6 ms·

No A/C? No problem, if buildings copy networked tunnels of termite mounds

82 points by notpushkin 3y ago

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
I love seeing architecture that uses wind to cool and condition buildings, but it's not very helpful for older buildings. I wonder if we can mimic some of the benefits by creative planting of trees and plants? I've seen mentions of whole house fans in the ArsTechnica comments and was intrigued as to whether that would be useful for my house. Here in the UK, our houses are designed to keep warm and don't have any A/C built in and that's becoming more of an issue as summers get hotter. However, I've discovered that OnlyFans is not the correct website to find whole house fans.
- nehal3m 3y ago
  I have a little house in the back yard surrounded by some large birch trees. The insulation in that little place is pretty good, but I wouldn't say stellar. In the summers, our main house gets exceedingly hot for the same reason yours does. The little house in the shade however is nice and cool all summer. So if you can get away with it, sure, plant some trees. :)
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    Planting trees isn't much of an option for us. We're in an old (1890s) mid-terrace house and our front "garden" is barely big enough to hold our recycling bins.
- Tade0 3y ago
  There's a type of optical filter tape which you can buy that reduces the amount of energy getting in and out - less than 20% goes through, most of it in the visible spectrum. It has a blueish tint though and really doesn't do much if it's the ambient temperature that's too high.
- jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
  An acquaintance of mine works with a builder that specializes in zero energy homes. They mostly build in a climate similar to the UK. The houses are insanely insulated and airtight, but they have an air exchange unit that cycles fresh air in through a heat exchanger so the house temperature stays steady. These houses are honestly quite pleasant to be in. The insulation has the side effect of being very good noise dampening as well. I was talking to the owners of one and they said they'd never used the backup electric heater. The one time things got a little cold they light a candle in their bedroom and everything was fine. So I think in temperate climates, the answer is air tightness and thermal control, not whole house fans.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    With old houses, air tightness isn't always practical as they need to breathe: https://www.greenspec.co.uk/building-design/importance-of-breathability-in-old-buildings/ https://www.greenspec.co.uk/building-design/importance-of-br...
    - walthamstow 3y ago
      That's what the air exchange unit is for. It brings fresh air in and exhausts stale air, passing the heat from the stale air to the fresh air as it does so. I would love one in my 1970-built house. In the types of old houses described in your link, this type of thing was designed to be done by one or more open fires, which drew fresh air in through cracks and crevices and exhausted up the chimney.
  - WirelessGigabit 3y ago
    I lived in one of those homes. In fact, I had it built to spec. Very thick insulation Heatpump Solar panels Very energy efficient overall. Except... In the summer it overheats. Once it heats up you cannot get it to cool down at all. Horrible.
- fy20 3y ago
  I'd argue that houses in the UK are not very well designed to keep warm which is why they overheat in the summer. I live in the Baltics, in a modern 4 bedroom house, and our annual energy consumption for heating is around 6000kWh - that's around half the average of a similar sized house in the UK, even though our winters are much colder. My house is a bit older so doesn't have it, but new houses must have a heat recovery ventilator. Almost all of these have a 'summer bypass mode' which bypasses the heat exchanger, so effectively draws warm air out of the house. This is useful in the summer, as here although it can get to 30c+ in the day, at night it almost always drops to below 20c. The way our houses are built we have a lot of thermal mass, so if you can cool it down during the night, it will make it a lot more comfortable during hot days.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    A lot of the UK houses are quite old and so they used the materials that were common at the time. My house is a mid-terrace house built around 1895 for mining workers, so it was built as cheaply as possible and doesn't seem to have a proper 90-degree angle anywhere. It's going to become a much bigger problem in the UK as we're struggling with having enough housing anyway and making them energy efficient is going to take a lot of money and work.
    - Southworth 3y ago
      I had heard that one reason UK housing was particularly bad insulation wise, and notoriously draughty was because they were all heated by open coal fires. The “bug” of being draughty became a “feature”. There is perhaps a lot to be understood about the British through it’s love of old buildings that are entirely unfit for modern purpose. The Houses of Commons/Palace of Westminster is a great example of this.
      - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        Whilst we do love our old buildings, I think it's important to remember that we do actually have old buildings. We visited Tombstone, Arizona on holiday and were surprised to see some historical building (can't remember which one) that was built in the early 1900s - that's younger than our house. The problem is that we've got loads of old houses and not much room left in populous areas (and most people don't want to live in the less populous areas such as Wales or up North) so people will live in old houses as it's cheaper than knocking them down and building anew.
- jojobas 3y ago
  You basically want something to catch the solar radiation and either reflect it or convect away the heat. Some sheet material affixed a few inches away from your walls would give the same or better results as the trees.
rjmunro 3y ago
London's Gherkin building uses twisting tunnels through the floors that channel air up and mean AC isn't needed most of the year. The tunnels correspond to the dark stripes on the outside.
kkarpkkarp 3y ago
that idea is nothing new, in Persia they have been using it since hundred of years https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210810-the-ancient-persian-way-to-keep-cool https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210810-the-ancient-pers...
fractallyte 3y ago
There's also this excellent article from Scientific American: Passive cooling systems in Iranian architecture, by Mehdi N Bahadori, February 1978 "They have no energy sources other than the sun and wind, and yet they circulate cool air through buildings and traditionally provided cold water and ice for the hot summer of the country's arid regions" https://sci-hub.st/https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0278-144 https://sci-hub.st/https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerica...
magicalhippo 3y ago
Nearby here in Oslo they're building a (smallish) tower[1][2] for combined office and residential use, with the aim to not use any external electricity for ventilation, cooling or heating. Instead they will rely on natural ventilation combined with a solar-powered heat pump, or so is the goal. Will be interesting to see how it works out in practice... [1]: https://www.fremtidensbygg.no/nydalens-mest-spektakulaere-bygg-tar-form/ https://www.fremtidensbygg.no/nydalens-mest-spektakulaere-by... [2]: https://www.avantor.no/?eiendom=vertikal-nydalen https://www.avantor.no/?eiendom=vertikal-nydalen
- zokier 3y ago
  Of course in Oslo cooling is not the biggest problem: https://weatherspark.com/s/68697/1/Average-Summer-Weather-in-Oslo-Norway https://weatherspark.com/s/68697/1/Average-Summer-Weather-in... It would be interesting to see something like this work in e.g. Houston: https://weatherspark.com/s/9247/1/Average-Summer-Weather-in-Houston-Texas-United-States https://weatherspark.com/s/9247/1/Average-Summer-Weather-in-...
wodenokoto 3y ago
The Japanese pavilion at expo 2020 in Dubai purportedly used some kind of architecture that didn’t require fans or AC. Luckily it was fully equipped with fans and AC as it did not work at all out in the desert.
- kijin 3y ago
  This is the difficulty with all cooling solutions that isn't an AC. The efficacy of each method depends heavily on the climate for which it was developed. What works in dry SoCal doesn't work in humid Japan, and what works in Japan might not work in Dubai. The future of energy-efficient cooling is not going to be one solution that fits all. There are going to be different solutions for each region. Summer weather can vary wildly even in the same place, so many solutions will end up using software to actively adjust its own mode of operation based on sensor readings, just like a modern HVAC system. You don't want your cooling apparatus getting all moldy when it rains unexpectedly.
tomohawk 3y ago
No AC, big problem in the US South. It's the humidity.
- QuarterReptile 3y ago
  That's probably why the building cited in the linked article is at 5000ft.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  You think the Native Americans and early settlers failed to enjoy life while sweating?
trabant00 3y ago
There are problems that can be solved with ventilation and then there are problems where you need a heat pump. If outside in the shade temperature and humidity are unlivable then "No A/C? Big Problem! You are probably going to die!". Enough "passive cooling" articles. That's ventilation, just a part of HVAC. These articles makes it sound like the ancient Iran and the termites knew something an entire industry full of engineers doesn't.
- aaron695 3y ago
  [dead]
- QuarterReptile 3y ago
  Termites certainly know things that modern engineers don't, and the same is probably true of ancient Persians. Just about everyone has the intuitive understanding that some old buildings do a very good job maintaining comfort, and that modern buildings often fail to do the same or only keep up at enormous expense. It's perfectly understandable that, in the wave of globalization and cheap energy that swept much of the world for half a century, we lost the craftsmanship to create these structures well, then the knowledge to do so at all, and all the while we didn't care because electricity was so cheap. Now we're clawing back stuff we used to be able to do as a matter of course. Central air is miserable to maintain. I want to maximize my comfort with ceiling fans and window units, or maybe ductless.
  - jojobas 3y ago
    Sorry, no, termites don't know crap. They don't have to shed nearly as much heat per unit of surface area and are perfectly fine in humid 35 degrees C. We've known about thermal mass, convection, venturi effect and other stuff for ages, and it's not going to help you be comfortable (another thing termites have no concept of) beyond a certain envelope.
    - presentation 3y ago
      Have you read the article? The fungus described evidently is quite temperature sensitive (though at a temperature higher than what we’d like). > Architect Mick Pearce famously based his design in the 1990s on the cooling and heating principles used in the region’s termite mounds, which serve as fungus farms for the termites. Fungus is their primary food source. > > Conditions have to be just right for the fungus to flourish. So the termites must maintain a constant temperature of 87° F in an environment where the outdoor temperatures range from 35° F at night to 104° F during the day. Biologists have long suggested that they do this by constructing a series of heating and cooling vents throughout their mounds, which can be opened and closed during the day to keep the temperature inside constant.
jmartrican 3y ago
I have a 3-story house in the US Northeast. The AC that cools the 2nd and 3rd floor broke. instead of paying to replace it, I'm trying to use passive cooling techniques. The house was built in 1870, before ACs. I suspect the original residents had techniques for keeping it cool. For example, I suspect they had awnings on every window. They kept the windows open on the top floor to create cross winds that pushes the accumulated hot air out of the house. And I suspect they had large trees on the property to create shade and cool the air. I'm slowly replicating these techniques plus some fans to help push hot air out, including a gabel fan in the attic. I started getting awnings, but not yet on every window, they definitely help. Started planting trees around the property and around the house to create shade. I did get two window ACs, one on 2 ND and one on the 3rd floor, to help when it gets to high 80's and above. I want to see how far I can take this. I'm definitely going with the approach of having more air flow vs. other passive techniques that lock in the air, e.g. closed attics.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  It depends on a lot of factors. Many older homes today were converted from barns and other structures that were not designed to optimize climate. But some homes were indeed designed with climate in mind. The broad rear side might face the south to be heated during winter. The whole house may be configured with one long hallway with windows or screen doors at either end to allow cross breeze. Windows on different floors may be designed to open part way to facilitate cross breeze. The fire place may be located deeper in the house near the bedroom, with subsequent rooms getting farther from the fire so in winter you can shut the doors and only heat your own room with the one fireplace. An attic fan that can switch between blow and suck is essential to keep cool (and prevent mold using air flow). When it's cool in the early mornings, keep windows open to cool the house, then close them when the sun rises and close shutters. As the temps rise throughout the day, you crack a window upstairs and turn on a window fan (blowing inward) and one window downstairs (blowing outward) to create a downward breeze, or the reverse to pump heat up and out. My ex hasn't owned an AC in 10 years. She just regulates the doors and windows and has window fans. House is 130 years old
  - 3y ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
The truth is that with climate change, more and more people will need modern air-conditioning to be comfortable in their homes (or in some parts of the world, to survive). We will likely see a massive expansion of air conditioning as more and more people come out of poverty and desire to be comfortable across the developing world. We can’t conserve our way out of this crisis. We need abundant, zero carbon energy like wind, solar, and nuclear to support all the energy needs of humanity. If we don’t have zero carbon energy people are not going to do without, they are going to burn fossil fuels. Take a look at Germany. Despite all their rhetoric about how much they care about climate change, they are burning coal which is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels.
- tdehnel 3y ago
  We should pair with this more innovation and cost reduction for air conditioning and other climate control technology.
dimmke 3y ago
The idea of central AC/Heat to me is so dumb. I much prefer the style of having individual units in individual areas. There’s no single point of failure, if you only want one room to be extra cool it’s easy and faster to do. With central AC you have to set the temperature for the whole house and wait I’m sure there are reasons it’s so common that I don’t know about, it’s not even close to an area of expertise for me. But moving from the US to Mexico I feel like concrete is the way to go vs drywall and wood framing. Sound insulation is so much better too.
- tdehnel 3y ago
  It’s more expensive up front to have separate units for all rooms.
- philwelch 3y ago
  The rationale for central HVAC is that your house is insulated. If you heat or cool a specific room, heat is going to flow from one room to another and you’re going to have to keep fighting that. Getting the whole house to a specific temperature is more efficient since it’s insulated from the outside and can more easily maintain a set temperature with less work from the HVAC system. In older houses it didn’t matter as much because the insulation was shitty enough that this didn’t really work, but with modern insulation it makes more sense.
  - dimmke 3y ago
    Yeah but everything I hear is that new builds in the US are worse than ever in terms of quality. I owned a brick ranch house in the US and had to have all the ductwork redone because it had accumulated mold. Cost me 3k. It just seems way more trouble than it’s worth.
    - philwelch 3y ago
      > Yeah but everything I hear is that new builds in the US are worse than ever in terms of quality. That's a meme. There's a lot of variability between houses (and the shitty old houses don't tend to survive long), but insulation is one of the things that has unambiguously improved over time. Matt Risinger has a good video on the "old houses were better" thing here, but his channel is full of great house-building content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBMMDY3LFAA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBMMDY3LFAA

82 points by notpushkin 3y ago

I love seeing architecture that uses wind to cool and condition buildings, but it's not very helpful for older buildings. I wonder if we can mimic some of the benefits by creative planting of trees and plants? I've seen mentions of whole house fans in the ArsTechnica comments and was intrigued as to whether that would be useful for my house. Here in the UK, our houses are designed to keep warm and don't have any A/C built in and that's becoming more of an issue as summers get hotter. However, I've discovered that OnlyFans is not the correct website to find whole house fans.

nehal3m 3y ago
I have a little house in the back yard surrounded by some large birch trees. The insulation in that little place is pretty good, but I wouldn't say stellar. In the summers, our main house gets exceedingly hot for the same reason yours does. The little house in the shade however is nice and cool all summer. So if you can get away with it, sure, plant some trees. :)
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  Planting trees isn't much of an option for us. We're in an old (1890s) mid-terrace house and our front "garden" is barely big enough to hold our recycling bins.
Tade0 3y ago
There's a type of optical filter tape which you can buy that reduces the amount of energy getting in and out - less than 20% goes through, most of it in the visible spectrum. It has a blueish tint though and really doesn't do much if it's the ambient temperature that's too high.
jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
An acquaintance of mine works with a builder that specializes in zero energy homes. They mostly build in a climate similar to the UK. The houses are insanely insulated and airtight, but they have an air exchange unit that cycles fresh air in through a heat exchanger so the house temperature stays steady. These houses are honestly quite pleasant to be in. The insulation has the side effect of being very good noise dampening as well. I was talking to the owners of one and they said they'd never used the backup electric heater. The one time things got a little cold they light a candle in their bedroom and everything was fine. So I think in temperate climates, the answer is air tightness and thermal control, not whole house fans.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  With old houses, air tightness isn't always practical as they need to breathe: https://www.greenspec.co.uk/building-design/importance-of-breathability-in-old-buildings/ https://www.greenspec.co.uk/building-design/importance-of-br...
  - walthamstow 3y ago
    That's what the air exchange unit is for. It brings fresh air in and exhausts stale air, passing the heat from the stale air to the fresh air as it does so. I would love one in my 1970-built house. In the types of old houses described in your link, this type of thing was designed to be done by one or more open fires, which drew fresh air in through cracks and crevices and exhausted up the chimney.
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  I lived in one of those homes. In fact, I had it built to spec. Very thick insulation Heatpump Solar panels Very energy efficient overall. Except... In the summer it overheats. Once it heats up you cannot get it to cool down at all. Horrible.
fy20 3y ago
I'd argue that houses in the UK are not very well designed to keep warm which is why they overheat in the summer. I live in the Baltics, in a modern 4 bedroom house, and our annual energy consumption for heating is around 6000kWh - that's around half the average of a similar sized house in the UK, even though our winters are much colder. My house is a bit older so doesn't have it, but new houses must have a heat recovery ventilator. Almost all of these have a 'summer bypass mode' which bypasses the heat exchanger, so effectively draws warm air out of the house. This is useful in the summer, as here although it can get to 30c+ in the day, at night it almost always drops to below 20c. The way our houses are built we have a lot of thermal mass, so if you can cool it down during the night, it will make it a lot more comfortable during hot days.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  A lot of the UK houses are quite old and so they used the materials that were common at the time. My house is a mid-terrace house built around 1895 for mining workers, so it was built as cheaply as possible and doesn't seem to have a proper 90-degree angle anywhere. It's going to become a much bigger problem in the UK as we're struggling with having enough housing anyway and making them energy efficient is going to take a lot of money and work.
  - Southworth 3y ago
    I had heard that one reason UK housing was particularly bad insulation wise, and notoriously draughty was because they were all heated by open coal fires. The “bug” of being draughty became a “feature”. There is perhaps a lot to be understood about the British through it’s love of old buildings that are entirely unfit for modern purpose. The Houses of Commons/Palace of Westminster is a great example of this.
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      Whilst we do love our old buildings, I think it's important to remember that we do actually have old buildings. We visited Tombstone, Arizona on holiday and were surprised to see some historical building (can't remember which one) that was built in the early 1900s - that's younger than our house. The problem is that we've got loads of old houses and not much room left in populous areas (and most people don't want to live in the less populous areas such as Wales or up North) so people will live in old houses as it's cheaper than knocking them down and building anew.
jojobas 3y ago
You basically want something to catch the solar radiation and either reflect it or convect away the heat. Some sheet material affixed a few inches away from your walls would give the same or better results as the trees.

rjmunro 3y ago

London's Gherkin building uses twisting tunnels through the floors that channel air up and mean AC isn't needed most of the year. The tunnels correspond to the dark stripes on the outside.

kkarpkkarp 3y ago

that idea is nothing new, in Persia they have been using it since hundred of years https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210810-the-ancient-persian-way-to-keep-cool https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210810-the-ancient-pers...

fractallyte 3y ago

There's also this excellent article from Scientific American: Passive cooling systems in Iranian architecture, by Mehdi N Bahadori, February 1978 "They have no energy sources other than the sun and wind, and yet they circulate cool air through buildings and traditionally provided cold water and ice for the hot summer of the country's arid regions" https://sci-hub.st/https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0278-144 https://sci-hub.st/https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerica...

magicalhippo 3y ago

Nearby here in Oslo they're building a (smallish) tower[1][2] for combined office and residential use, with the aim to not use any external electricity for ventilation, cooling or heating. Instead they will rely on natural ventilation combined with a solar-powered heat pump, or so is the goal. Will be interesting to see how it works out in practice... [1]: https://www.fremtidensbygg.no/nydalens-mest-spektakulaere-bygg-tar-form/ https://www.fremtidensbygg.no/nydalens-mest-spektakulaere-by... [2]: https://www.avantor.no/?eiendom=vertikal-nydalen https://www.avantor.no/?eiendom=vertikal-nydalen

zokier 3y ago
Of course in Oslo cooling is not the biggest problem: https://weatherspark.com/s/68697/1/Average-Summer-Weather-in-Oslo-Norway https://weatherspark.com/s/68697/1/Average-Summer-Weather-in... It would be interesting to see something like this work in e.g. Houston: https://weatherspark.com/s/9247/1/Average-Summer-Weather-in-Houston-Texas-United-States https://weatherspark.com/s/9247/1/Average-Summer-Weather-in-...

wodenokoto 3y ago

The Japanese pavilion at expo 2020 in Dubai purportedly used some kind of architecture that didn’t require fans or AC. Luckily it was fully equipped with fans and AC as it did not work at all out in the desert.

kijin 3y ago
This is the difficulty with all cooling solutions that isn't an AC. The efficacy of each method depends heavily on the climate for which it was developed. What works in dry SoCal doesn't work in humid Japan, and what works in Japan might not work in Dubai. The future of energy-efficient cooling is not going to be one solution that fits all. There are going to be different solutions for each region. Summer weather can vary wildly even in the same place, so many solutions will end up using software to actively adjust its own mode of operation based on sensor readings, just like a modern HVAC system. You don't want your cooling apparatus getting all moldy when it rains unexpectedly.

tomohawk 3y ago

No AC, big problem in the US South. It's the humidity.

QuarterReptile 3y ago
That's probably why the building cited in the linked article is at 5000ft.
fuzzfactor 3y ago
You think the Native Americans and early settlers failed to enjoy life while sweating?

trabant00 3y ago

There are problems that can be solved with ventilation and then there are problems where you need a heat pump. If outside in the shade temperature and humidity are unlivable then "No A/C? Big Problem! You are probably going to die!". Enough "passive cooling" articles. That's ventilation, just a part of HVAC. These articles makes it sound like the ancient Iran and the termites knew something an entire industry full of engineers doesn't.

aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
QuarterReptile 3y ago
Termites certainly know things that modern engineers don't, and the same is probably true of ancient Persians. Just about everyone has the intuitive understanding that some old buildings do a very good job maintaining comfort, and that modern buildings often fail to do the same or only keep up at enormous expense. It's perfectly understandable that, in the wave of globalization and cheap energy that swept much of the world for half a century, we lost the craftsmanship to create these structures well, then the knowledge to do so at all, and all the while we didn't care because electricity was so cheap. Now we're clawing back stuff we used to be able to do as a matter of course. Central air is miserable to maintain. I want to maximize my comfort with ceiling fans and window units, or maybe ductless.
- jojobas 3y ago
  Sorry, no, termites don't know crap. They don't have to shed nearly as much heat per unit of surface area and are perfectly fine in humid 35 degrees C. We've known about thermal mass, convection, venturi effect and other stuff for ages, and it's not going to help you be comfortable (another thing termites have no concept of) beyond a certain envelope.
  - presentation 3y ago
    Have you read the article? The fungus described evidently is quite temperature sensitive (though at a temperature higher than what we’d like). > Architect Mick Pearce famously based his design in the 1990s on the cooling and heating principles used in the region’s termite mounds, which serve as fungus farms for the termites. Fungus is their primary food source. > > Conditions have to be just right for the fungus to flourish. So the termites must maintain a constant temperature of 87° F in an environment where the outdoor temperatures range from 35° F at night to 104° F during the day. Biologists have long suggested that they do this by constructing a series of heating and cooling vents throughout their mounds, which can be opened and closed during the day to keep the temperature inside constant.

jmartrican 3y ago

I have a 3-story house in the US Northeast. The AC that cools the 2nd and 3rd floor broke. instead of paying to replace it, I'm trying to use passive cooling techniques. The house was built in 1870, before ACs. I suspect the original residents had techniques for keeping it cool. For example, I suspect they had awnings on every window. They kept the windows open on the top floor to create cross winds that pushes the accumulated hot air out of the house. And I suspect they had large trees on the property to create shade and cool the air. I'm slowly replicating these techniques plus some fans to help push hot air out, including a gabel fan in the attic. I started getting awnings, but not yet on every window, they definitely help. Started planting trees around the property and around the house to create shade. I did get two window ACs, one on 2 ND and one on the 3rd floor, to help when it gets to high 80's and above. I want to see how far I can take this. I'm definitely going with the approach of having more air flow vs. other passive techniques that lock in the air, e.g. closed attics.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
It depends on a lot of factors. Many older homes today were converted from barns and other structures that were not designed to optimize climate. But some homes were indeed designed with climate in mind. The broad rear side might face the south to be heated during winter. The whole house may be configured with one long hallway with windows or screen doors at either end to allow cross breeze. Windows on different floors may be designed to open part way to facilitate cross breeze. The fire place may be located deeper in the house near the bedroom, with subsequent rooms getting farther from the fire so in winter you can shut the doors and only heat your own room with the one fireplace. An attic fan that can switch between blow and suck is essential to keep cool (and prevent mold using air flow). When it's cool in the early mornings, keep windows open to cool the house, then close them when the sun rises and close shutters. As the temps rise throughout the day, you crack a window upstairs and turn on a window fan (blowing inward) and one window downstairs (blowing outward) to create a downward breeze, or the reverse to pump heat up and out. My ex hasn't owned an AC in 10 years. She just regulates the doors and windows and has window fans. House is 130 years old
- 3y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

The truth is that with climate change, more and more people will need modern air-conditioning to be comfortable in their homes (or in some parts of the world, to survive). We will likely see a massive expansion of air conditioning as more and more people come out of poverty and desire to be comfortable across the developing world. We can’t conserve our way out of this crisis. We need abundant, zero carbon energy like wind, solar, and nuclear to support all the energy needs of humanity. If we don’t have zero carbon energy people are not going to do without, they are going to burn fossil fuels. Take a look at Germany. Despite all their rhetoric about how much they care about climate change, they are burning coal which is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels.

tdehnel 3y ago
We should pair with this more innovation and cost reduction for air conditioning and other climate control technology.

dimmke 3y ago

The idea of central AC/Heat to me is so dumb. I much prefer the style of having individual units in individual areas. There’s no single point of failure, if you only want one room to be extra cool it’s easy and faster to do. With central AC you have to set the temperature for the whole house and wait I’m sure there are reasons it’s so common that I don’t know about, it’s not even close to an area of expertise for me. But moving from the US to Mexico I feel like concrete is the way to go vs drywall and wood framing. Sound insulation is so much better too.

tdehnel 3y ago
It’s more expensive up front to have separate units for all rooms.
philwelch 3y ago
The rationale for central HVAC is that your house is insulated. If you heat or cool a specific room, heat is going to flow from one room to another and you’re going to have to keep fighting that. Getting the whole house to a specific temperature is more efficient since it’s insulated from the outside and can more easily maintain a set temperature with less work from the HVAC system. In older houses it didn’t matter as much because the insulation was shitty enough that this didn’t really work, but with modern insulation it makes more sense.
- dimmke 3y ago
  Yeah but everything I hear is that new builds in the US are worse than ever in terms of quality. I owned a brick ranch house in the US and had to have all the ductwork redone because it had accumulated mold. Cost me 3k. It just seems way more trouble than it’s worth.
  - philwelch 3y ago
    > Yeah but everything I hear is that new builds in the US are worse than ever in terms of quality. That's a meme. There's a lot of variability between houses (and the shitty old houses don't tend to survive long), but insulation is one of the things that has unambiguously improved over time. Matt Risinger has a good video on the "old houses were better" thing here, but his channel is full of great house-building content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBMMDY3LFAA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBMMDY3LFAA