Summer is officially here, and if you live in the Midwest like I do, you already know it. The humidity hit before June even got going around here, and my AC has been running more than I’d like it to with our utility provider essentially forcing us to pay more during peak weekday times.
That got me thinking: what happens if the AC goes out? Not just a quick repair, but a real grid-down scenario where it’s out for weeks on end. What do most of us actually have as a backup plan?
(For what it’s worth, I found a SurvivalistBoards.com thread that I’m partially summarizing below with the most useful ideas and my thoughts.)
Passive Cooling
Old houses got this right, but we mostly abandoned it after 1990. My house is over 50 years old, and you can tell a difference. For example, high ceilings let heat rise away from the living space and covered porches block direct sun while still letting a breeze through. Windows and doors are positioned to catch cross-breezes. Stone and brick walls, which we sadly don’t have, absorb heat slowly during the day and release it at night, keeping interior temps more stable than drywall ever will.
If you’re thinking long-term, shade trees on the west and south sides of your house (in northern latitudes) are one of the cheapest investments you can make. They take years to grow, but they work without any power at all. Same goes for roof overhangs that block the high summer sun angle.
One thing the thread kept coming back to was attic heat. A hot attic cooks the living space below it, and most people don’t think about it until they’re miserable. Gable fans, powered roof vents with thermostats, and good passive airflow through perforated soffits and a ridge vent can make a real difference. Solar-powered attic fans are worth a look if you want something that works even when the grid doesn’t, though I believe passive solutions make powered attic fans mostly pointless.
Regardless, having an appropriate amount of insulation, without going overboard, is always a good idea for summer and winter climate control. If you’re unsure, have your insulation measured or do it yourself if you’re comfrotable climbing into the attic. (We had an energy audit performed a few years ago and the insulation was the correct amount.)
One commenter mentioned spraying the roof deck underside with reflective silver paint, and another said white elastomeric coating on a metal roof made the surface cool enough to touch in direct sun. I hadn’t heard either of those before, so I can’t speak to their effectiveness.
Basements also came up, and I think they’re underrated in a heat emergency. Basements can run 10+ degrees cooler than upstairs; I think mine stays closer to several degrees lower. Regardless, a box fan at the bottom of the stairs blowing up, combined with window fans exhausting hot air from the upper floors, can actually circulate some of that cooler air through the house. It’s not AC, but in a real heatwave it could matter. Granted, I would just stay in the basement if this were the situation and keep the colder air trapped.
Active Cooling
A couple of ideas in the thread require some setup but not much electricity to run. For starters, buried pipes six feet or more underground use stable ground temperature to pre-cool incoming air. You need a small fan to pull air through, but that’s it. One commenter’s grandfather ran a tractor radiator through his ductwork connected to a garden hose, using 55-degree well water to cool the whole house. Well water temperature varies depending on where you live, but it’s worth knowing if you have that as a possibility.
These aren’t off the shelf solutions because they take some planning and in some cases some significant construction work. But if you’re thinking about long-term grid-down cooling, they’re worth considering if you expect to stay where you are. I covered some related ideas in my post on 26 ways to stay cool during a heat emergency if you want more options.
Personal Cooling and Behavior
This is where most people underestimate what actually works. For instance, a spray bottle plus any moving air gives real relief through evaporation. Frozen water jugs in front of a fan, cold showers, and wet cotton clothing all help … or just run around in your birthday suit. 🙂 They’ve worked long before AC ever existed.
The bigger point the thread made was about scheduling. Work early morning and late evening, then rest during midday. This is what people did before AC was a thing, and what people in hot climates around the world still do. Understand that this isn’t just a comfort adjustment, because in a genuine grid-down situation, shifting your whole schedule around the heat is probably the most practical thing you can do from a safety standpoint.
There was also a point about acclimation that I thought was worth pointing out. If you’ve spent the summer in air conditioning, your body isn’t adapted to the heat the way it used to be. Going from a 72-degree house into 95-degree heat in a heatwave is harder on your body than if you’d been living at 78 inside and spending time outside regularly. Gradual heat exposure before summer actually builds tolerance, just like my youngest kid tells me that cold showers build tolerance, though I’m unwilling to take his word for it. In any case, keeping your thermostat a little higher on purpose can, therefore, be about more than saving money on your cooling bill, but for us, that’s what it’s mostly about.
One Caveat
If you live in a humid climate, like the Gulf Coast or the Southeast, a lot of the evaporative cooling advice you’ll read doesn’t apply to you because swamp coolers and misting systems need dry air to work effectively. In high humidity, they mostly just make you wetter. The thread was pretty direct about this: passive cooling may help with comfort in those climates, but it won’t protect vulnerable people who truly need to cool down in extreme heat. Elderly people, infants, and people on certain medications can be in real danger in a heat emergency, and no amount of shade trees or spray bottles changes that fact. For those situations, generator power or solar-powered mini-splits become a more serious preparation that you should consider.
What’s your current plan if the AC goes out for a week in the summer? Do you have anything set up, or is this still on the list to accomplish?
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