Asklemmy

Indian here, so experienced with hot climate.

• Wear loose cotton clothes (long-sleeved if stepping out in the hot sun)
• Keep yourself hydrated.
• Avoid soft/ aerated drinks/ soda & coffee as they'll dehydrate you. Stick to cool water, ice chips, fresh lemonade made with water, fresh fruit juices, melons, spinach-cucumber-onion-tomato salads, yoghurt,
• Eat light.
• Stick to well-ventilated rooms with good air-circulation (fans help)
• Cold water showers to cool down
• Sweating is good. It'll cool you down. This is also why Indians eat spicy food and drink hot tea even in hottest summer. Get sweaty then take a quick cold-water rinse.
• If you have to step outside in the hot sun, umbrella, hats, caps etc are your friends.
• Wet towel on the back of the neck for a quick cool down.

ETA: When it gets so hot that we lose our appetite, then our go-to meal is to mix up cooled cooked rice with unsweetened yoghurt and a pinch of salt. its variously called yoghurt rice/ curd rice/ thayir saadam / dahi bhaath / dahi chaawal . This is an easy to make & easy to diges meal that is guaranteed to cool a person down.

thayir = dahi = curd = yoghurt
saada = bhaath = chaawal = cooked rice

Good luck.

Close the windows, curtains and shades during the day, at around 8-9AM. When it's very warm outside, open windows are your enemy.

Open windows, curtains and shades during the night when temperature is lowering.

Air conditioning, fans, drink water and pray it ends fastly, our problem is more energetical, more demand less production

Most heat gets in through windows facing the sun. I cover the worst with aluminium foil (tin foil).

Also bans all the evil rays! Pew pew pew…

AZ here, Get a cheap low power desktop for work shit, it will heat up less and you'll be able to ventilate it better.

Otherwise, a/c, thermal curtains, insulated reflector layer in front of that, make sure your weather seals on your doors are good. Drink water all the time, carry water with you all the time. Good luck with all the heatwaves and welcome to the club.

This stuff is unbearable, I can’t even play video games on my laptop, because it warms up very fast and the keyboard becomes uncomfortable for me to use.

There's a lot of good advice in here but I haven't seen anyone tell you to just reduce the amount of heat being generated in your home. Almost every plugged in electrical device in your home is generating some amount of heat. Esp. if they're in use.

So my suggestion to you is to flip off the power-strip or unplug unnecessary devices, and find something else to occupy your time. The consoles, PCs, the tv itself, they're all hungry devices that generate a lot of heat. Those fans people are telling you to use? They generate heat too... so while I'm not saying, "don't use a fan to stay cool", I am saying, "don't fill your home with running fans in rooms you aren't in".

Brazilian here, to be fair I've read so many good tricks here that I am not sure what I have to contribute, but yeah, light clothes with bright colours or white, don't dress dark as your clothes you heat up. No shoes if you can, but also not barefeet lol sandals and flip flops havaianas styles. If you live close to the beach obviously go take a swim, otherwise swimming pool or AC at home or car or go to store random stores with AC too lol. Drink cold stuff, keep hydrated. Fans, and cold shower.

Lots of fans.

When I lived in a top floor apartment in Melbourne, where it regularly hit 40°C without any air-conditioning (still unsure how that was and is legal to rent out), I would use a spray bottle of water and a fan to evaporatively cool myself, cold showers to lower my body heat and trips to an air-conditioned space like the cinema or shopping centre during the worst of it.

If AC isnt an option, the way Ive gotten through summers without is opening one window on one side of the building, then another one on the opposite side. Then point a box fan facing outward of one window, and do your best to seal the gaps with some cardboard or whatever you have. This will create negative pressure in the building, drawing in a bunch of air from the opposite window.

If the dew point is favorable at least, then drinking Hot Coffee and let myself sweat in front of an Electric Fan. If it is very humid, Ice on neck or taking a cold shower.

If I had to go outside or Air conditioning at the office broke, then I'd wear light clothing where sweat is easier to evaporate

Otherwise, I'd just use air conditioning and eat up the electricity cost, fuck this weather.

I'm late to this party because I'm on the other side of the planet in a sub-tropical climate. I agree with the commenter from India and want to add:

• if you have a cotton cap / beanie / soft hat, get it out Wet it, wring it out, and put it in your freezer in roughly the right shape for your head. Use whatever is in the freezer to shape it, then let it freeze. Remove from freezer, put it in your head, and thank me for the brief but blessed relief.

• Wear a light cotton long sleeve top. Wet the sleeves and stand or sit in front of a fan or in a breezy spit in the shade. It's like air conditioning for your skin.

• Wet your head for instant relief. Your wet hair will help keep you cool for longer.

• Plan your day around the heat. If you have to go out, do it as early in the day as you can to avoid the heat. Stay in the shade as much as possible, but somewhere with good air flow

The one thing I don't see mentioned enough for keeping your apartment cool is to close all windows and draw all curtains during the day and open them when the temperature outside is lower than that inside (normally ~an hour after sunset).

Heat reflects off all surface, so it's not just about keeping light out.

Blinds on the outside of your windows help significantly too.

Houses are built differently in hot areas. Very few windows facing south. Shutters on all windows. All windows deeply recessed. Channel the wind, ie have a deep through channel that spans across the house so any pressure differential causes air to exchange. Tiled floors. No/low insulation.

In Northern Europe, we live in sweat boxes designed for letting in maximum light and keeping heat inside the house.

I live in the desert so its usually a dry heat so I get to use a evaporative/swamp cooler. It uses way less electricity than the AC. I just have to crack open a few windows across the house and turn on a fan in the hallway and it gets quite cool and doesn't get too humid inside. It hit 110ºF (43ºC) today and it never got above 72ºF (22ºC) inside.

A neck towel that you regularly wet is truly amazing

People have already mentioned wet towels on your neck but I would add, if you can, cold wraps for your legs: wet towels around your calves.

I'm from central Italy, in my city temperatures regularly reach 40 degrees in August. With the recent heatwave we reached it in mid July, I cope by being indoors and locking myself in with AC on and drinking ice cold water, and when I can (and I fortunately can afford so) going on vacation in colder, still close, places, something like Abruzzo or Molise if you know central Italy.

Always humid heat, days above 35 degrees have increased a lot. Have to use an AC all summer long... Prayers to those who have to work outside.

I’ve discovered that if I have one little air conditioned place I can go, then I don’t actually need to be in it for it to be a relief.

Just knowing that after this day in the year I’ll have a place to cool off really helps.

San Diegan here. Beach. That’s what we all do. Pool works too. And of course AC.

Get as much cold air inside overnight as possible then close all the doors and windows a little after sunrise. If your house is well insulated it’ll keep it relatively cool until after lunch. Also, keep the blinds closed on the side of the house actively getting sun.

Light weight or moisture wicking clothes.

Fans. Lots of them.

Damp washcloth on your neck or a spray bottle to mist yourself. If you want to step that up, put the washcloth in the freezer for a bit then wipe your face/neck down.

Midwestern US here, it's been getting hotter and some years our AC just stopped working. I keep my fan turned on almost 24/7 as I can't breathe well without it on and recently I got blackout curtains with angled curtain rods. Keeps my room much cooler than a blanket over the window

Fan + spray bottle filled with room temperature water. Divine

In FL: Air conditioning.

In HI: Breezes, fans.

I'm from eastern europe too, I feel like I almost died from the august 2020 heat, this year I couldn't belive my eyes seeing 37°C on the weather app last week(and continues to rise). The hail mary was fans for me, but air conditioning is something that will get harder to live without as years roll by and the temperature increases. I know I'm not the intended audience, but what worked for me was spending more time in rooms where the sun doesn't hit as much(for me it's the bathroom), standing near walls(I noticed they don't catch a lot of heat and they are not too cold to lean on), every few hours try to splash some water on your face and neck and maybe(I don't know if this works, didn't try it) towels that are wet and were left a bit in the fridge(I'd avise much caution with temperature change to avoid termic shock, for the towel too not be too cold and the body too warm). Hydrate and avoid going outside mid day as much as possible. Summer gets easier when you work in an air conditioned office, but until then, good luck and drink water.

If you don’t have air conditioning you can create a shitty version using a bucket of water, a towel and a fan. Just have the towel wick up the water and lay it over the fan.

Drink lots of cold water. Back in May I almost got a heat stroke because I was drinking room temperature water and hot tea @ 4pm when it is the hottest. Stop drinking anything hot. If tap water is warm fill up buckets of water previous night for bathing. Leave those buckets open in the bathroom with windows open to allow water to cool overnight. Of course you also need air-conditioning and ceiling fans. Additionally, use blackout curtains on windows, keep doors and windows closed so that rooms don't become as hot as outside. FYI where I live summer temperatures are 45 deg C, and this is all part of what I do to deal with the heat.

I'm in Phoenix. It was 112°f here today. It's hot as balls.

However, I'm immensely more comfortable in this heat than I was when visiting Germany last summer when it was in the high 70's. The difference is the humidity. I was constantly sweating, soaking everything while I was over there. Here? I get a little sweaty at 100°, sometimes. Our power infrastructure is pretty solid, so lots of air conditioner.

Air conditioning and swimming pools

You can make a simple a.c. by putting a rack with wet towels in front of a fan, tho it loses effect once the humidity in you house gets higher.

One thing not mentioned, ice.

Drink water with ice to physically reduce your body temperature. Wipe yourself with ice packs. Eat ice cream and frozen popsicles.

I stay inside with AC on as much as I can for June, July, and August. I know many homes in Europe don't have AC, but if we didn't have it here, we would likely have very high heat-related death rates. It has been 100-104°F (38-40°C) almost every day for the past 6 weeks. And at night, it only gets as low as 80°F (26.5°C). It's brutal. So AC is the answer.

But from mid September through the end of May, we can be outside almost the whole time. There's the occasional cold snap in winter, but on a regular day, it can be as warm as 80°F (26.5°C) in December and January.

I live with no AC. First thing, all windows get blocked with blackout curtains or whatever you can find. Wear loose cool clothes. I like to wear linen. At night and early morning/dusk, open the windows and doors (if applicable) to get the cool air flowing through your place. If you can, keep them open all night and seal them up once the sun comes up. Use a fan to blow directly on you. Even when it's hot, that air flow is a life saver. Misting yourself and standing in a fan is a very effective way of keeping yourself cool. All your physical labor chores you're going to want completed early in the day or after the sun goes down.

As for your laptop, maybe pointing a desk fan at the keyboard may help?

Honestly, I just love the heat. I strip down to as few layers as possible, put a fan on, and that's pretty much it. Even when it gets really hot, I still find that easier than the cold. The question I really want to know is how do people deal with the cold!