So I agree with many of you that we should reduce our reliance on AC for cooling through passive cooling methods, but it really isn’t that easy. Where I live it can be 30-35 plus humidity (so 40-45 in the summer) which is hot enough to kill the vulnerable, and due to the high humidity, makes many passive cooling options not work all that great. Especially when it doesn’t cool down at night anymore (thanks Obama).
Then, in the winter it’s regularly -10, to -20. So some passive cooling no longer works to your benefit.
Realistically there needs to be design considerations for each building, as well as the design of cities/towns/etc., that minimizes all kinds of consumption by leveraging the local climate, geography, flora, as well as transportation related consumption (i.e. use ideas like 5 minute cities to make living less consumptive and car optional).
But none of these things will realistically happen on any meaningful scale until the profit motive is removed from the real estate industry.
Especially when it doesn’t cool down at night anymore
This is the part that gets me, I primarily use fans but in the peak of summer my apartment can regularly reach 40 no problem, so I’ll run a small window unit AC for a bit if I’m home to take the edge off
At night I usually use fans, with a big double fan doing exhaust and intake to compensate for the fact this place wasn’t built for air flow, but even then this place usually deals with 3 months worth of 30-40 days and 25-30 nights, with humidity never breaking
Never used to be that way, that’s why these places were designed to trap heat, but thanks to climate change, we’re fucked
One thing I didn’t mention was using heat pumps for ac/heat. They are very efficient and should be a sort of support cooling/heating system for when the passive options are not quite enough.
So I agree with many of you that we should reduce our reliance on AC for cooling through passive cooling methods, but it really isn’t that easy. Where I live it can be 30-35 plus humidity (so 40-45 in the summer) which is hot enough to kill the vulnerable, and due to the high humidity, makes many passive cooling options not work all that great. Especially when it doesn’t cool down at night anymore (thanks Obama).
Then, in the winter it’s regularly -10, to -20. So some passive cooling no longer works to your benefit.
Realistically there needs to be design considerations for each building, as well as the design of cities/towns/etc., that minimizes all kinds of consumption by leveraging the local climate, geography, flora, as well as transportation related consumption (i.e. use ideas like 5 minute cities to make living less consumptive and car optional).
But none of these things will realistically happen on any meaningful scale until the profit motive is removed from the real estate industry.
This is the part that gets me, I primarily use fans but in the peak of summer my apartment can regularly reach 40 no problem, so I’ll run a small window unit AC for a bit if I’m home to take the edge off
At night I usually use fans, with a big double fan doing exhaust and intake to compensate for the fact this place wasn’t built for air flow, but even then this place usually deals with 3 months worth of 30-40 days and 25-30 nights, with humidity never breaking
Never used to be that way, that’s why these places were designed to trap heat, but thanks to climate change, we’re fucked
One thing I didn’t mention was using heat pumps for ac/heat. They are very efficient and should be a sort of support cooling/heating system for when the passive options are not quite enough.