Heat

This Blog Post was originally published on adagia.org.

We are way into July now, and newspapers in Austria are already declaring the third heatwave (or so). Although it is not as critical as it is in Canada (I think they have up to 50 degrees Celsius), up to 38 and 40 is still extremely hot for Austria.

The thing is, I don‘t mind heat throughout the day. Although I find it easy to work below 27 °C, I can still work in the office if it gets hotter. Luckily there are people way more heat-sensitive than me, so our AC is running from the morning when the first worker comes till the evening when the last one leaves.

But at home, that’s another story. I think I read a while back that the perfect sleeping temperature is around 18 to 20°C (maybe can give some insight). So how am I supposed to cool the Apartment down?

Well, obviously, the only way is to keep an AC running myself. Currently, I‘m sitting on the balcony writing this, seeing the heat the AC blows out the window. It is strange how hard it is for us humans (I know I shouldn’t generalise, but whatever) to adapt to heat while sleeping.

I think our bodies can cope up to at least 40°C without getting completely wrecked, although it isn‘t healthy at that temperature, I think. But when it comes to sleep, we can only tolerate 20°C less.

I know that above 23/24°C I won‘t be able to sleep through the night properly. It is not that I‘m sweating a lot at that temperature, but something keeps waking me up. Maybe it is my body preparing for an emergency run to somewhere cooler just in case it gets even warmer?

At least with the AC, I‘ve got, I can bring the temperature down to 20°C. Only in the bedroom, but better a cool bedroom than a slightly cooler Apartment.