Summer Woes and Gratifications

Woe-wise: We've already had three small wildfires in my local area and one big one in the Sequoia National Forest that firefighters haven't been able to bring under control yet. Every couple of days I see one or two plumes of smoke rising like twisted threads over the mountains north of the lake. This morning, the sky over the mountains looked like what can be seen on a normal smoggy day in Los Angeles...an ochre-colored striation along the horizon. One of the local wildfires was less than a mile north of me, and now that hillside looks like burnt toast.

Gratification-wise: This is my first summer using a window-mounted swamp cooler and I'd give it a rating of 9 on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being best. The hottest day so far cooked at just under 100 degrees, and the temperature inside rose to 75 at midday. At night, when the temperature only goes down to 60, the temp inside the house cooled to 57 by running the cooler all night. I think I'm doing a good thing for my pocketbook and the environment by using waaaaaaay less electricity than if I were running the a/c. I'll know about the pocketbook thingee when I get my electric bill in about ten days.

Using a window-mounted swamp cooler requires opening a window (just a bit) in the room farthest from the cooler, just enough of an opening to create a vacuum so the cool air is pulled through the house and out the open window. To check if the window is open the right amount, I place a single sheet of toilet tissue against the screen. If it stays in place, the opening's perfect. If the tissue slides to the bottom of the window screen, or falls off, the window needs to be open wider. Hey, it ain't rocket science.

The kitties are gratified also, because summer used to mean all windows and doors remained closed to compensate for the a/c, so no great smells or sounds from the outside. But this summer, they sit for hours at the open window on their window box, noses pressed to the screen and twitching with delight, as they smell the rabbits and chipmunks and squirrels and hear the quail and mockingbirds and sparrows and bluejays and acorn woodpeckers.

One other benefit of the swamp cooler, I've attached a long hose to the drain hole, and I move the hose around the yard, letting the automatic drain-off (the water changes every 12 hours) water one tree then another. No waste here.