This summer, I went to see my extended family in Europe. This year was an extremely hot and dry summer, and the temperature reached close to 40°C every day for

This summer, I went to see my extended family in Europe. This year was an extremely hot and dry summer, and the temperature reached close to 40°C every day for almost 2 months. I lived in an old house made of "pisé", a form of rammed earth. At no point during the whole summer the temperature ever reached above 25, and humidity was way more bearable there than in other houses I went to, I suspect because the walls absorbed some of the ambiant humidity due to the temperature difference. It actually convinced me that any active climate systems like heat pumps should only be built as a supplement to well built passive systems, first as a means of resilience(no part to repair and no external dependency), second for our own well being (a house with no motor running is eerily silent and great to live in.)