3 ms·
I don't know what country you are from, but I am saying that as an American who has lived in Germany and has studied this problem space some at the college leve
by Mz 9y ago
I don't know what country you are from, but I am saying that as an American who has lived in Germany and has studied this problem space some at the college level. Most American homes are terrible cardboard boxes. German apartments routinely have thicker walls, fewer windows and other interruptions in the wall space and the windows are more useful than American ones. It was common when I was there for windows to have two ways to be opened, one just for airflow that was not a security risk and one to allow it to open completely, like a door. They typically had no screens.
There is zero reason why American housing cannot incorporate, as a minimum, more thermal mass -- like German apartments routinely do.
Furthermore, many American cities are simply not that dense. There are few places in the U.S. that are really densely urban with lots of skyscrapers. So most passive solar methods would be applicable for most structures here.
I grew up in the Deep South, where 98F was quite common in the summer, with much higher humidity than 55%, and I have lived in the High Desert, where I did my long walks for exercise (up to 6 miles) after the sun set so temps would drop to a cool 99F. The temperature and humidity you list does not qualify in my book as "wet, hot death" and I see zero reason that a building could not be made reasonably comfortable in such conditions using mostly passive techniques.