What do people with home offices do with heat?

[reluctantbrit]

I had no real issues with working from home and heat but the last 2 years it was really awful. My blood pressure is dropping, I start feeling faint and have issues concentrating. I had hopes that me loosing weight helps but unfortunately no.

I do a lot already, airing from 6am onwards to around 8am when the sun starts getting into the room. Dark roller blinds and open door. I can open the window only after 3pm but then the air outside is hardly better, it‘s just oxygen with hot air. A fan also just moves the hot air around.

I can’t change rooms as I need a complex set-up with a large screen, it‘s not that I can just move a laptop around.

It has to be fairly quiet as I have regular calls.

I also go to the office but that includes a train ride back home and I am often ill in the evening from travelling. I am also under work adjustments to do hybrid due to an injury which will run until end of August.

No plans to install air con permanently currently, we have enough going on with the house for this year already, and I am wondering if a portable one with a hose is actually doing anything as it requires to have a window open.

I am happy to throw money at the problem for a decent solution which doesn‘t include building work.

I worked wearing a wet top the summer we had 40 degrees a few years ago.

frozen 2l bottle of water in front of a fan is pretty effective and cheap. Have two or three bottles in the freezer and swap them over as they defrost.

Office curtains closed tonight and windows open. That helps massively but it's only 26 degrees here.

We use air conditioning. It regularly gets to over 40 here.

I also have my home office in a half basement. It is mostly underground, but one wall is half exposed and has windows. So I have natural light and natural cooling. You can feel the temp drop when you go underground in the house. It helps so much.

my husband got stuck with the home office on the main floor and it’s not nearly as pleasant in the summer.

Yes, I call the office my vampire cave between 9-3.

The rest of the house is also covered up.

I wish we would be able to use the outside roller shutters like we have them in Germany, they make such a difference keeping the heat out. Yes, it's utterly dark but it's cool.

We’re past masters at all the usual passive measures, but with enormous windows in our 1970s house and a huge amount of loft insulation, the rooms get hot and stay hot in a heatwave. I’m a historic buildings specialist so I understand how to mitigate heat and cold without fabric interventions, but nothing seems to work here!

I can’t have water under my desk because I’ve got things plugged into 11 extension sockets under there and I don’t want to risk it! I’ve got a big fan for today and am thinking about the portable aircon, though by the time it gets here the heatwave will be over for this time.