Hottest weekend this year but it is supposed to drop back into the normal range next week. The swamp coolers are still doing okay but all rooms are warmer but still below 80 degrees F. Bedroom is 73 degrees F. and the living room is 77 degrees F. The biggest problem is it not cooling down over night so I can't use my fans to cool the house off. That has a big impact on the house temps for the rest of the day.
I am filling the water tank on the swamp coolers and the run time for the living room cooler is about 5 hours and the bedroom cooler lasts about 6 hours. The coolers have a hose connection for continuous operations but I don't want to run a hose into the house so I have not tested that out.
Because it is not cooling off a lot at night I'll probably use the air conditioner at night for the next few days. I'm still happy with the swamp coolers as they have worked very well with the "normal" hot summer weather. A few days using one small air conditioner is a huge improvement to using one 24/7 during the summer.
If I'm reading my electrical usage correctly I have saved almost 200 kwh compared to my electrical use last summer by turning off the hot water heat during the day and using the swamp coolers rather than air conditioners for cooling and it has only been two weeks! I love the swamp cooler even if they are not a perfect replacement for the air conditioners. I'm staying cool on most days and the energy savings is substantial. I can set up/run my window air conditioners if it gets unbearably hot but overall I'm happy with my swamp coolers and will add more in the future for cooling my shop and patio. I have a couple of timers to shut off the swamp coolers before the tank runs dry after 5-6 hours. that would work for cool air for most of the night. I'll have to test them out this weekend.
I finished up dead heading the roses in the front yard and it looks like the garlic is ready to harvest in the front yard beds. The peas did well in the north bed but I did not do a good job creating a trellis for them to climb. The peas did bad in the sw facing bed and got to hot. This is a bed that needs sun/heat loving plants but the north bed could be good for cool weather loving plants.
I have few black berries and raspberries forming in the container plants. From what I understand most raspberries and black berries don't produce the first year after planting but I have berries forming. I'll take it as I love berries even if it just a couple off a new plant.
I have a fire wood delivery coming the 18th of July of 2 cords of wood and I'm paying for the firewood guys to stack it. They can stack in two hours what would take me 2-3 weeks to get stacked so the extra cost is worth the time savings. We have only 8 weeks of summer left before September and it will be all all about Fall harvest and getting ready for winter.
I started cutting up kindling for the wood heating season today and filled a box that I'm giving to Mom for her little woodstove. I split a wagon load of wood for kindling to start filling my own kindling boxes. When you buy cut and split wood you get chunks of wood that won't start burning with a match. You need a fire starter of some sort, usually paper, kindling and wood that is in between the size of kindling and the cut and split wood. I find as I cut kindling there are some chunks of wood that is to knotty or twisted for good kindling and those smaller chunks of wood become the base of my fires I set the kindling on before I add the larger chunks of split firewood. Even if you buy cut and split firewood you will need a 3-4 pound axe and hatchet for cutting kindling.
I suppose I'm "old school" lighting a fire with just one match. I see people start woodfires with a propane torch and I cringe. Nothing against them and that works great until you run out of propane. It works but it feels wrong to me. I like laying out the wood and fire starter and using a wooden match to start the fire and build it up slowly with larger chunks of wood.
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