Boy It Is Hot Outside

We are having very warm temperatures in Utah right now. When I go to the national weather service it has a message saying, "Excessive Heat Warning." Basically if you go outside, you run the risk of spontaneously bursting into flames. I don't mind too badly as my air conditioner is fairly new and does a great job of keeping the inside of my house comfortable.

One problem with air conditioning is that it can be expensive during really warm weather. I have done what I can to limit how much it runs including painting my house white and using white tiles on my roof. When I had to have my roof replaced, the salesperson said the color of the tiles shouldn't make much of a difference. Interestingly I chose the tiles with the Energy Star rating and my electrical bill is consistently 50% less than it was with my previous tiles. In other words, the salesperson was ignorant and white roof tiles make a huge difference.

To help keep my air conditioning costs down I also set my thermostat to 76 degrees Fahrenheit. That is a great daytime temperature as I can hang out in shorts and a t-shirt inside. My office likes to keep the temperature much colder and people run around in jackets and blankets. It is a good thing I don't have to go in every day.

One more thing you can do to keep electrical costs down in the summer is to leverage free air conditioning with the cool night air. The only downside is you can't rely on an outside source to know when it is okay to open your windows. I have an Amazon Show in my family room that always displays the outside temperature as reported by the national weather service. Unfortunately it is never the same as my actual outside temperature. How do I know? I have an electronic thermometer that displays its reading on my weather station inside. I keep the sensor in the shade on the north side of my house. I don't even think about opening a window until my weather station tells me the outside is at least a half degree cooler than the inside.

There are about 20 days in the summer where the outside temperature never gets low enough for me to open my windows. When I fell asleep last night, my bedroom was about 3 degrees cooler than the outside. It was still 2 degrees cooler this morning when I woke up. I expect a few more days of this but will still watch nightly as I enjoy seeing how cool I can get my house with free air conditioning.

That outdoor thermometer has more than paid for itself. Sometimes I will go outside and think the house is warmer inside. Often that just means there is a slight breeze which makes it feel cooler even though it isn't. Having a trusted temperature source helps me convince others that live with me to keep the windows closed for just a bit longer.

Finally it is important to know that unless you have many zones for your air conditioner, not all rooms in your house are at the same temperature. My house has 3 levels and the basement is always cooler than the other 2. The master bedroom is in the top level and always the warmest being about 3 degrees warmer than the level below it. When it is time to open windows, I start upstairs. I have thermometers on each level of the house and only when the outside temperature drops below the inside temperature for that level do I open those windows.

The system is not foolproof but it works fairly well for dry western states like Utah. I was talking with someone recently that said the difference between high and low humidity is that with low humidity, it does get cool in the shade. For me, that means when the sun goes down, it gets cool. Sometimes very quickly and I appreciate that.

Global Warming

Those who believe in global warming will point to the weather here in the western half of the country as proof. Those who don't will point to the weather in the East. Since I am in the West, all I can say is that it isn't fun to watch all this early snow melt. It is tough to ski when there isn't any snow.

Saturday I had a great day of skiing at Snowbird. My wife and I were first into a large bowl and had a nice run of untouched powder. By the time we hit the bottom, there were others following our tracks and so it was impossible to circle around and have the same experience. That didn't keep us from finding little stashes of powder throughout the rest of the mountain. Yes, it was a great day and I hope to have more like it throughout the year. Snowbird is fortunate in that they have elevation to help combat the warm temperatures. While they had fresh snow, places like Park City had to deal with rain.

I got back to the office today and asked if anyone else had gone up skiing. A coworker had thought about it, but Tahoe was just too warm. A look at the Squaw Valley website which showed that it was in the 40's and snow was melting fast. In fact, Squaw only has an 18-inch base. In Utah, that would mean a lot of exposed rocks. It has been so long since I have skied any of the Lake Tahoe resorts that I am not sure how bare it is, but I don't plan to go there any time soon. That is too bad because Squaw Valley is one of my favorite places to ski.

Ski resorts used to have a phone number that you could call to get weather conditions and I'm sure they still do. However now it is so much easier to go to the resort's website and get the same information. Often times there is even a live picture or two so you can see for yourself if the report measures up to your expectations. Unfortunately 18-inches of snow just makes me depressed. Hopefully the weather predictions for a cool down are true and we will have snow later this week. Otherwise there are several websites I won't be visiting only because it is too sad.