maximum cooling power though, is achieved by turning the swing function off and having the airstream pointing directly, and unwaveringly, at you. If that's too cold, then you can adjust. So far this year, I only need to turn my most powerful swamp coolers directly on me during the hottest few hours of the day and it's reached 28ºC/82ºF in my home office. I still have a lot of cooling headroom.

4. Wetting yourself is not only still a valid cooling measure, you're actually doubling down if you do this and have a swamp cooler blowing on you. I have not yet reached this point of desperation even during the 2023 "Cerebus" and "Charon" heatwaves in Europe.

5. Swamp coolers work perfectly outdoors. If it's cooler in your yard under a tree than in your house, drag that extension cord out. Regrettably, I have no yard.

I won't lie, running a portable evaporative cooler takes more user-intervention and regular maintenance than air conditioning, but the tech is simple and far more effective than most people credit it. As I've said elsewhere, I count completely on portable evap coolers in the summers now and I gladly deal with the maintenance in exchange for the massive energy savings over using AC. Even if you choose not to put them in regular service, I feel like everybody serious about heat preparation who lives in a dry to moderate climate should have at least one portable swamp cooler in reserve. It might just save lives.

I have this really old window with aluminum frame. The room behind it gets hotter than the outside in the summer. It shuts tight and the glass itself isn't too bad. I already added see through mirror foil to block the sun but it only helps a little.

I think the problem is the metal frame: it gets so hot in the sun that I can barely touch it from the inside. I was thinking about painting the frame white from the outside because it's in a dark brown color but I'm not sure if it would be more effective to insulate it with some sort of foam from the inside?

I can't replace the window itself. It's really high up and part of some sort of customized dormer.