How to keep your house cool in summer without electricity when and you're in full board preserving mode, aka a homesteader kitchen in summer is vastly different than the majority of main stream society, can be a challenge. We've got bread to bake, cast iron skillets to sizzle, Mason jars and canners waiting to be filled, and it doesn't matter what the temperature outside is, we need to get it done.
But that doesn't mean we have to suffer or forgo preserving all the bounty to stock our larders. We're going to look at old-fashioned ways to keep your house cool in summer naturally as well as yourself, because ya can't keep a good homesteader down, right?!
Listen below to, How to Keep Your House Cool In Summer Naturally Without Electricity #148 of the Pioneering Today Podcast, where we teach families how to grow, preserve and cook their own food using old-fashioned skill sets and wisdom to create a natural self-sufficient home, with, or without, the homestead.
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How to Keep Your House Cool in Summer Without Electricity
We've never had air conditioning and when you can over 400 jars of food a year, you get creative and learn how to stay cool without electricity.
8 Tips on How to Keep House Cool in Summer Naturally
- Block the windows. It's always cooler in the shade and same thing goes for your house, especially on southern exposure windows. Close blinds and curtains in the morning. You may also want to look into black out curtains (we use these in our bedroom).
- Minimize opening and closing the doors. It's pretty amazing how much heat comes in by even fast opening and closing of doors through out the day. This can be difficult with kids (I've been known to lock the southern exposure door so they have to use the other doors) but can make a difference of at least 2 or 3 degrees. Try to use doors that are northern exposure or in the shade and as little as possible.
- Plant deciduous trees strategically. This one is going to take some time to pay off and you needs to be done with thought. I say deciduous because you don't want an evergreen tree blocking the sunlight in the dead of winter when we actually want the heat of the sun to warm our house (especially true if you have solar panels or plans of going solar in the future).Take care you're not planting the trees too close to the house where you'll have the potential for limbs, roots invading the foundation or septic system, and leaves clogging the gutters. You'll also want to make sure you don't plant in a spot that would block sunlight to your garden. Most fruits and vegetables require at least 8 hours of full sunlight a day for optimal production.
- Open the windows at night. Let nature cool off your home for you. As soon as the sun begins to fall behind the horizon, monitor the outside temp with inside and when it's the same or cooler, open all those windows. In the height of summer we generally open our windows and sliding glass doors at 7:30 pm and leave them open overnight until about 7:30 am the next morning. (We have a guard dog and other home security measures in place).
- Minimize oven and stove top use. We're a from scratch cooking house and that doesn't stop in the middle of summer. I adore my Instant Pot, it lets me cook my favorite meals without heating up the house or being plugged in for hours on end like a slow cooker (but a slow cooker helps keep the house cool too if you don't have a beloved Instant Pot).
- Out door cooking. I use our Sun Oven (solar oven) a lot in the summer to put that heat and sunlight to use. Fire up that grill or cook over an open fire. We do a lot of grilling and Dutch oven cooking and baking during the summer months.Not only do we enjoy it, but it keep the house cool while still allowing me to bake all of our favorite goodies and dishes.This is especially helpful during power outages and a skill set we use all year long.We have a brand new series starting on cast iron and outdoor cooking for Pioneering Today Academy members, you can click here to be sign up for notification when we open for enrollment again!
- Create a Summer Kitchen. This is an old practice when a separate building was used to cook and preserve foods during the heat of summer. Another variation of this is a dog trot house, where an open breezeway connected two separate one story structures, one side was used for sleeping and main quarters, while usually the other was for cooking and the kitchen.We take the same idea here on our homestead and create an outdoor summer kitchen. We have a permanent fire pit for an open fire and to set our Dutch ovens in, with another pit that's waist high with a grate over it for frying or roasting, with an accompanying long counter next to it.I also use this same area to install an outdoor canning kitchen with a two burner propane stove. (You'll find a full lesson on this covered in our Home Canning with Confidence course and part of the Pioneering Today Academy)
- Be strategic on when you use the kitchen. If you must use the stove in the kitchen, I've found I prefer using it in the evening when I'm either just about ready to open the windows or know I will be shortly so the house can begin it's nightly cool down. Some people will say to do it in the morning before the heat of the day, but I find that just raises the temperature in the house without anyway to cool it down when you don't have air conditioning and prefer the evening route.
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These are bonus tips because they do require electricity and while they're not old-fashioned they do make a much more comfortable homestead.
How to cool a room with fans
- Place a fan in front of an open window to draw and push the cooler outside into the room.
- If you have a second fan, place it at another window facing the outside to draw the hot air out of the room and house faster.
There you have it, our best tips on How to Keep Your House Cool in Summer Without Electricity. Do you have any tips to add?
Careful about a fan in the window.
I was an Firefighter/Paramedic and I have seen box fans catch fire when put in a window. The screen blocks the air flow and overheats the motor. Then the motor catches fire. It is better to install a whole house exhaust fan.
Thanks for the safety tip and for your service. My husband is a volunteer fire fighter and EMT, too.
??? Appreciate the warning. I’ve never had a box fan catch fire but have not run them hours on end. In non AC home while growing up, almost every night the window fan (not box fan) would be set for in or out depending on which direction a slight breeze was blowing. But then things were built better 50 and 60 years ago.
It must be a defective fan to begin with
Probably works better in the Pacific Northwest than our neck of the woods. In the southeast US where we live summers such as this one don’t even have a lot of relief even in the evening. But good advice for other parts of the year when it isn’t quite so brutal. Thanks Melissa!
Similar argument was made regarding a NextDoor post how to save electricity. “Open windows? You have to be nuts.” – Yes, if you don’t use any common sense and open them when outdoor temps are same as or higher than indoor. In Houston there are very few nights from June into September that I can open up, but I do when conditions are right.
Just a comment on trees for cooling, there is a great tree that a lot of people don’t know about. It’s a Tamarack or American Larch. In the warmer months it bears needles like a fir or pine, but it drops it’s needles in winter. We have them growing on our south side to keep us cool in the summer, but in the winter, we can open the curtains of our large living room window and the furnace doesn’t turn on until sundown, when we close the curtains. We also recently purchased a solar oven to use outside, Just starting out with it so far so good.
I totally echo your statement about the solar oven. I know a lot of people will balk at the initial price (around $300, depending on sales), but it’s SO WORTH IT especially as a one-time investment, and helps keep the electric bill every summer.
Mine is going right now with two sets of chicken leg quarters to be used in whatever during the week. You can even dehydrate in it!
For a old person I’m so enjoying your teaching. I just wish you did youtube videos. So you could show us some of the things you are talking about. Great job, keep up the good work.
I love the work you do may God continue to bless your efforts. Audra
A depression tip that seems to work, was to place a wet towel in front of a fan and re-wet it when it dried out. The air blowing through the towel feels much cooler.
Melissa these are great tips. In addition to some of these tips we also use neck wraps that can be cooled in cool water, fridge or freezer. Keeping your hair tied up in a bandana and wearing loose cool clothing helps as well.
Thanks Heidi, those tips I’m going to be sharing on keeping your body cool in a few weeks, great minds!
We do many of these things. I also combine 5 & 6 by putting my crockpot outside! Yesterday I reheated a brisket by placing it in a covered glass dish with some water in the bottom (to prevent drying out) and put it in the grill (like an oven!). We’re spending lots of time in the basement right now 😉
We have a problem in the summer with neighbors having bon fires at night. We can’t open our windows because of the smoke. We are also in the Pacific NW.
I was very interested in these unique and effective ways to keep your house cool. Where I live, it is common to be nearly 100 degrees all summer. The AC bill was getting to be a bit too much so we are moving. I am going to search for a house that I can apply all of these different techniques. I am particularly interested in one: Blocking the windows. I am hoping to get a house with enormous windows. If I do find a house like that, I will definitely keep them blocked to keep my house nice and cool during these hot summer months.
my husband is also a firefighter for 33 yrs.
I think I’ve heard you speak about a coffee alternative. Or a coffee that is lower in acidity. What’s it called, I’m interested in looking into it.
Yes, there’s two options, one is this Toddy maker system that is a cold brew process that has 67% less acid https://amzn.to/2P1mHT6 *affiliate link and I also started using this coffee almost a year ago, it’s shade grown and organic, which shade grown coffee has less acid as well. You can get whole beans or ground. I do a bit of both. On really early mornings, we use the ground coffee… aka when I forget to grind it the night before so the grinder doesn’t wake up the kids.
You can get 1/2 off your first box here (scroll down to see the 1/2 off box sizes and special) –> 1/2 off organic and shade grown coffee
How long are whole coffee beans go to http://j.mp/2oSejt0
Just curious about using an instant pot. Do you have one that doesn’t use electricity? Thanks
One thing I have learned to keep the temps down is to minimize the number of lights that are on and how long they are on for. Granted that means you have electricity and are turning it off, but those bulbs put out a lot of heat. Also, you can get used to doing things in the dimmer light, during the day at least, and don’t usually need the lights on during the day, contributing to the heat.
I live in an older house (134 years) and one of the ways I help cool it down is to open up the door down to the cellar/basement and put a fan there to pull the cool air up out of there. Also Swamp cooling (placing wet towels in front of fans) helps to cool things down. I have also made a portable “air conditioner” with ice and a bucket, and dug a hole and sunk a hose in it to create a heat sink. That’s a fun one. You pull air from your hot house down thru the hose into the ground where it gets cooled down and then the cool air circulates back up thru the house. There are some really good sites on how this is done.
I want to try making a pop can heat exchanger next.
You can’t stick a $15 box fan in the window. You need a durable fan. A quality fan may cost $100 but will not heat up and will run for many years. I have one that is a lot older than you. It was left in this house when we bought it in 1975. I have another high volume fan that is only 20″ which sits on a stand at the floor and can be turned to blow at any height. I bought that at Sam’s in 1990 for $39. Those fans are about $50 now. I use mine in my basement garage. I have to make sure the garage door is open before I turn it on, because it will blow any dust out the door.
Don’t forget about awnings, my parents now 99 and 100 years old used awInns to help cool our home. I decided to give it a try as most of my windows are southern exposure. It worked amazingly. No light blocking in the winter, love them!
Putting a fan in the window to draw in hot (106*) outside air will not cool your house down, even though you put another fan in another window for cross ventilation, it just blows hot air. Besides that it takes electricity to run the fans, if you’ve already have electricity just buy an air conditioner!
Umm you put the fan in the window and turn it on when the sun goes down and the outside air is COOLER. And it’s much cheaper than an air conditioner.
My Mam told me about hay boxes that my Grandma used during the War. Basically, you’d start a casserole off early in the morning, and finish it off in a hay box ready for dinner. A hay box was a wooden carton with a lid. Hay was layered thickly in the bottom, the piping hot casserole dish was put in, more hay was packed firmly around the sides, and a thick layer of hay was put on top. Then the lid was put on, and the whole thing was left in the sun for the day. If I were to try it, I may experiment with polystyrene boxes that fishermen use. Not sure if it worked on cloudy days. Possibly.