2012, Summer, Los Angeles - the days of unbearable heat are never-ending, and having just moved into a single-story, century-year old home with no air-conditioning the Los Angeles summer heat is stifling, suffocating... sweaty, in a nutshell, absolutely terrible! Even my poor terrier-poodle tries to escape it by hiding in corners that never see daylight, there she will escape disappearing for hours as she sleeps in probably what is, no doubt, the coolest part of the house- 'if only I was as small as she, if only I was a dog', I think to myself.
I suppose with my daily complaints of the heat my husband decided to be proactive and do some research on how to keep an AC-less home cool. We tried a simple idea that is called "The Texas Summer", apparently this method is used in homes where Summer's are absolutely the worst, places like... Texas?
The Texas Summer method is done by keeping windows open in the evening and overnight to allow the cool evening air to enter and pass through the home, come morning all the windows are closed- the idea is to trap the cool evening air thus resulting in a cooler home.
This being a rather simple method, besides we really didn't have anything to lose, my husband and I tried The Texas Summer in our home. We kept the windows open all night and evening, come morning around 7AM when I woke to walk my terrier-poodle I closed all the windows. What do you think happened?
The Texas Summer really does work! This method will not keep your home cool all day as if you had an AC but it does make it much more bearable. The house will stay cool with the trapped evening air until about 1PM, beginning at 2PM I can feel the house becoming body temperature, by 3PM I open the windows, by 3:30-4:00PM the weather begins to cool which means I'm only in the heat for about a hour or so a day- this beats sitting in a heated home for 5-6 hours. The method is simple and financially sound as it doesn't cost a thing and obviously the better the insulation the better The Texas Summer will work.
