Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Mission Monitor Board It is so ridiculously hot

... I might as well be in Orlando waiting on line for the new Harry Potter theme park

I prefer the heat of summer to the cold of winter. I can do without the humidity though.

hot again, but not humid... yet. Tolerable.

I prefer a hot, dry heat, so today ain't bad. But I'll take a frigid winter day over a hot and humid day.

I sweated my guts out just clearing books off my daughters shelving unit. Way to hot and humid for me...and I miss winter desperately.

The older I've gotten, the less fond of Summer I am.

The fatter I've gotten, the more I hate hot weather.

Yeah, I especially hate how my air conditioner can't keep it below 80 (or sometimes 82) on the really hot days! I wish I had the $$$ to invest in whatever changes need to be done to fix that.

Ours was creeping up to 85... we finally bitched about it and now they got it down to 73-75.

below 80 degrees? Which part of SC are you in, CT? Thats nighttime weather over here in the peedee.

Years back when my wife and I were married about two years, the AC burnt up. I got it repaired and the house was tolerable. I blamed it on the little black sugar ants that like to find electrical connections and burn them out to save my wife being embarrassed. The real problem was that she was pregnant

The real reason was that she was about five months pregnant and she had the thermostat set at 52 degrees.

I personally don't get comfortable outside til it starts hitting high 80's to low 90's. And this is SC. We can swim in the air in mid summer, lol.

[Conrad Veit] We Ggrrggians must be prepared to adjust to all climates when we rule them all. [/Conrad Veit]

(I like all weather but the extremes are killer. When its hotter than 90 degrees, I'm not a fan at all.)

I live just outside of Charleston, Rick. I'm talking about the temperature inside the house! Outside 80 or 82 is like heaven, but inside it's like an oven. I like my internal temp around 75. We didn't know it at the time, but when we replaced our A/C unit, they put in one that can only cool up to 20 degrees cooler than it gets outside. So if we're knockin' around 100, then it's gonna get uncomfortable inside during the peak heat hours.

It's been worse the last coupla years because we had to cut down our HUGE tree that shaded the entire house after it was struck by lightning. It was shedding huge limbs as it slowly died and was putting our house in danger. That's exposed some inadequacies in our insulation and has compounded the problem with the A/C unit not being so powerful. I'm thinking the cheapest option may be to install a window unit in the great room where we spend most of our time where the heat is the most intolerable. I think it probably gets around 90 in that one room, personally.

Hopefully, that clarifies things a bit!

93 here right now. Ridonkulously hot. So i refuse to leave the house.

I used to run around in shorts in the middle of New England winters (back when it used to snow from Thanksgiving to Easter, not like these days, when it snows for like, five days, total, all 'winter' long), so I'm definitely a cold lover.

But, growing up between Arizona and Oklahoma, I'm also tolerant of a nice dry heat.

Muggy kills me. I like my water where it belongs, in the swimming hole, not in the air!

102 here, which is pretty tolerable for early July in Tucson. I try not complain until it gets over 106.

A bird just burst into flames in mid-air.

You're sure that wasn't just a Phoenix?

It was one of those bird baby things that look like an egg roll.

No doubt it was one of Egghead's egg-sploding eggs!

Holy yolk, Batman!

Yeah, but still you guys should be getting a bit of the ocean breeze, unless you are talking Moncks Corner or Goose Creek.

And you've got a heat pump, not an A/C unit it sounds like. Yeah, those can be a pain. As to the tree, try a Maple tree, green or silver. They grow extremely fast and throw a lot of shade with their branches. Don't snap out the top to get them to grow low and squat. It will take a few years, but they provide excellent shade in the summer and allow what sunlight you can get in the winter. One thing to be aware of...while technically they are a hardwood, they are very soft in reality and branches that get damaged have a tendency to snap.

I personally would plant that, and if you have the room, find some nice oaks that grow quickly and plant a couple behind it. Then, when its old enough and the oaks are bushing out nicely, you can trim back the maple.

I'm a few miles south of Florence, right up here in SC's dust bowl, lol.

Let me rephrase something...snapping out the top will cause them to be more rounded and not get as high, which would not shade as well. So, unless you want it to grow low and squat, don't snap out the top and she will grow taller, throwing higher shade which, with proper placement, will shade your home quicker.

Non-fruit bearing Bradford pears grow well and throw shade up here as well. Don't know how they would do down there.

It was so cool on 7/4 that we were watching the fireworks with our jackets on.

Today is the last predicted day of breezy coolness, though. I tried to make the most of it over the long weekend by doing pretty much nothing.

When I buy a house (hopefully in 2011 if all goes as planned), I'm definitely asking Rick for advice on how tree layout in the backyard!

Yep, we're definitely talking Moncks Corner or Goose Creek! I'm so used to saying "Charleston" to avoid the blank stares that I rarely specify!

For the record, though, I work in Mount Pleasant, which is very close to the ocean, but there's rarely enough of the fabled "ocean breeze" to counter the heat, there. Trust me. Feels just as bad as where I live, if not worse.

Yep, I shoulda specified. You see, Rick, I'm not the least bit mechanically inclined, so when we put in a new unit, we focused on how "energy efficient" a heat pump is. Well, as you know, the price of "energy efficient" is they don't cool worth a shit! (don't heat all that groovy either, truth to tell).

Oh well, live and learn, I guess.

That sounds like some good advice. Unfortunately, my wife and I don't really make up for our lack of mechanical skills with our glorious botanical skills, either. Which one am I least likely to kill and will require the least possible maintenance?

I just spent two hours putting away my comics in a room that was 102 degrees, WITH the fan on.

Try the green maple, CT. And a simple way is to get a small timer to fit on your outdoor spigot and set it to water the tree late in the afternoon. Really, the best way to do it is to just set the tree out, and water it once a day late at in the afternoon when the glaring sun is off it. You can also get some plant fertilizer that will give you feeding instructions.

The watering late in the day should be done down around the roots. I like to make a circle around it without actually throwing water on the plant. If you water in the middle of the day and spray the tree, its possible that the water beads will act as magnifiers and burn the leaves.

If you buy from walmart or lowes, you can usually get a tree that has a one year warranty with it.