4 ms·

So we've been stupid "solar oven" buildings for 50 years while climate scientists were warning against extreme weather events and, now that said extreme event a

So we've been stupid "solar oven" buildings for 50 years while climate scientists were warning against extreme weather events and, now that said extreme event arrives, the best we find is to rush to aircon. Seems pretty short-sighted to me.

bamboozled 3mo ago
I feel every comment section related to weather and climate seems to have the same winging about buildings. Cold? Europe has amazing buildings, hot? Europe has been building ovens... it's interesting psychology. Edit: We cannot blame people for buildings things that worked when we had a stable climate but are no long suitable for all these extremes. We needed to fix the emissions issue 30-50 year ago to avoid this. We knew it and we collectively ignored it. I get your point, we could've "planned ahead" but if you build something that wasn't suitable / cost effective for the time it was built, you'd be out of business. 50 years ago no one was going to pay extra for a building that might be important in 100 years because we didn't stop burning fossil fuels in time.
- sdeframond 3mo ago
  > you'd be out of business. Correct. And we'd be "out of business" too as a country if we decided alone to fix emissions. Other economies would have passed ours because burning oil is so damn useful. Thing is, I don't feel we are changing much in this respect. Now the best idea we come up with is burning more fuel for aircon...
  - queenkjuul 3mo ago
    > Now the best idea we come up with is burning more fuel for aircon... I mean really what else is there? We can't undo the warming, we can't rebuild every building in Europe (even if we could, would it work? Winter will still happen too). We can install solar panels and air conditioners, though.
    - sdeframond 3mo ago
      We can install adjustable shades and ceiling fans. Cheap and efficient. It practically pays for itself in saved energy bills if we decide to add an aircon anyway. Plus the saved energy saves carbon emissions too. We can update building regulations so that new building are better. We can plant trees. It brings shade in summer but lets sun through in winter. We can stop taking the plane. I mean, there really are tons of things to do!
      - stavros 3mo ago
        The one thing I want is for everyone to tick the box on their power company's website that says "only give me electricity from renewables". If everyone does this, hopefully the problem will be fixed quickly, plus you can enjoy all the guilt-free AC you want!
      - throw-the-towel 3mo ago
        It's 38 degrees this Wednesday again, and you're talking ceiling fans. This is just ridiculously out of touch.
        sdeframond 3mo ago
        For the record, I live on a rooftop and it will indeed be 38C this Wednesday at home (Grenoble, France, not a fresh place). No AC, fans, shutters, some shadow and, admittedly, some sweat. I know I will need an AC one of those years but for now this is fine for home working.
tokai 3mo ago
Don't worry it will even out when the Gulf Stream chokes out /s
- cassepipe 3mo ago
  ...or not ? As el Nino would say: Porque no los dos ?
3eb7988a1663 3mo ago
I live in SoCal and am continually shaking my head at the architecture. So my floor-to-ceiling glass buildings in a climate known for sunny weather. So much extra air-conditioning will be spent to cool those buildings compared to if they had been built more reflective.
- euroderf 3mo ago
  I'd try hanging long sheets of aluminum foil in too-large windows. I imagine someone in academia has studied this.
  - sdeframond 3mo ago
    That works. A lot of people do that in their home when they have no other choice (renting the place, typically). It'd be better to block the sun before it hits the window though, so that the window itself does not get hot and heat the inside. Edit: people generally use emergency blankets, fyi. You can stick them to the glass with water.
    - Timon3 3mo ago
      I've read a few times now that applying reflective foil to the inside using water can lead to broken windows - though I can't remember any linking to statistics or studies, so it could also be false or very rare.
      - sdeframond 3mo ago
        I didn't know! Google agrees with you so it must be true.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3mo ago
  Also windows that go down to the floor has been considered bad architecture for decades. Wall-to-wall windows are great. Floor-to-ceiling windows are stunning when you walk into an empty place that you're thinking about buying or renting, but when you're actually living there, windows that go down to the floor create a few feet of dead space. You can't really put any furniture there without feeling guilty about blocking the view you're paying for, and it's uncomfortable to walk up to the edge and look down - it makes you feel uneasy like you're standing on a cliff with your toes at the edge. It's much better for the window to end around waist high. They're psychologically fine if both the floor and the ceiling extend beyond the window (e.g. it's on the ground floor, and the roof overhangs), but when they're used on every floor in a high rise apartment building, killing limited square footage and driving up energy bills, it's absolute madness.
OptionOfT 3mo ago
Yup. Built a house in 2016 in Belgium. Perfectly insulated. You didn't have to run heating in winter. Kept it all inside. Also, it overheated instantly.
- sdeframond 3mo ago
  Insulation is actually helpul against heat too! But since modern buildings usually have huge windows, we're letting in about 1kw of heat from sunlight per square meter of window. That's 6kw for a 3x2m bay window, or about the equivalent of 6 electric heaters at full power. Block that heat ouside of your house with all kind of shade you can get: trees, blinds, adjustable shades, rolling shutters... Also, close every openings during the day, vent at night.
  - OptionOfT 3mo ago
    > Insulation is actually helpul against heat too! Yes, until you reach that tipping point where once warmed up, you can't cool down anymore.
    - scarecrowbob 3mo ago
      I don't know your situation but surely you've tried ventilating at night and then closing up the house at a specific time in the day? I only ask because when I moved from the US south to the high desert in NM (about 2KM) I had to learn how to time that transition. Very few folks here run A/Cs, we generally have homes designed to stay warm and during the summer usually fans go on about bed time and off in the morning, and that's enough to keep things cool because of insulation. It was not obvious to me how that worked and I spent one very sweaty summer before I got the timing correct. Of course, if the nights are hot (which sometimes happens) then that doesn't work so well.
      - whatevaa 3mo ago
        Ventilating at night doesn't work at all when nights are hot. And now it happens oftenly, not sometimes. That is a bigger problem than hot days. Also, all the activity you do inside your insulated home also increases temperature. Human body itself is a small space heater. At some point, you gotta get that energy out somehow, and if nights are hot, there is no way to do that except via a heat pump.
cucumber3732842 3mo ago
>So we've been stupid "solar oven" buildings for 50 years while climate scientists were warning against extreme weather events and, now that said extreme event arrives, the best we find is to rush to aircon. >Seems pretty short-sighted to me. The same industries that got rich over those 50yr selling BS we didn't need because the government mandated it are gonna get rich over the next 50 installing smart ventilation and heat pump A/Cs and whatnot when the next pile of mandates to undo the ills of the prior ones gets written into the building code. Seems pretty long sighted to me.
amluto 3mo ago
I stayed in an otherwise lovely flat in northwestern Europe in the summer in an area where the minor heat wave at the time gave daytime temperatures in the mid to high seventies (F) and lows in the sixties. No usable A/C. If there had been screened windows that opened wide and faced in different directions, it would have been very comfortable by just leaving some windows open for cross-ventilation. Instead it had unscreened high-end “European” windows that could either crack open a bit at the top or could open wide, swinging inward and banging into obstacles (like the bed or anyone’s head who was trying to sleep!). And bugs would come in while the windows were open. I found this to be rather disappointing.

bamboozled 3mo ago

I feel every comment section related to weather and climate seems to have the same winging about buildings. Cold? Europe has amazing buildings, hot? Europe has been building ovens... it's interesting psychology. Edit: We cannot blame people for buildings things that worked when we had a stable climate but are no long suitable for all these extremes. We needed to fix the emissions issue 30-50 year ago to avoid this. We knew it and we collectively ignored it. I get your point, we could've "planned ahead" but if you build something that wasn't suitable / cost effective for the time it was built, you'd be out of business. 50 years ago no one was going to pay extra for a building that might be important in 100 years because we didn't stop burning fossil fuels in time.

sdeframond 3mo ago
> you'd be out of business. Correct. And we'd be "out of business" too as a country if we decided alone to fix emissions. Other economies would have passed ours because burning oil is so damn useful. Thing is, I don't feel we are changing much in this respect. Now the best idea we come up with is burning more fuel for aircon...
- queenkjuul 3mo ago
  > Now the best idea we come up with is burning more fuel for aircon... I mean really what else is there? We can't undo the warming, we can't rebuild every building in Europe (even if we could, would it work? Winter will still happen too). We can install solar panels and air conditioners, though.
  - sdeframond 3mo ago
    We can install adjustable shades and ceiling fans. Cheap and efficient. It practically pays for itself in saved energy bills if we decide to add an aircon anyway. Plus the saved energy saves carbon emissions too. We can update building regulations so that new building are better. We can plant trees. It brings shade in summer but lets sun through in winter. We can stop taking the plane. I mean, there really are tons of things to do!
    - stavros 3mo ago
      The one thing I want is for everyone to tick the box on their power company's website that says "only give me electricity from renewables". If everyone does this, hopefully the problem will be fixed quickly, plus you can enjoy all the guilt-free AC you want!
    - throw-the-towel 3mo ago
      It's 38 degrees this Wednesday again, and you're talking ceiling fans. This is just ridiculously out of touch.
      - sdeframond 3mo ago
        For the record, I live on a rooftop and it will indeed be 38C this Wednesday at home (Grenoble, France, not a fresh place). No AC, fans, shutters, some shadow and, admittedly, some sweat. I know I will need an AC one of those years but for now this is fine for home working.

tokai 3mo ago

Don't worry it will even out when the Gulf Stream chokes out /s

cassepipe 3mo ago
...or not ? As el Nino would say: Porque no los dos ?

3eb7988a1663 3mo ago

I live in SoCal and am continually shaking my head at the architecture. So my floor-to-ceiling glass buildings in a climate known for sunny weather. So much extra air-conditioning will be spent to cool those buildings compared to if they had been built more reflective.

euroderf 3mo ago
I'd try hanging long sheets of aluminum foil in too-large windows. I imagine someone in academia has studied this.
- sdeframond 3mo ago
  That works. A lot of people do that in their home when they have no other choice (renting the place, typically). It'd be better to block the sun before it hits the window though, so that the window itself does not get hot and heat the inside. Edit: people generally use emergency blankets, fyi. You can stick them to the glass with water.
  - Timon3 3mo ago
    I've read a few times now that applying reflective foil to the inside using water can lead to broken windows - though I can't remember any linking to statistics or studies, so it could also be false or very rare.
    - sdeframond 3mo ago
      I didn't know! Google agrees with you so it must be true.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3mo ago
Also windows that go down to the floor has been considered bad architecture for decades. Wall-to-wall windows are great. Floor-to-ceiling windows are stunning when you walk into an empty place that you're thinking about buying or renting, but when you're actually living there, windows that go down to the floor create a few feet of dead space. You can't really put any furniture there without feeling guilty about blocking the view you're paying for, and it's uncomfortable to walk up to the edge and look down - it makes you feel uneasy like you're standing on a cliff with your toes at the edge. It's much better for the window to end around waist high. They're psychologically fine if both the floor and the ceiling extend beyond the window (e.g. it's on the ground floor, and the roof overhangs), but when they're used on every floor in a high rise apartment building, killing limited square footage and driving up energy bills, it's absolute madness.

OptionOfT 3mo ago

Yup. Built a house in 2016 in Belgium. Perfectly insulated. You didn't have to run heating in winter. Kept it all inside. Also, it overheated instantly.

sdeframond 3mo ago
Insulation is actually helpul against heat too! But since modern buildings usually have huge windows, we're letting in about 1kw of heat from sunlight per square meter of window. That's 6kw for a 3x2m bay window, or about the equivalent of 6 electric heaters at full power. Block that heat ouside of your house with all kind of shade you can get: trees, blinds, adjustable shades, rolling shutters... Also, close every openings during the day, vent at night.
- OptionOfT 3mo ago
  > Insulation is actually helpul against heat too! Yes, until you reach that tipping point where once warmed up, you can't cool down anymore.
  - scarecrowbob 3mo ago
    I don't know your situation but surely you've tried ventilating at night and then closing up the house at a specific time in the day? I only ask because when I moved from the US south to the high desert in NM (about 2KM) I had to learn how to time that transition. Very few folks here run A/Cs, we generally have homes designed to stay warm and during the summer usually fans go on about bed time and off in the morning, and that's enough to keep things cool because of insulation. It was not obvious to me how that worked and I spent one very sweaty summer before I got the timing correct. Of course, if the nights are hot (which sometimes happens) then that doesn't work so well.
    - whatevaa 3mo ago
      Ventilating at night doesn't work at all when nights are hot. And now it happens oftenly, not sometimes. That is a bigger problem than hot days. Also, all the activity you do inside your insulated home also increases temperature. Human body itself is a small space heater. At some point, you gotta get that energy out somehow, and if nights are hot, there is no way to do that except via a heat pump.

cucumber3732842 3mo ago

>So we've been stupid "solar oven" buildings for 50 years while climate scientists were warning against extreme weather events and, now that said extreme event arrives, the best we find is to rush to aircon. >Seems pretty short-sighted to me. The same industries that got rich over those 50yr selling BS we didn't need because the government mandated it are gonna get rich over the next 50 installing smart ventilation and heat pump A/Cs and whatnot when the next pile of mandates to undo the ills of the prior ones gets written into the building code. Seems pretty long sighted to me.

amluto 3mo ago

I stayed in an otherwise lovely flat in northwestern Europe in the summer in an area where the minor heat wave at the time gave daytime temperatures in the mid to high seventies (F) and lows in the sixties. No usable A/C. If there had been screened windows that opened wide and faced in different directions, it would have been very comfortable by just leaving some windows open for cross-ventilation. Instead it had unscreened high-end “European” windows that could either crack open a bit at the top or could open wide, swinging inward and banging into obstacles (like the bed or anyone’s head who was trying to sleep!). And bugs would come in while the windows were open. I found this to be rather disappointing.