Don L. wrote:I'm curious how hot a car would get with your thermometer?
A nice thing about foamies is they don't get hot or radiate heat like cars do. The foam can't build up heat and hold it like an auto does.
Cars get very hot, very quickly. Decades ago I was an engineer working on vehicle HVAC systems. Part of the testing was to "hot soak" the vehicle to 140F in the sun, jump in as quickly as possible, and drive with the windows up until the AC cooled off the interior while taking measurements. NOT FUN! I never had to do a cold soak test.
* Reflective sunscreens help a lot but mostly they just slow down the time to reach peak temperature
* Leaving a window open even just a little helps by providing a path for heated air to escape but doesn't prevent an unsafe rise in temperatures
* Parking so the the car is shaded or the least amount of window faces into the sun helps (that might mean the front windshield if it has a sun screen, it might be the rear window of a minivan or SUV because of the angle).
* When you get into a hot car, open all windows, and blast the FAN at high speed.
(You want to push air through the vents to pull off as much stored heat as you can)
* Until the vehicle is near the outside temp, the "max AC" isn't going to help. It just recirculates the interior air. Doesn't make you cooler until that air is below the outside air.
NONE OF THESE TRICKS MAKES IT SAFE TO LEAVE A PET, A CHILD, OR PERSON INCAPABLE OF GETTTING OUT ON THEIR OWN IN A CLOSED VEHICLE. Just don't do it. Even on a "cool" day, the interior of a vehicle can reach dangerous temperatures in a surprisingly short time.
I'll get off my soapbox now. But I'm very passionate about hot car dealths because they are preventable.
Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 7:19 pm
