My bedroom is 30 degrees!!

[schroeder]

I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but you are all so nice on here so...

Our bedroom is in the attic and gets so hot in this weather it's hard to sleep.

What can I do to make it cooler we leave the sky light open all the time and in the evening I open the bathroom window(at the bottom of the attic stairs)too to try and let some fresh air in.

It's still boiling

The problem is that all the hot air in the building will be rising and trying to vent into your attic.

We have a similar problem because our house seems to soak and keep heat easily (wonderful in winter) and the hot water tank is in our bedroom! I've been venting hot air into the loftspace to try keep it down (we are at 25 °C right now).

We have tried using a portable air con unit to cool individual bedrooms down, but since it's too noisy to sleep with - about 30 to 60 minutes after turning off the room starts getting hot again.

Airconditioner, I'm afraid. Or at least an electric fan.

We have an air conditioner in our loft room.

You need a fan to exchange the hot air in your room with the cool air outside.

Can you hang a wet towel somewhere in the airflow e.g. over your bedroom door. Gives a similar effect to air con.

we are in a similar position. Last year we reached 31 in our bedroom

Agree with what others have said re an air conditioner. We rarely use ours due to cost though. (also it isn't vented 100% properly due to the type of window we have, but is good enough imo)

Often I have a very cool/tepid bath or shower and go to bed slightly damp. If you manage to get to sleep feeling relatively cooler then you may stay asleep?

In the heat of the day because of how the sun streams in, it is actually cooler to lower the blind and shut the window (only on desperately hot days)

Tell me more about how the wet towel works?

You need to get a through draft if possible - we live in a shared house (ie flats in converted house) with huge windows that are only south-facing. We leave blinds down all day, with windows open a bit - this helps keep the heat from building up too much. Then in the evening, if heat is still oppressive we open the front door (on opposite side of house) and our own flat door, for as long as we can (bearing in mind we need to keep an eye on the front door!). It helps.

Other suggestion is use the 'cold hot water bottle' trick that DH devised a year or two back. Put water in hot water bottle, put in freezer, then take to bed/put in bed... I'm pretty sure you can get 'heat packs' that could be used as cold packs in this way too. Cool bath before bed also helps...

Re keeping windows open, this also depends on how warm air temperature is outside. If it's warmer than inside, keep the windows shut...

One of the other problems with our loft bedroom is that we have a "shut" window (i.e. it doesn't open) on the stairs up to the actual loft. So there is no way we can release the hot air from the lower levels and it makes its way up to the loft.

We have blackout blinds in there which I think helps a tiny bit (but not massively)

Blackout blinds won't be good unless they are white/silver on the sun side. If they are black on both sides they will act like giant radiators.

A wet towel hung in the airflow will cool the air (heat transference as the water is evapourated). Is a similar method that air conditioners use anyway. Is a common technique in hotter countries (in one method or another).

My Mum has been known to have big bits of flat polystyrene packaging which she tapes to the windows to keep the sun out... Obviously it only helps if this is how the heat is getting IN; if it's rising from elsewhere it will make it worse.

Lionstar - I'm glad I've got a load of washing hung in our room to dry now!

Thankyou all for your tips, I will try the towel thing I'll have to hang it on the bannister or stair gate(we don't have a door, but that's for another thread)