Winnie,

Looks like an airconditioner would be a big relief for you, family and plants. May be you can get a window unit.

It is not a bad idea to keep them drier - you just do not want the soil to become real dry. First - the wicks can become salted - they dry first - and start sucking the water from the soil -oops - the salt concentration becomes high - and when you water them again their ability to wick will be significantly reduced because of all these salt crystals covering them. The second - soil becomes dry - hard to rewet it again.

When it is humid and warm- all fungi become very active and attack the plants. AVs prefer the temperature they grew in African mountain forests - and it is under 90F. So the plants'd get weaker if it were higher and eventually they would all die out. I trying to think why it could be more water in a soil if the temperature is high - it is possible that the movement of water molecules up the wick in a capillary action can become slightly faster - but as soon as the soil is saturated - that's it - gravity keeps more water from coming up. You can put more perlite in your mix - instead of 1:1:1 of peat, perlite and vermiculite - you can make it 1:3:1 just to try if it will help to have more air in a root area.

Cheers and hope it will cool down soon.

Irina