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Humidity in MontevideoThis forum post has messages dated from 10/02/11 through 10/14/11, please be sure to read all the messages. If you feel it is old or outdated, please follow up with a question or comment and someone may be able to update it, or reply with newer information if you have it.
| Humidity in Montevideo Hi there!Can anyone tell me about the humidity in Montevideo during the summer months? We hoped to move there because it was on the coast and had coastal breezes, but when I hear about people having multiple air conditioners, I have to ask. Can someone please post a detailed response? Thank you so much... |
Comment #210/02/11 10:06Rural east Colonia departmento | "Air conditioning"
I have 3 Chinese "split" air con units and so far I've felt the need to use them for between 6 and 12 days each year when the temperatures have exceeded 100F. I live away from the Rio de la Plata and so lack the cooling effects of being near the water. Since I've been here we have only had one wet summer with uncomfortable levels of humidity.IMV the bad humidity here occurs in winter when cold humidity off the river seems to penetrate your bones. |
| "Don't have one either."
I don't have air conditioning. Just a roof fan in the bedroom. Never thought it was completely necessary, though I may buy one sometime just for the hotter days. The breeze generaly makes my apartment quite cool. I guess it'll depend on the particular house or department. Most people in Uruguay don't have AC appliances. |
| "Yes, heat...humidity...insulation"
no good when you're in your forties (and female), but I notice the windows are all single-paned, so I wonder how the heat stays in in the winter. It seems like the heat would just go right through...do they insulate? Or is it just a bake and freeze situation (like Tokyo - where you hope to land in new concrete construction because the wood and single paned windows makes homes so cold. |
| "Air con"
Yes, and same in most areas of Canada...we have fans... |
Comment #610/03/11 15:25Rural east Colonia departmento | "Insulation"
Having built myself a house here, insulation and the very high levels of local hostility towards it is a particular hobby-horse of mine :-)I have single glazed windows because most of the examples of double glazing I went to look at showed signs of condensation between the sheets of glass. Whether this is because of the extreme temperature differences or because Colonia lacks competent manufacturers of DG units I know not. Instead, I opted for insulated plastic roller shutters which not only keep the cold out in winter, they also keep the hot sunshine out in summer. I spent about one fifth of my building budget on insulation. My wall cavities are insulated, the roofs and ceilings are insulated and even the floors are insulated. My building crew did everything they could to dissuade me from "wasting my money" on insulation and then seemed surprised when the house was cool in summer without turning on the air con and warm in winter without lighting the wood stoves :-) Even the booklet produced by UTE (the state electricity supplier) which purports to give sound advice to house builders concerning energy efficiency makes no mention at all about insulation! I wish I knew the reason why a nation so obsessed with being economical holds such hostile views towards saving money and being comfortable :-) |
| "Insulation"
Thanks Patrick, I imagine you added the pink bolt insulation then? I wish there were some nice easy-on-the-planet options, but don't know many. I remember a show blue jeans being recycled into insulation and should try to find it. Is it cheap to build a home there? (I know how relative that questions is, by the way..) |
| "Heat....."
"wonder how the heat stays in"Before you wonder that you better check if the place has any heat to begin with. Heat is NOT STANDARD. And, there are many kinds of heating. And, you may well be told that electric heat is "not expensive", which may be true from an Uruguayan perspective of those who don't use a heating system even if they have it. Yet, quite different (ie: expensive) from a North American perspective of 70F day and night. On the bright side, one of the common types of heat in the older, apartment buildings (that have heat) is a floor that is heated by a central boiler. Now, that beats the North American concept of comfort. However, the newer buildings tend toward an electric radiant floor heat which I fear doesn't offer the comfort and costs an arm and a leg. Expert Page: Quick Tips for Getting Settled in Uruguay |
Comment #910/04/11 10:09Rural east Colonia departmento | "Heating cooling and insulation"
Electricity is expensive here. UTE's bills are (?deliberately?) complex with variations depending on the size of your trip switch, increased charges according to how much you use, a fixed charge and IVA tax on the lot but by taking the total bill and dividing it by the total kWh used, you can calculate the unit cost. This month I've paid 3, 180$ for 570 kWh which comes out at 5.58 pesos/kWh or about 28 US cents or 19 GB pence per unit.The Chinese "split" air conditioners here function in 3 modes... cooling, heating and dehumidifying. In effect they are reversible heat pumps. With an external temperature of 10C (50F, ) the experiments I did indicate that when it comes to heating, the Chinese splits are nearly three times more cost effective than a standard radiant electric fire. The cooler the outside temperature, the less cost efficient the splits are. When it comes to insulation materials, the ROU has all manner of suitable raw materials ideal for the manufacture of insulative sheeting but because of the general hostility to the concept of insulation or possibly because of some other factors which elude me, none of them are put to use on a commercial basis. We export raw wool for not much money and import costly insulation materials... but that's our way of doing things :-) The most commonly available materials are polyurethane in the form of sheeting, roofing "sandwiches" where the material is pre-fixed to metal sheeting and in spray-on form from specialist contractors. Expanded polystyrene sheeting (cheaper but less effective) in various thicknesses is also available and recently my local barraca has started stocking rolls of fibreglass and rockwool. Sad to say, all the above are imported and are thus relatively expensive. |
| "Panel size"
Wow - now I'm speechless..we're paying 6 cents a kWh...any idea of the average panel size? Most homes have 100 amp service panel, unless it's a larger home, then it's 200 amp.... |
Comment #1110/04/11 15:42Rural east Colonia departmento | "Electricity supply and sheeting sizes."
When I first bought the place, it had a (disconnected) 2.2kW trip switch (10 amp.) I asked my contractor to contact UTE for me to upgrade the supply but he was shocked at my suggestion pointing out that having the lowest supply would "save me money" so instead, we had to appoint an employee to stand beside the switch whenever we were welding, using my big power tools or the big cement mixer to turn the power back on each time the switch tripped. The trip switches are usually :-)When my Spanish had improved a bit I visited my local UTE office myself and persuaded them to change my supply trip to the largest available which in my case was a 7.4 kW trip (33.6 amps.) I cook using bottled gas and do most of my water heating using a Chinese vacuum tube solar array and so far, I haven't caused UTE's 7.4kW trip device to trip. The polyurethane sheets I bought were 8 feet by 2 feet (from the USA I supposed) and the expanded polystyrene ones were 1.2 meters square (from Argentina.) The metal sandwich roof sheeting is assembled here and comes in whatever lengths you care to specify... in my case 5.8 meters long. The sheets interlock sideways and each sheet covers about 90 centimeters. Needless to say I had to go and find the "sandwich" factory myself in MVD as my friend Sergio who did most of the materials buying for me (to avoid gringo gouging) denied their availability and told me that the factory was on strike/suffering production problems in the hopes of "saving me money" by causing me to lose patience and buy uninsulated plain metal sheeting instead :-) I found it impossible to get angry about it because it was clearly done from the best of motives. |
| "Humidity"
Hi Joanne, I think it gets a little humid Jan/Feb months, but for me I live out in Canalones and I'm away from the immediate sea breezes. You can always get something worked out when your here - aircon, fans etc. depending on your needs. By the way a lot of stores, bars, public places have air-conditioning installed.What tends to occur in the summer months is that the humidity and heat creeps up until a terrific thunderstorm occurs, then the temp drops dramatically, then the process begins again. |
| "summer heat and humidity"
I stayed two months in Mvd last summer - February and March. The apartment I subletted, like many others, had exterior roll down blinds. I learned after a bit of trial and error that if I kept them down during the day when the sun shone, the place cooled off quickly in the evening. The drawback to Mvd, is that, depending where you live, the traffic can be noisey so keeping windows open at night isn't always an option. I had a room fan that sat on a table in the bedroom and it was enough to keep me from feeling hot with the window closed. |
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