Home, Pool & Energy
Everything filed under home, pool & energy.
Home, Pool & Energy11 min readA cooling system maintenance calendarWhat a Phoenix cooling system needs across the year, ordered by what the equipment is actually doing in each month, a checklist drawn from the heat record.Home, Pool & Energy9 min readEvaporative coolers in dry heat, and when they stop workingA swamp cooler's limit is set by moisture in the air, not by temperature, which is why June in Phoenix cools better than March, and August is the worst month of the year.Home, Pool & Energy10 min readKeeping a house cool at 115 degrees115 °F is not a normal day here: it is a rare afternoon with a long record behind it. What the Phoenix normals and the station record say a house is actually up against.Home, Pool & Energy9 min readOn-peak hours and what to move in a Phoenix summerThe hours a Valley utility prices highest sit in the late afternoon and evening, which is the same stretch the cooling load peaks in, and which household loads can move.Home, Pool & Energy11 min readPool care through a Phoenix yearA Phoenix pool is a winter object and a summer problem. The year the air temperature draws, from the switch-on months to the nights that stop cooling the water.Home, Pool & Energy9 min readPool safety around children: the layers of protectionNo single measure prevents a child drowning, which is why the CDC and the Consumer Product Safety Commission publish a set of them. Here is what each layer actually says.Home, Pool & Energy10 min readUnderstanding a summer electric bill in PhoenixA summer bill is two numbers multiplied together (the kilowatt-hours the house used and what each one cost) and the Phoenix climate loads the first of them heavily.Home, Pool & Energy9 min readWhy pool water gets too warm in a Phoenix summerIn a normal July the Phoenix night never drops below the mid-eighties, so a Valley pool has almost no hour in which to shed the heat it gains by afternoon.