Hello and welcome once again to Cooling India. It is that time of the year in India when soaring temperatures in many parts of the country has caught even expectant weather scientist by surprise. Some parts of the country, especially in the central and northern belt mercury reading recorded a daze-inducing heat of 47°C. In fact, the national capital suffered blazing heat. However, things have improved a bit since yesterday, when I started writing this with thunderstorm and dust storm hitting the city.
Since more than 100 people have lost their lives in the past 15 days due to soaring heat waves across northern India, I would like to dedicate this note for some basic methods of keeping our place of residence cool even without air conditioning, which is still considered a luxury by a vast majority of our population. I would urge you to share this with those who are in need. For those majority of the people who do not use air conditioning, there are many ways and methods to keep your house reasonably cool in the dry summers that we have in India. There are two major heat receptors in any building – the roof and the wall. Most of our buildings are made of concrete and therefore it absorbs in the heat and radiates it to the lower floors and similarly from the walls the heat transfer occurs directly to the rooms. Apart from that in many houses the temperature of the room increases because of clutter of furniture that create a hot air pocket and in some because of the dark colours used on the walls, curtains and furniture.
Paint your building roof in white so that the heat is radiated back. Use as much of neutral light colours inside the room, like light colour curtains and wall paints. Keep the windows open for fresh air to come in. And last but not the least, why not have lots of plants in and around our homes.
Whichever way you choose to keep yourself cool from the soaring heat, stay safe and wish and hope monsoon hits our shores soon. Hope you enjoyed reading this issue as much as we have in putting together the different contents for you. Do send in your comments to me at pravita@charypublications.in
Pravita Iyer
Publisher & Director
