Morning Mist From a Former Suntan Lotion Bottle

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Waking early is great, to run when it is cooler but it does have a serious drawback. That drawback is that whilst the run might be more pleasant, due to the fresher air, especially evening and morning rain but it has the drawback that if you live in a minergie apartment you never get an opportunity to flush out warm air and replace it with cool air.

Today, as one of my suntan lotion bottles is empty of suntan lotion I decided to clean it with dish soap and water, before adding water to use the suntan lotion bottle as a mister, and so far it has been a partial success.

The spray is too fine to be a complete success. You need to spray multiple times to get any volume of water out and it evaporates fast. I’d recommend a spray that has more volume.

It’s an interesting situation to be in. With a minergie building, or an apartment building, when it’s 35°c during the day you’re going to cook, and because the temperature is the same everywhere, getting used to it is normal.

In Switzerland though, the nocturnal temperature drops to 20°c or so. This means that every single day you can aerate and reset the indoor temperature to a comfortable level. This requires either that you like sharing your room with mosquitos, without a mosquito net overnight, or that you like to wake early and aerate.

Last night I was exhausted, from waking at 4am, to run, and then spending a few hours with family so I slept through the night, until my alarm woke me, I think. That shows how tired I am now.

The most efficient time to ventilate, and cool, is right around dawn because that’s when the temperature difference is the greatest. You go from 30°c to 20°c so that thermal difference clears out the warm air in minutes. Within an hour or two, with the chimney stack effect I can flush the heat traps, and the air can help cool the building.

The spray bottle is meant to provide a fine mist to cool me, but I suspect that the building is so warm that it barely works. Splashing oneself at a fountain works much better.

There is one use that is refreshing. If you’re familiar with having your hair sprayed, during a hair cut, then the former suntan lotion spray bottle is great. You get that refreshing feeling any time you need it.

During a hike you might feel too warm, you spray two or three times, and evaporation will cool you for a few minutes.

Since we still have at least another week of heatwave temperatures, and my apartment is very hard to cool, it makes sense to have fun thinking laterally.

We will all have one or more suntan lotion bottles that need recycling, so we might as well grab the opportunity to cool ourselves without using litres and litres of water.

Remember, this is a free opportunity for upcycling. Since it doesn’t cost anything success is not essential. It’s a way of saving a few francs, by not buying specialist bottles from the shops.