3 ms·
Naturally, people who've always lived in hot places for centuries have more well-developed and thought-out ways of dealing with heat. The trouble with 'modern'
by 8bitsrule 3y ago
Naturally, people who've always lived in hot places for centuries have more well-developed and thought-out ways of dealing with heat.
The trouble with 'modern' air-conditioning in conventional housing is that it uses energy to produce waste heat which is also absorbed by the environment. Then we're building up the thermal capacity of our surroundings (asphalt, concrete, roads) ... a bad idea. In cities, it 'keeps on giving' all night.
This technology, used in Africa, Asia and India has been around at least 1200 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher
The coolness of the Earth beneath our feet never seems to be advantaged by cities looking for solutions. Cool thermal masses are often found underground. Those of us who live in homes with basements have a thermal resource that's very welcome when upstairs temps rise above 90F/35C.
- acters 3y agoBecause it is more expensive to dig underground vs. just slapping heat generators(ac unit) on top of everyone's house and collecting the extra money in the power bill than doing it the right way.
- ultrarunner 3y agoEspecially here; the ground is mostly rock. Basements are rare, unfortunately, and most homes are built through deals with commodity developers packing copies of the same ~~people storage units~~ houses into whatever rectangle of desert they've most recently razed. Most people have been sold on ignoring their environment by concentrating on their indoor habitat; no developer (save for maybe Cul de Sac Tempe) has any wider consideration than the immediate offloading of "units".