4 ms·
That prompts a lot of questions I'd never thought about before. Assuming a failed grid, are there enough off-grid cooling units to keep the population alive?
by causi 5y ago
That prompts a lot of questions I'd never thought about before. Assuming a failed grid, are there enough off-grid cooling units to keep the population alive? If such a thing happened in my city people would pile into vehicles and use that AC, but my city has an average car ownership of two per household. The next century will definitely create a market for refrigerated trucks full of bunkbeds.
I wonder how long a fridge-sized freezer filled with water and then frozen could keep you alive in such a heatwave.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoI don't think you need active phase-change cooling to survive a heat wave, there are architectural solutions found in deserts the world over (India and Iran have great examples). Namely, thick stone walls as heat mass so interior stays cool where nights are cool, and encouraging airflow through great public halls (wind will form where-ever there's a temperature gradient, breezeblocks or jaali can aid in increasing airflow while blocking sunlight) Courtyards with a pool of water will have noticeably cooler ambient temps, these are found all over the middle east. At the extreme, you get underground cities like Nūshābād.
- roughly 5y agoOne of the things I’m going to be interested to see over the next couple decades is what happens to building design - especially for houses, we’ve switched entirely over to a mode of building that’s effectively optimized for cost and consistency, as opposed to localized to the environment. You’ve got houses built the same in Arizona and Montana, which is insane on the face of it and assumes sufficient energy availability that we can ignore local climates. It would be great to see a move back towards those older building techniques that are tailored better towards their environments.
- germinalphrase 5y agoIf we have any architecture buffs here, I’d love a starting point for learning more about climate specific architectural design (that doesn’t center around active climate technologies like HVAC). Keywords?
- jazzyjackson 5y agoCheck out the wind catchers or wind-towers (burj al hawwa) of Iran [0], as well as Qatar [1] <- some helpful diagrams Jaali is the latticework that at first glance is merely decorative but is in fact functional, see this paper [2]: "Different names- Takhrima in Yemen, Shanashil or Roshan in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, with differences in design, materials, etc., calls them but the function remained the same as a climate control tool in the harsh deserts." [0] https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20180926-an-ancient-engineering-feat-that-harnessed-the-wind https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20180926-an-ancient-engin... [1] https://www.iloveqatar.net/guide/places/traditional-air-conditioning-cooling-in-doha-qatar https://www.iloveqatar.net/guide/places/traditional-air-cond... [2] https://ijseas.com/volume2/v2i2/ijseas20160211.pdf https://ijseas.com/volume2/v2i2/ijseas20160211.pdf
- sidewndr46 5y agoThe pool of water would only be able to keep the temperature down due to the constant evaporation of water taking heat out of the environment. This won't work once the wet bulb temperature crosses a threshold.
- joak 5y agoEven when it's windy?! How the windchill effect does work? I thought it was because it accelerates the evaporation. Not sure though...
- causi 5y agoWet-bulb temperature means equivalent to 100% humidity, at which point there is no evaporation.
- sbradford26 5y agoWind increases evaporation if it is occurring, basically a multiplier. At 100% humidity no evaporation is occurring because the air is fully saturated. So the wind is multiplying times zero.
- elil17 5y agoThe thing about wet bulb temperature is it means that even pools of water are too hot to survive in.