Still fighting the sun

Originally posted, 7.18.17, updated on,
7.21.17:

The fight with the sun just got tougher.  The a/c went out yesterday.  Last night was tough.  It got up to 107 degrees inside the trailer yesterday.  It took till midnight for the temperature to drop to 90.  At that point, I figured my fifty pounds of ice could take over, and I could get some sleep.  This part worked well.  But the high temperatures need to come down.  ( no kidding )

The trailer is trapping heat, obviously.  Last night, I came up with a way to cool it down faster.  If you put a box fan in front of the screen door, it will suck in cooler air.  That helps.

It may also help to try to manage this thing better.  The sun goes south during the day, and strikes the bedroom area first.  This gets really hot, then the rest of the trailer follows, as the sun moves back north and west.  At the end of the afternoon, say 4 pm,, the sun will head north of the east west line, and the south end catches a break.  This is when I need to start working on that end of the trailer.  That's because it is the bedroom.

At the end of the day, the north end is getting blasted.  I need to finish my work getting some protection against the sun.

As for the a/c, I will have to suck it up for awhile until I figure out what I need to do about that.  Yeah, the obvious thing is to buy a new a/c.  I'd like to avoid that.



The original post follows:

Been back from Irving for eight weeks now.  Each week on Tuesday, the day of the week that I got back, I drain the black and grey water tanks to the trailer.  Therefore, it is pretty consistent now that I won't use any more than that much water each week.

So, the water part has been easy.  The sun part is tougher.  Since I seem to be struggling a bit with the problem, I decided to start making notes on the sun's movement.

It is the later part of the day that is the real butt kicker.  Starting at about 2 pm, the sun begins to strike the western side of the building, which is where the trailer is situated.  Once that happens, temperatures start to rise quickly inside, unless you want to use a lot of a/c.  At 4 pm, the sun is starting to head back to the northern side of the building.  From four to eight pm, is when it can really get hot.

Since the overhang that this building has seems to offer some shade, why not try that?

This is a problem that I want to solve without spending a lot.  This is over six hours before sundown that is the trouble.  After sundown, things start to cool down.  But not before it gets to about one hundred degrees in there.  Cooling down from that point may take hours.  Not good.

On the other hand, I have the freezer that prepares fifty pounds of ice each night for the bedroom area.  This is working well.

However, the freezer produces some heat, and that makes the living room hot.  If I open some windows, it seems to help, but I think more aggressive action is needed.  It so happens I have a small fan, and I can crack open the door and let the fan blow out some air.  Will try that tonight.  Don't want to have the living room hot because of the freezer.

In short, there seems to be some progress, but for some reason, it is hard to pin down that I actually getting anywhere with this problem.  That's because I use the a/c for several hours, and I want to cut back on that.  Hopefully down to near zero.  The study of the sun may give me some insights on what to do next, if my ideas don't seem to get anywhere.  An overhang may be the ticket.

Still fighting it.