Tenants report extra fees, eviction threats among barriers to cooling in new national survey
Aloysius Wong · CBC News
Everyone should join ACORN. Renter in Canada are overdue some organization.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Anonymized raw survey data shared exclusively with CBC showed that tenants with access to AC reported adverse effects of extreme heat less often than those without.
“The temperature gets upward around 30 C in here as opposed to 33 C just outside on my balcony,” said Sandra McCrone, a 64-year-old tenant from South Calgary — even with fans running and blackout curtains blocking out the sunlight during the day.
ACORN’s summary report, published Thursday, identified the most common barriers to having air conditioning: high costs, threats of eviction, and lease agreements that prohibit installing AC units.
In half the households where CBC collected data, it showed people spent a majority of time above 26 C — the maximum indoor temperature widely considered safe by experts.
“We’ve seen people that have had medical prescription notes from their doctor stating, ‘This person needs to keep the temperature of the environment cool because they have asthma, or they have a breathing problem, or they have a heart condition,’” she said.
To combat the effects of extreme indoor heat, ACORN is among those calling for provincial or municipal laws that would mandate maximum temperatures in apartments during the summer.
The original article contains 1,116 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 83%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
30C/86F with humidity is too hot for an apartment. I agree with those ACORN people. It makes sense to have an upper limit too.
i just run a dehumidifier all summer. does an ok job.
Small tip to my northern neighbors. Swamp coolers. Essentially a fan blowing across a medium of water. Crazy low power consumption compared to AC. The only caveat is humidity. It works by essentially exchangeing water for thermal energy. So if its already humid it won’t work. But if the humidity is below %40, you can cool a room by up to 6 or 7 C
TIL: Most of Canada is humid, had no clue. Thought countries near the arctics didn’t have to worry about that.
Unfortunately much of Canada is too humid for swamp coolers to work.
This might not be the best idea, as a lot of the extreme heat is due to humidity (at least in a lot of the country).
Damn really? I didn’t know that. I guess it does make sense with all the water front.
Might be different in places like the praries, but where I am, the humidity can add another 5°C-10°C on those sweltering hot days.
And its not necessarily being by a big body of water that is a factor in humidex values. In fact, being by a big body of water tends to have a moderating effect on the weather.
Winnipeg here, we get serious humidity index increases… and nasty wind chills. Last summer was as hot and humid as I can remember.
Fall is nice. :)
There’s some concern about cleaning the sponge/absorbance medium as that’s a fantastic area for mold growth.
Not a barrier but something for consideration
True true. I always look fo the ones that use the cardboard medium. Those are cheap and easy to replace. I have no idea how often to replace them, I’ve never used one for more than 2 days.
I think it would probably help if, when you turn it off at night once temperatures cool down, to turn off the water pump a while before the fan, so the medium has a chance to fully dry and stay that way overnight. It should be hard for mold to grow that way.
It’ll be harder for sure but mold like cool damp places to grow so anytime you have such an environment you’ll be fighting that battle.
Definitely a good counter measure to help limit it but I’d estimate you’ll likely add a day or two before you need to clean up.
What do you mean by ‘clean up’? Is that estimate based on anything? I don’t think anyone is cleaning swamp coolers more than twice a year when connecting/disconnecting the water lines seasonally, I know I don’t, not sure what that would mean with respect to the mediums since they have running water moving over them while in use anyway and it’s either an accordioned cardboard thing or a mat of what looks like straw so it’s not like you can scrub it without it coming apart. Never noticed mold. It isn’t actually a damp enclosed space, they dry out very fast since evaporation is what they are designed for and they are open to the outside air.
