District Cooling. Keeping cool in Dubai

It's almost summer in Dubai. The temperature is hovering around 35c in the day and 24c at night. If you've never lived in a country with heat like this, you'll probably won’t have thought how we keep it cool enough to live in.

There's a huge difference between 2 weeks of holiday sun than to living and working in these temperatures.

When we lived in the UK, our central heating system was never notched up above 21c. I was in the UK this February when the temperatures plummeted below zero for over a week during the heavy snow and the country couldn't meet the demands of heating houses, offices and shops. Our boiler broke down in the house we rent out to our tenants. I purchased them 3 heaters to keep them warm while we waited a week for the gas company to repair and then install a new boiler. I was on hold for almost 5 hours on the phone to get the repair booked. In general as long as you have enough money, you can keep warm.

Now imagine living somewhere where the temperature is higher than 21c almost all year round, reaching almost 50c in June and July and work out how to keep cool. The aircon units have been switched on now and they will run pretty much 24/7 now until the end of November. Taking a cold shower isn’t an option as the cold water tanks can run out the tap at 42c.

Our Villa has separate air-conditioning units in the bedroom and 2 central units, one for each floor. We pay huge electricity bills up to £250 a month to keep cool.

But for apartment blocks, offices and Malls, the demand is high for multiple use so this is where District cooling steps in, with centralised production and distribution of cooling energy, via underground pipes to cool the indoor air of the buildings. They cool sea water which is then piped into the buildings where specially designed units use it to lower the air temperature through the buildings air conditioning system. It’s rarely any cheaper to use this method but it does allow the country to keep up with the demands.

In every district around Dubai, you'll see buildings similar to these below. It took us a while to work out what they were for.

Viewed from the Burj Khalifa, you can see the size of the building and the area it has to cool.

Week 158 Bluewater Islands and Dubai Eye. Man made island a 210m high Big Wheel
Week 159 Dubai Marina - Reflections
Week 160 Dubai Frame. A window between the Old and New Dubai and a 150m high glass floor.

Week 161 Dubai Marina 3 years apart.

Week 162 Dubai Water Canal Bridge Construction and reconfiguration of roads

Week 163 New Metro Line for Expo 2020
Week 164 Hoover Dam 2002 - 2010
Week 165 Dubai Opera House What a difference a year makes
Week 166 Unfinished buildings. The Pentominium
Week 167 Mixing the old and the new. Coventry Catherdral
Week 168 New Dubai Metro Station 
Week 169 Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa 
Week 170 After the Address fire 
Week 171 The Opus Building

Week 13 - One Daily Positive and Project 366

The teen arrived on Tuesday night for the Easter holidays, it's strange having him back home, but it feels like he never left, I'm enjoying being a Mum again for two weeks and I'm back to hiding the goodies and it's been great to have the company and the help around the garden.

We don't have anything planned, he's not here on holiday, he's just home, he's in bed till gone midday, but I'm sure we'll find plenty of things to do, mind you there's no need to entertain him every second of the day.

I'm off work for 2 weeks also and I've managed to catch up with letter writing the old fashioned way and I've finally got round to blogging about my camping trip in Canada last year for Animal Tales and HDYGG? as well as scheduling other blog posts and spending some time in the garden.

Here's my week.

Sunday Day 87 #onedailypositive #project366 there was chocolate in the house for Easter. I had to buy my own chocolate, so I ate it in secret.

Monday Day 88 #onedailypositive #project366 tomorrow's job.....operation clean the study and find my job contract and credit card, lesson plans, key tags for online banking so I can gift the kids their Easter egg money, locate a card I should've posted in February, reclaim the day bed so I can actually sit on it and use my desk to write up blog posts and hand write letters. On a positive using this room as a dumping ground made cleaning the house a little easier.

Tuesday Day 89 #onedailypositive #project366 despite temperatures in the car reaching 46c, it rained this morning in Dubai providing a most welcome relief from this heat for a whole 17 seconds.

Wednesday Day 90 #onedailypositive #project366 the air con is now on in the bedroom at night. The temperature is going to drop below 30c for the next week so hopefully I can switch it off and have respite from the dry skin, coughing and noise for a bit longer.

Thursday Day 91 #onedailypositive #project366 I had planned to have finished all this by now, but I kept putting it off. I'm evidencing the children's work for the last half term, filing reports and keeping their learning journals up to date. It has given me some fab ideas for lesson planning for next term and now I have a system going I'm whizzing through it all. Whoever thinks teachers get long holidays needs to think again. What I actually get during the school holidays is just time away from physical teaching.

Friday Day 92 #onedailypositive #project366 it has rained ALL day in Dubai. Started with a walk in the desert wearing rain coat and wellies, bacon butty for breakfast and a day in watching crappy films and eating chocolate while Peter and the #teen went to the World Trade Centre, movie and dinner. I visited a coffee shop after dropping them at the train station, love the views of the @burjkhalifa from there.

Saturday Day 93 #onedailypositive #project366 yesterday it rained none stop and this time last year we were in the middle of a sandstorm, today's is cool, a little windy and perfect for sitting outside relaxing and a walk on the beach later.

Week 34 - My Sunday Photo

Drinking coffee with a view of the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai skyline in Starbucks. 

Can't wait now till winter when I can sit outside and enjoy the view rather than looking through a piece of tinted glass sat under the air conditioning. 

How to keep cool at home in Dubai?

Before we moved to Dubai we were informed that EVERYONE leaves Dubai for the summer.

Everyone? Seriously? Dubai doesn't shut down for summer, hubby doesn't have 3 months leave every year. We can't afford to rent someone in the UK for 3 months and maintain our villa that we rent in Dubai also. What about the cat and dog? Kennels would cost £3,600 for 3 months. So the other option is I leave Dubai for 3 months, seems a lot of expat spouses do that. But I'd still need somewhere to live and although staying with family and friends is good, I can't spend 3 months on sofas and living out of a suitcase in spare rooms.

I can understand why so many people leave though. Until I experienced the relentless heat I thought 'it can't be THAT bad' but it is, it's worse.

In the day it's an average of 42c, going as high as 50c early in June and not dropping below 33c at night. It's not cooler in the shade, the only place to get any respite is under the air conditioning. Humidity is high and the 'real feel' is up to 10c higher.

I'm still going out, I spend most days in the house on various projects, I tend to get up before sunset to water the garden, walk the dog, do the washing, cleaning etc and around midday I sleep for a couple of hours, before a second flurry of activity kicks in around 5pm, when I go to the beach, walk the dog, food shop and cook dinner.

I go out for coffee everyday, whether its a 5 minute walk over the road or a short trip on an air conditioned bus to an air conditioned mall.

When I'm indoors at home I do the following as it really makes a huge difference to the temperature inside the house.

Keep the curtains closed in the day time, it keeps the direct sunlight from damaging the wooden furniture and leather sofas and keeps the heat out of the room.

You can see how hot it is outside, this is condensation on the outside of the window

The drafts excludes are used to stop the cold escaping and the heat out, rather than the other way round

Keep containers of water outside, so they cool down during the day to be used to water the plants and wash the dog.

Water from the outside cold tap comes out the ground at 46c

Wear cotton and loose clothing, these are cheap and available to buy from the large supermarkets and the souks and perfect for wearing around the home

Keep doors closed during the day, if you're not using a room, If I'm at home alone I tend to only use the bedroom, dining room and kitchen during the day

Drink plenty of bottled water. I'm never more than a couple of feet from a bottle of water.

Make sure every window is covered. With floor to ceiling windows there's a lot of heat that can get into the house, these light weight panels are actually being sucked back towards the window by the heat from outside, imagine how hot the room would be without them

Hubby has been able to plan quite a few trips abroad with work, there are countries he needs to spend time in with his job, so it makes sense to be away during the hottest months. I spent 3 weeks in Canada in June/July which coincided with Ramadan. It's not just the heat that causes me a problem, but during Ramadan I am limited with my day light hour activities also, It is illegal for me to smoke, drink or eat in public during the day and most restaurants and cafes are closed during this period until Iftar when the fast is broken at sunset. It really limited my ability to cope with such high temperatures when I'm out, without being able to drink water.

Ramadan 2016 is earlier around 5th June till the 6th July, when it's not usually so hot and I will probably spend the month in the UK, although I'm yet to experience August in Dubai, so I'll wait till summer is over before I book any flights.

In the meantime I will just continue to live an indoors life at a slow pace, drink plenty of water, sleep during the hottest parts of the day, keep the cat and dog inside during daylight hours, read and hopefully try and make some headway with writing my book while I have the time.

Week 16 My Sunday Photo

Well it's been over 3 weeks since the air conditioning repairmen informed our landlady that they could no longer repair the existing unit and we'd need new ones installed.

After a lot of measuring, checking the fuse boxes, haggle over prices, finally the new units are being installed today. Hopefully this means we can get some sleep tonight with temps in the mid 30's.

Having lived in South Africa for 4 years prior to moving to Dubai, you'd think there would be nothing left that anyone could do to shock me, but unfortunately not.

There is now a lot of cleaning up to do, there is dust everywhere, despite covering everything with sheets first, but hey ho, at least the 3 bedrooms will be cool enough to work in.