> The house was built in 1870, before ACs. I suspect the original residents had techniques for keeping it cool I think it's tempting to ascribe some lost ances

> The house was built in 1870, before ACs. I suspect the original residents had techniques for keeping it cool I think it's tempting to ascribe some lost ancestral knowledge to older house, but to be completely honnest a lot of them weren't designed with thermal considerations in mind (or rather, the thermal efficiency was accidently achieved by following some heuristics). A lot of these older houses were simply badly insulated. They required a lot of wood or coal to keep warm during the winter or had the occupants wearing layers inside at all times but would cool down quite fast in the summer during the night, only to heat up again during the day. Good, explicit thermal design appeared with mid-century houses. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq-3cZ0cbws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq-3cZ0cbws