‘Hell on earth’: Phoenix’s extreme heatwave tests the limits of survival

bossito@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 453 points –
‘Hell on earth’: Phoenix’s extreme heatwave tests the limits of survival
theguardian.com
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I live here. A couple weeks ago my AC went out and I had to have an after hours/emergency tech come out - blown capacitor. The next day one of my co-workers had his AC go out - blown capacitor. Yesterday my mother-in-laws AC went out - blown capacitor. It’s so hot that these units are running basically nonstop. AC companies are making money hand over fist right now.

If it helps at all, AC capacitors are extremely easy to replace, so if you had an extra or two on hand, that might save you some headache and money later. Tell you friends. I hope you can stay cool!

Do be carefully though, capacitors can store an electrical charge, even broken ones can still be dangerous.

Def did this one by one to all of the caps in my old AC unit. Amazing how resourceful you become when faced with a night of discomfort and a huge repair bill.

I bought a book a few years ago and I think it is called Climatopolis. The first chapter talks about how major cities in certain parts of the world (focused mostly on the U.S.) are fast becoming super heated islands because of all of the steel and glass and concrete in densely packed over urbanized areas and furthermore, that there will be no escape for the poor and disenfranchised because the asphalt absorbs the heat so night gives no reprieve.

It blows my mind how homes in the desert hardly use swamp coolers. It's just a sign to me how unprepared people are. If the grid becomes unstable, this place almost immediately becomes uninhabitable due to how inefficient ac is. Homes are hardly built with efficiency in mind. I see homes painted black, with floor to ceiling windows, set on top of sand stone cliffs. Nobody out here seems to realize how dangerous this all is or that they're living in a desert.

Ffs if it were me id dig into the ground and paint my walls white, and only put windows on the north/south sides, use geothermal cooling/a swamp cooler, etc.