How to cool our homes (even without ACs)
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- čas přidán 30. 04. 2024
- As the planet gets hotter, more people use air conditioners to keep cool. Running these takes lots of energy, which means emissions that then further speed up global warming. Rethinking our architecture and using more efficient cooling technologies could help us break this vicious circle.
#PlanetA #AirConditioner #GlobalWarming
Credits:
Reporter: Beatrice Christofaro
Video Editor: Markus Mörtz
Supervising Editors: Kiyo Dörrer, Malte Rohwer-Kahlmann
Interviewees:
Sneha Sachar, Associate director, Clean Cooling Collaborative
Ankit Kalanki, Manager, RMI
Prasad Vaidya, Senior advisor, Alliance for Energy Efficient Economy
Charles Gallavardin, Co-founder, Kanopea Architecture & T3 Architects
We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world - and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.
Read more:
A sustainable cooling handbook for cities:
www.unep.org/resources/report...
Report on the future of cooling:
www.iea.org/reports/the-futur...
Medellín's interconnected green corridors:
www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/art...
Go-to guide for sustainable district cooling:
www.iea.org/articles/the-go-t...
Special thanks (for research support):
Ulises Bobadilla y Jiménez
Peter Farag
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:54 The history of ACs
02:38 The dilemma
03:33 Cooler cities
04:43 Cooler buildings
07:34 Better ACs
10:22 District cooling
11:48 Conclusion
Do you like this video?👍Or do you hate it?👎Either way, we'd be grateful if you would share your thoughts about Planet A with us in this survey 👉surveys.dw.com/c/dwplaneta
very clickbait title tbh
Hate it.
Video feels a little padded and get rid of the shaky cam effect.
First tell Americans and Europeans to reduce their emissions before commenting on us
6:03 Fix your subtitles! It's FAÇADES not FACADES. As without that cedilla you are writing FA/K/AD. It's from French, but the word is written with its own logic.
I grew up in an old villlage house with one-meter-thick stone walls. The interior of such house is cool whole summer. The building materials matter. I have recently read an article in National Geographic that traditional clay architecture is much more resilient to heat than modern concrete equivalents.
Hi samuela,
Concrete is not the issue. It is the type of material [concrete and brick/stone are in the same cathegory] that is used to cover the building. Your "century old house" would be very expensive to build nowadays. If a building has meter thick concrete walls, it will be even more energy efficient than your "traditional clay architecture". The issue here is the cost, not the materials.
I can confirm this. My grand grandmother's house has walls made from wooden fence plasted with clay, straw and cow poop. The walls are thick too. Also the foundations are made with stone walls.The temperature inside is like 5C lower than outside. Of cource it is a country house, it's not in the city, but still it's really nice and cool inside.
@@iat8329 The issue is also the emissions created by the materials used. Creating concrete and cement generates a huge amount of the world's emissions.
You might be interested in Earthships - the walls are built with compacted mud (clay) and used tyres.
Also check out Passivhaus designs using mud.
@@iat8329using local materials and labour are cheap if planning authorities allow it more easily and people teach themselves the techniques
I've been designing and building passive solar homes in Canada since 1981. The simple fact that it is not common has me constantly scratching my head in bewilderment. The current super insulated house I'm in stays a comfortable 22-23 C all year with no AC and some small baseboard heaters for the cold season. We lost power last winter for 31 hours at -5 C and the indoor temperature went down 2.5 C over that period of time. Prioritize solar orientation, good design and efficiency. Outlandish displays of wealth are really pathetic in this day and age under the current circumstances
Where do you live BC?
@@kalvinlawrence2933 Previously Okanagan, now Kootenays
Hi Gary, I live in the Philippines. Solar is very popular here. Most houses here have a 4' overhang. But metal roofs. Almost all the houses are built with concrete block.
I live on a island so digging for a geothermal system is hard because the coral. I have a lot forienor friends here and the electrical system is very poorly run. Blackouts daily. I was a general contractor in Ohio.
I would like to try to start that here.
If you have any ideas on how we could work together, get back with me and let's lay out some options.
Gary, do you have a web page or where I can reach you?
@@jameslowellblakenship2192 I design passive solar which is the architecture. Sounds like you need a PV system with battery backup. Not my field of expertise
These type of videos need to be played in movie theaters, so that more people will realize faster how modernization is leading to bigger complex challenges
That would be blown the cover of the big fortune 500 companies who are green-washing since ages while polluting the most
I live in South Asia and have an AC because of the high humidity level and sometimes the high heat levels here. The temperatures range from the high twenties to the low thirties. However no matter how hot or humid the climate is, in our home we only use the AC for a couple of hours at night just before going to sleep to cool down the bedroom. This is usually sufficient for a good nights sleep. We never use the AC during the day time. Then we just rely on the breeze and a couple of fans.
Congratulations: you are highly developed compared to the average European (a peasant).
yeah you do it right. otherwise you would fall ill a lot more and waste a lot of energy
This video is playing into environmentalist alarm agendas. Don't feel guilty for using an AC. They don't generate heat (as is implied in the video) but simply move heat from one place to another and it's really not worth trying to save a few bucks with all the heat stress disorders, heart attacks, respiratory illnesses and other nasties you get from not running your AC at such high temperatures.
Nobody asked.
@@alexn4255 your mom did during our post coital chat.
I want to point here out, that warm capacity of a building DOES matter a lot.
I work in a company, and we have 2 buildings here - one built in traditional way - solid bricks, and new modern well isolated framed one.
The traditional one feels comfy all year long, but the new one gets very quickly hot/cold, due to lack of heat inertia…
Sometimes, it gets so cold in the night, that you want to turn on heating when you arrive, and then 6h later, you’re melting down. Madness! But technically it’s very well isolated and almost passive!
I live in a bedroom that is a modern addition onto a century-old brick house. My room alone is freezing in winter, and boiling in summer, while the rest of the house is comparatively stable and comfortable. It’s a natural experiment and example of architectural failure.
If you turn on heating in a near passive building then I say the controller of Central Heating simply needs to be readjusted.
That being said, a buffer, like the one in this traditional building is also very important and serves a concrete purpose. Both solutions are good if properly implemented.
@@Rnankn i live in bedroom facing west on brick house and it's always too hot to sleep at night due to the brick dissipating the heat previously absorbed from the sun earlier on.
@@NimbleBard48 in summer, the heating system is completely turned off.
It doesn't make any sense to turn it on - it take hours to warm fool up, and then it takes hourssss to cool down. That would be pure hell at midday.
But your thinking shows how ridiculous modern houses are. Think about the energy you would wast for heating/cooling, while in old buildings, you don't experience such temperature fluctuations at all.
@@FunktasticoThermal mass can be a double edged sword. Sun-facing brick walls should be shaded or they become thermal batteries, great in the winter but not so good in the summer.
I've personally built my house 10 years ago. I invested a lot in insulating materials from top to bottom and I've planted several trees around my house. Even that right now temperature in my area goes higher than 40 Celsius I have no AC and no need for one. And I am using not much gas in the winter for heating. I am sure that trees and insulation does the job of keeping inside temperatures in confortabile zones.
Not everyone has that kind of budget. In fact, I'd argue that at least 80% of humanity could not only never afford to build their own home, but they could definitely not afford the plot of land. However, yes, if an individual is rich, then they really have no excuses.
This is great but only works as long as temperatures in your surrounding fall low enough at night. Once you live in an area where nighttime temperatures only barely fall before 30 insulation doesn't really help
@Mefaso09, that's true for very humid climates, but for most of the dessert lands, temperatures drop very quickly at night
@@Novastar.SaberCombat You don't have to build your own house to have this if we have build laws that encourage this for all new buildings.
@@stillconnected4838 Tell me more! I mean, I am nowhere near wealthy nor knowledgeable about construction. But I'd love to know how much a person would need to build a home (or whatever, have one built?), etc. from your perspective? 🙂
I was really impressed by all the passive cooling ancient people had at their disposal, like wind towers or even making ice, in. a. desert 🤯 So much stuff is not used just because we think the modern technology is better.
With better you mean faster. Thats what want. Faster. Quicker... we are pathetic.
@@Movie2Documentary You are pathetic. I'm awesome.
They didn't "make" ice in the desert, they brought it in from mountains, which is incredibly inefficient and expensive
Yea that wind doesn’t work that great as it’s not always windy. Modern tech is far superior in consistently achieving desired goals
@@lelele1408 Well, they did make ice, look up ice pits or yakhchāl. You need to remember that in some deserts it can get quite cold.
Honestly I can't afford to cool my home. Best solution for my case will be to plant trees in from of my house to introduce a shade during the day.
I think that a central issue is when even the nighttime low is not low enough to bring the inside down to something livable, and then the daytime high is just brutal or medically dangerous. The problem with passive cooling techniques is that they only work to a point, but the climate exceeds that in many places.
A great solution is to have a centralised AC unit (large and efficient) for every neighborhood/flat building/office complex etc, and put the heat exchanger in a passively cooled space.
If the heat is dumped into a slightly cooler space, the AC is much more efficient.
Also if passive cooling can decrease the indoor temp by 2-3 degrees, that is an enormous amount of work taken away from the AC unit! This way passive and active cooling can be combined instead of either/or.
I live in Germany - and we almost have no AC's. Our houses are of thick stone - with mostly good insulated walls and a few windows.
During hot weeks I'll shade windows during the day.
And have cross ventilation windows - open doors at night. That still is okay on most days - if it's only hot for 10 days or so. Longer periods are brutal - then it's best to suffer outside in shadows. 😅
@@theresabu3000May be true for Germany. In Spain we have 40 degree July and Augusts where temperatures never drop below 25 in the nights and there’s high humidity. I live in a passive house design and we still chose AC, but we use it to a very low setting in key days. People historically protected against that by shutting everything down during midday and working early mornings and late afternoons. That is no longer possible in today’s worlds. Efficient heat pumps are the way to go for any architecture.
I live in the tropics at 10 latitude. The temp is minimum 20 C in December at night and 32 in the day most of the year and for 4 months it's 37 c everyday. As long as there are fans it's perfectly fine. As long as the actual (not wet bulb bs figure) remains 37c (human temp) it is perfectly fine to survive. Only in places and times of the year the temp goes above 37c is when the human body can no longer cool passively.
A lot of it is the heat island effect. Lots of concrete, asphalt, metal and glass... All stuff that absorbes and reflects heat into surfaces that never get half a chance to cool down.
I work in a down town area, and in the 6 years I have worked there they have planted a lot of trees, and started paining flat top roofs white, and added a lot more canopy areas, and even though there is a long way to go, the difference is already pretty huge! Less blacktop, more green spaces, more places that shade or reflect heat up and out... It doest just keep the insides if the buildings easier to cool, there are also far more days where it is comfortable to walk around during lunch over the summer months.
I especially like the canopies. During the summer months it keeps things nice, and during winter they take them down to let the sun heat things up a bit. Having the option for both is good.
But the idea that truly passive systems is enough is just dumb. That said, AC working with smart building design instead of against it can keep things cool while using surprisingly little energy. More often that not, it isn't that AC power use is impractical... It is AC power use when fighting old designs that is impractical. In the end we need both good buildings and good AC units.
I live in Spain and we’ve recently bought a flat. It gets cooled down by the pipes under the floor. It works really well and I love that you don’t have this direct cold air coming at me from the air conditioning. The downside is that the cooling is not instant, you need a few hours for it to cool down the place. However it doesn’t heat the outside and it’s supposed to be more efficient as well. I’m not sure what technology it is though.
Is it a geothermal heat pump? They're pretty expensive to set up but very good at what they do
@@sewpungyow5154Yeah, geothermal heart pumps are so efficient that I think they should be mandatory for all new construction in areas where temperatures get high.
Also quieter!
It's called radiant cooling.
Well, I has to heat something in return 😂
@@simonhaas6480 Yeah, the earth, which has an enormous thermal mass
"Passive House" design is a method of designing houses that can use up to 90% less energy than standard housing, and it includes ways of keeping the house cool or warm with little climate control. It's great to implement in new construction, but it did make the upfront cost of the house higher as well.
There is also a push to try and retrofit existing housing to meet Passive House standards. Cost tends to be an issue here as well, unfortunately.
I've been telling people here in the southwest the native americans used adobe bricks to build homes. Adobe is very resistant to changes in temperature which keeps the house cool inside and warm during the winter (yes it does get cold here). Not only is adobe one of the most recyclable materials but it literally comes from the ground.
Yeah but adobe cost a lot man, but imma just pirate it
@@kakyoindonut3213 adobe is cloud now, cant pirate the latest.
Lies again? AMWF CAR Cooling Period
But Adobe can't be made see through so its not pretty enough for the ultra rich who finance these unsustainable buildings
But but Adobe is a software 😂
I live in an all brick house, our solution was installing highly efficient windows and ceiling fans - these two things cut our a/c cooling costs by about 45%.
Underfloor heating is a good solutions for this. In the summer you pump cold water through it and when it absorbs heat you store that heat underneath the building to use in the winter. Won't bring down temperatures to an acceptable level on its own, but its a couple of degrees for sure. Major bonus is that underfloor heating is very efficient in the winter.
you're part right! And this tech does already exist! So, the reason why you can't just store the warm water in an area to be used for later is because it will dissipate into the surrounding air or ground, in fact once you get below the average freezing point of any given topography, the ground stays at a nice stable 50 degrees f. and with a mass that solid, you'd have to run a LOT of fluid over a VERY long time, constantly, to even possibly raise the temps by even a fraction of an amount. So you can't store heat down there, but you CAN use it as a stable baseline for dang near infinite ground-based water cooling loops that you can then hook up to a heat pump/ac combo to get that last few degrees of heating or cooling you need, with little to no emissions, noise, and at a fraction of the electrical costs, and even can be hooked up to multiple buildings.
Heck, you don't even have to waste that wonderful heat energy, AND you can make it cheaper! the pump and ac can be powered by solar, and the solar panels can also be cooled by the same system. Now have multiple houses with connected systems and they can dump that heat into the ground to dissipate, or they can very slightly warm a communal pool with that same heat energy. This option can be applied to old construction, new construction, with very few places that don't work with this method, and upfront cost being the largest issue. And they also work even better when you combine them with other passive cooling methods.
Welcome to the world of geothermal heat pumps.
Great idea !
Still tou would have to control humidity, as condensation would be an issue
Won't work on Humid hot areas. Like South India, Indonesia or Brazil for example. It's just too wet there.
@@nntflow7058 not entirely correct, you can use radiant cooling together with dehumidifiers. But you probably do lose the benefit of storing heat for the winter, because those areas never get that cold during winter.
We are a big extended family in the Philippines. It gets really hot and humid here. Our ancestral house is quite big, it has seven bedrooms but only one has airconditioning (the rest have stand fans/ceiling fans only). When it gets really hot, everyone sleeps together in that one airconditioned room. That single room which uses an inverter-type aircon has four bunk beds. We sleep there only during the hottest summer months, around 2 and a half months of the year. I say our system works. Our next step is to install solar panels, hopefully by next year. 😀
Sounds cool, and cozy as well. 🌬 Here for solar inspiration 👉 "How solar energy got so cheap, and why it's not everywhere (yet)" czcams.com/video/sUvaYycoWqI/video.html ☀
Living in hot tropical region with hotbox room 5C hotter than outdoor temperature throughout my teens probably tempered me to stay comfortable at higher temperature. The gap between my "comfortable" vs everyone around me including families are a stark difference. Knew some that can't sleep if its not cooled to under 24C while I find 27C too cold.
Point is, if more people can adapt to slightly, just slightly less cooling, would save a whole lot of energy. Especially those that insists its too hot, crank the AC up, then proceed to wear jacket or blanket cos it got too cold.
Well said
However that said, due to widespread AC for decades, humans, especially middle class and above no longer acclimatize to local hot conditions like their ancestors did which makes shifting away from AC a lot more challenging as none of the other methods deliver indoor cooling nearly as powerful as AC
IMHO, temperature acclimatisation can be learnt. People just have to be willing. Some of it is skills that perhaps are lost or weren't required before in that area, some of it is appropriate clothing and equipment ie a fan, and some of it is giving the body a chance to adjust over a couple of weeks. That said, I suspect all humans appreciate the modern climate control when it's above 34ºC or below 14ºC, or the relative humidity is 80+%. So I don't expect we will ever give up the a/c! But perhaps we can allow the temperature inside our buildings to fluctuate more inline with outside?! That is how I live these days, I turn the equipment on less and open the windows more, and set a wider range on the thermostat between summer and winter, and let the temperature naturally drop overnight, etc.. A few winters ago I challenged myself to adjust to a much cooler winter house temperature, and found that with more woollen clothes, an active day and adjustment time, my body learnt to generate more heat. To the point that when I went out with friends to a restaurant I'd be in shirt sleeves and overheated!
These people grow more fat under skin to keep them climatised in an a/c environment. 😂
What is “heat accumulation”?
AC is one of the biggest factors in the obesity epidemic, because AC means you can eat a lot of heavy food during summer.
And that right there is why I'm skeptical when I see videos like this one. Every one of the old-time virtues proposed results in significantly higher indoor temperatures during the hot months. If they're asking us to make sacrifices, live more miserably in the name of reducing climate change, then say so clearly. Don't try to deflect or obfuscate. Don't try to sell us something under false pretenses. AC will always be needed to maintain current quality of life. If combining better home design and infrastructure reduces AC energy use, great! I'm all for that, for new buildings, city blocks and neighborhoods.
When we built our Earthbag home in tropical Puerto Rico, we knew the plan was never to use AC, and to generate all of our own electricity. To accomplish cooling in the hot tropics we have 1 meter overhangs and a green roof. Then we run efficient USB ceiling fans during the night if it's too warm still.
A single feature like properly sized, oriented and shaded windows can make all the difference. And it's nearly free.
Wtffff
Whats a overhang?
So you get all your electricity with panels and no public grid connection?
How cool is it in summer inside the house?
@@xaviercruz4763 an overhang is how much the roof extends past the wall, kinda like the brim of a hat. It gives the walls more shade for longer, and keeps rain off of our earthen plaster.
Temperature inside hangs around the upper 70s to lower 80s. But compared to outside it's almost always cooler. If I did it over again I'd add larger windows for better cross breeze though, and bigger pipes up by the ceiling to vent out the warmest air.
@@frenchiepowell oh thanks for the explain! By the way i dont know what you mean by bigger pipes to vent air on the ceiling (as in i dont know if you are talking about an ac system or some structure for cooling that you installed) but the ceiling cooling is something i understand by the experience bc i live under a cool ceiling myself: you can do put trees in planters that you like the fruits or look of or you can buy shadecloth and cover the ceiling and it drops temperature like falling from a ridge. The sun because the enemy there on uncovered ceilings
District cooling is something I think about from time to time on a neighborhood level. From thought experiment to thought experiment, I ended up settling on thinking of every distributed solution in terms of how it would work if I owned a rental neighborhood or apartment complex.
It's gotten me to the point where, if I could afford a decent amount of real estate, I'd probably be a landlord so I can put "be the change you want to see" into practice.
Something I would play around with in district cooling, is radiative cooling panels. There are substances that you can paint a panel with, that radiate heat as light in a wavelength that passes through the atmosphere out to space. Employing radiative cooling in a district cooling solution could raise the efficiency, either by implementing it on premises (before the heat is carried back to the center), centrally (as part of central cooling), or both. Where I am though, it gets pretty hot and pretty cold, so it's more likely that I'd just find a way to centralize the heat exchange for individual AC units.
I have even more interest in making a neighborhood area network, as people seem to have completely forgotten about the benefits of a free and open internet.
I love the idea of designing buildings like the ones Charles Gallavardin is working on that reduce heat and promote airflow. A Cambodian architect, Vann Molyvann, did this in many of his building designs such as the Royal University of Phnom Penh with a roof design and louvered windows that maximize air circulation. It really makes a difference! This is a very interesting and important topic and I learned a lot from this video.
Pro tip- sweat wicking or natural biodegradable low water materials (hemp?) really are a must in hot weather- if you’re hot don’t wear synthetic clothes, it’s like plastic wrap 🥵
I HATE polyester. It feels like wearing a sweaty trash bag. I've started to get natural fiber clothes that cover my arms and legs. I stay cool all day in 90f weather and as a bonus I don't need as much sunscreen! It also doesn't support fast fashion and I try to get used clothing too.
I always wear cotton
@@Moses_VII
Cotton is good. Organic Hemp and Linen are even better.
they problem is that sweat works with low humidity, when you have 45°c and 99% humidity, no sweat will help you
@@Moses_VII cotton is nice but I guess it’s water intensive- with as much marijuana that’s consumed I figure there was plenty of leftover plant fiber for fabric.
One thing to note in the old printing presses, massive prints were done by a heat set press, like today with ovens to set the ink cleanly, then the printed web is cooled by water cooled rollers. So, not just humid, but hot humid air was needed to remove.
I'd hoped they'd cover ancient technology from dessert tribes & nations of the world. For instance, in the old Arabian lands they had a ingenious method of making ice in the desert without any mechanical movement. They just manipulated high & low air pressure of the area with structures erected. I'm still fascinated by that today. Another instance to examine is the indigenous midsouth to southwest regions of North America. They have a very clever clay pots technique that used evaporation to cools things done, including preserving food. The residential areas also incorporated air drafts & evaporation in a different design. So, taking inspiration from learning about the ancient technology, I've used a few tricks modernized. Best one I used today is a water trough that a canvas tarp can weep water from, set at a angle like an awning, and when a draft starts through evaporation the cool air came in the house & made desert life so much more manageably bearable. Even I don't live in the desert region now, I still use the method presently.
Another thing to note, this is from athletics, cooling down forearm & calfs region of the body aid in reducing body temperature pretty quickly (not a technique for hyperthermic cases, go to a hospital) if done on a break with proper hydration (means water & replenishing electrolytes at regular intervals) with use of extra baggy clothing (block sunlight from sun poisoning aside from sunburn, your sweat gets absorbed by baggy garments (cotton is really good) and evaporation happens when winds pick up around you.. Made outside desert work bearable on 12+ hr shifts in the desert without threat of serious injury; heat stroke. Everyone is on average similar, but those born & lived in desert regions naturalizes to those climates quicker. So if you are from a cold regions & go to live in a hot (humid or not) area Don't be surprised if it takes a few years to naturalize, & ask questions from locals who work outside all year round. I'm glad I did with the Apache & Mexicans I worked with for almost half a decade at a strip mine many years ago.
honestly, please make an example video on those examples, it sounds more interesting than this video!
This video is good... they talk about some approaches and this guy wrote about some others... There is no one total solution.
That is a lot of reading 😳
I'm learning more reading the different comments, than I did listening to this video.
This was an excellent post, but, please, break it into paragraphs. It's difficult to read midway when it's a wall of text.
We're in Canada. Lots of A/C units here but we decided to go a step further and use heat pumps since they heat in the winter and cool in the summer. The next effect is that we save energy because of the reduction in heating costs.
Aquifer temperature can be a very helpful gauge for what kind of geothermal stabilization can be achieved in your location.
I live in the southeast US; in summer, the daily temperatures frequently go above 95°F (35C) and nighttime temperatures do not fall below 82°F (27C). Our local aquifer is around 62°F (16C) in summer and 57°F (14C) in winter. So an underground house here can be very pleasant all year round, but it won't get adequately cold for root cellars or cheese caves, even in winter. Geothermal tubes for cooling standard construction are nice, but they run into a limitation if being used for a large building or urban neighborhood. The air running through the tubes shifts its heat energy into the earth around the tubes pretty efficiently at first, but with less and less success as the earth around those tubes heats up. Eventually there's not much happening, except that you're expending energy to blow the air through long tubes. If nighttime temperatures or winter temperatures here got colder, the system would work better... but as it stands, the application is limited to fairly small scale implementation.
It's extremely humid here, too; higher than 80% relative humidity in my house at the moment (we don't have AC). Evaporative cooling simply isn't an option here because the air is carrying so much water already that wet things just stay wet, without evaporating or getting colder. Mold is a constant problem.
Traditional systems designed to chimney out hot air from buildings while pulling in cold air from the ground level just don't do much if your ambient air temperature is just as hot as the air inside the building. Those desert wind towers are fascinating but unhelpful in our climate here.
So I support passive home designs and I think that many of them work really well on the small scale in rural settings, like earth sheltered homes with geothermal air intakes. However, most of these systems don't work for large urban areas in hot, humid climates. Green spaces and reflective rooftops help, and maybe someday vertical farms and grow tubes for algae harvests will help shade buildings further, but there's only so much you can do if the ambient temperature and subterranean temperatures don't cooperate.
Have you changed your filter?
Cleaned the coils on the condenser?
Use a dehumidifier?
Easy initial steps you can take.
A separate dehumidifiers are really good companion for existing older ac units that have terrible or no dry mode.
Interesting how the focus is usually on the apartment buildings, where 2-5 people are squished into units that are 500-1200 square feet usually. No mention of the 5,000 square foot homes of single individuals (who of course, have their homes air conditioned) and the mega mansions of the ultra wealthy, with homes that are 10,000 to 20,000 square feet and larger. Often, the homes are not being lived in on a daily basis. These homes may go empty for months, yet have the HVAC air conditioner running to keep their art work and precious belongings "protected" from the heat and humidity. (think Hamptons summer residents, musicians on tour, actors, people who travel for work 80% of the week somewhere else, etc.) These people will not be affected by any severe measures that the government will take in the name of _"saving the environment"._ Just like the focus a few years back was to get rid of *plastic straws.* Well, what about plastic water bottles (bigger than straws, obviously) and black plastic lawn bags that many homes use for bagging up *dozens of bags* of leaves every autumn... Only to be picked up by the *trash collector* and disposed of as -*trash (never to become compost).*_ I call *BS* on a lot of these programs because the people *_in charge_* often overlook the obvious culprits.
It’s crazy that many of these very hot countries using air conditioning don’t use solar power 🤯
as you can see from the starting of video the houses are not able to use solar panel as compared to the USA where single family housings are more dominant as the ones in the hot countries are comprised more of multi family housing so the use of solar panels aren't as common as compared to USA also its not very efficient as the solar panel even if fitted on to the walls of buildings will at most get 4 hours of direct sunlight making it very inefficient and the amount of area it can cover is too low to generate enough for supplying a whole buildings worth of air-conditioning
Solar panels are expensive and countries like the US subsidize solar panels when most countries don’t.
Solar is shit. Literally only days ago was the breakthrough in nuclear fusion made again. The future is nuclear: not solar, not wind, not hydroelectric.
Its crazy that you think these countries are privileged enough to have solar panels.
Evaporative cooling is what I use here in oregon and especially in modern hotter summers it works quite well. It adds humidity to the air as it cools but that can be avoided with a heat exchanger. Evaporative cooling also get smore effective the hotter it gets.
I upgraded sunroom vaulted roof insulation from R20 to R50 by building a second roof over top with continuous ridged R10x3 last fall. Saves heating cost in winter and cooling cost in summer. Massive difference. But even though I DIY it, the ROI is very roughly 10yrs. Most ppl rather put that money into a trip or buy hot tub or car, etc. I value efficiency so I did it as soon as I could.
My older stone and brick building without any AC has built in air flow, there are very large leafy trees all around, and I keep the curtains and windows closed during the sunniest parts of the day when it's 25-32C outside. The indoor temps hit 29C when it's very hot outside, but it's not intolerable. A hand fan, the ancient kind with wooden slats and paper, is very nice!
Thank you for centering the voiced stories and interviews to express views and expertise from countries that you address!
Excellent work.
I live in and grew up in Chicago. We lived in an older, brick apartment. Growing up we did have 1 window a/c unit in the dining room and used fans to push the cooler air around the house on really hot days. But mostly we used fans. The sides of the building were obscured neighboring structures, so really it was ok. We kept windows open.
Now, my wife and I live in an older apartment building near the lake. Our place is small but has a lot of windows we keep open pretty much all the time. It’s like living in a giant, furnished screened-in porch. We keep cool with fans and don’t hang ac out the window. We both work outside we’re just used to the heat. As long as there’s breeze, we’re ok.
I live in Australia, Perth. We use 2 types of AC evaporative and refrigeration. When air is dry evaporative works great, you keep Windows and doors open because if humidity exceeds 30% those systems don't work, so evaporative systems are very limited in what environments you can use it. I use also a split system for heating and cooling, it is very efficient.
I'm very lucky in that I live literally across the street from the beach. That's my nature's natural air conditioner.
Good luck when the sea level rises... 😔
@@LudvigIndestrucable I've lived here my entire 45 years. I'm good, thanks.
@@LudvigIndestrucableworst kind of person right there
@@edyannlet's see 45yrs means nothing
@@edyannMost projections don't expect more than a foot of sea level rise by 2100, but I would encourage you to keep an eye on increasingly destructive storm surge. Also, if you live far enough south you might see 100°F water temperatures like we saw in Florida last week, in which case that body of water becomes simultaneously a heater and humidifier. Stay safe!
Well, in my region is always summer. I moved to a 8th floor appartment and I sleep with the windows open.
I live on the West Coast of Australia, it gets hot. Here we regularly see temperatures above 40°. Many of our homes are large Ours is almost 400 m². We use ducted reverse cycle, however, we control which zones of the house are cooled at anyone one time. During the day we do the living areas and at night we do the bedrooms, for example. We also shut off all areas that aren’t in use at any time. This is coupled to solar panels which power the entire system on sunny days. In our case we are yet to get storage batteries for night time usage. One in every three homes has its own solar. It is incredibly popular.
When it gets too hot in Mumbai in summer, I wet my t-shirt and have a fan blowing air on me. This has a remarkable cooling effect. Although, staying moist for long time makes the t-shirt and me smell bad. So I do it maybe only once or twice in the day.
The old motorcycle rider's trick to keep cool in summer: just pour water down your shirt. It actually works to keep you cool via evaporative cooling as long as there's dry air flowing fast.
I am glad this report balanced the 'passive' cooling tech with the obvious requirement of efficient ACs. I have lived and worked in some attempts at passively cooled modern buildings and the simple fact is that they are really unpleasant to be in. Usually the people who own these types of buildings want to cut out using AC competely and in hot places like California this is just going to lead to unbearable conditions.
Some environmentalists can get completely absurd on this subject. I once worked at a summer camp at a world renowned University and they had buildings that were supposed to never need AC. They used a few techniques covered in this report along with plastic darkening gels on the windows to block sunlight. Well it was california in the summer and there was a heat wave. The building got to 100 degrees internally and the building manager refused to get a portable AC unit until our students started passing out from the heat.
This experience has convinced me that AC is an undeniable truth of the hotter climate we created. You can't just try to build things in a smarter way to avoid it.
Yes and no, I think a/c should be run on those 100F (or 38ºC) days, but perhaps the passive design can help the building stay comfortable without a/c on all the warm to cooler days of the year! We could save a lot in electricity bills and climate impacts if we saved it for the more extreme weather days.
@@lynettejwhite if the grid runs on hydro, goethermal, solar, nuclear, or wind why would it matter? I feel like AC is the one thing we won’t be cutting back on in the future and we should build our energy system to cope.
@@LFPAnimationsAC is not just emitting because of energy. It's also because of the gases used to cool the rooms.
My garden is the same square as my house, made a centralized air duct (like a chimney) that sucks air out from the ground floor all the way to the roof which is mechanically done by rotary wind driven exhaust mushroom vent. The vegetation helps a lot, especially i have a big tree shades half the house. Tinted glass deflects heat and sun sails were added to a part of the house which receives Afternoon shade
It gets hot living in Perth but because we live on the coast we do get sea breezes...we use ceiling fans during summer only using the air con on 40 plus degree days and also having a lot of greenery around our home both in and out...also we gave solar panels to help with cost
Perth has an ideal climate. Very few places are so lucky. Your climate type is similar to CapeTown, SA and Santiago, Chile. Low humidity and fairly mild.
As an Indian, i use the air conditioner in between the months of March to June & that too post 6pm at home for max 90 mins. I work in IT & many offices are air conditioned. WFH saves it. I think this problem will be solved but we surely need sustainable solutions
I think we also need to get used to living in hotter temperatures without having everything set at 25 Celsius year round. That said, parts of India and the Middle East can hit high wet bulb temperatures in summer, where AC usage is almost mandatory if you want to stay comfortable.
I watch a scary movie, it always sends a chill down my spine.
Good one
I love the video for its simplicity and how it categorized different issues under different approaches. Being a resident of a city like New Delhi, I felt there are a few things we can do already at the grass root level. Delhi has a densely populated urban base with a lot of its construction dating back between 30-100 years. And not everyone would have enough capital to reconstruct these with better materials but we need to ensure that there is enough awareness amongst the local builders, architects, and residents to understand the nuances of using glass panes to make their reconstructed homes look fancy. Additionally, small changes like white-roofing though still out of reach for some might be a good start to reduce the consumption of energy to keep the temperatures inside the homes in check. Some bit of green roofing and solar panels help too. Though this is all easier said than done.
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White paint is cheap. - goes a long way towards addressing hot roòfs.
I live in a small village in rural part of South India. We have a two floor home without any Air conditioning. But still always at good temperature.
It is mostly depend upon the design of the home and your surroundings.
Nature has already given her blessings its just we want to know how to use them wisely without harming her.❤
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We have garden full of green plants (shadow) and a small pond. We open the living room doors to the garden. In Amsterdam we have only a limited number of really hot days, but when it gets over 30 there is usually also a lot of humidity, so it feels like "heavy" heat.
Do you have a basement? 🤔
I ask because I know the water table is very high in most of the Netherlands.
@@paulheydarian1281 That's right, the water table is sometimes only a few centimetres below the house, that's why we don't have a cellar. Because subsidence, the land around the house is sinking, giving us more of a clearance.
laughs in a city over 2600m over the sea on the equator with constant 20*C ambient temperature.
yeah.. lol living on high hills are fwcking cold. lol no need ac up there.
I live in the US now, and use ac everyday, whether I think about it or not, it's already there. But when I was in Taiwan, it was more common for people to have separate units for different rooms, so that you can cool only the room you're in rather than the whole house, so it uses less energy as a whole. that's the white rectangular units shown in the video. but i definitely agree that they need to be more energy efficient
I stayed in an old colonial brick build house in french Guyana, it had air bricks at the highest point of the house and the airflow was amazing. The negative part is noice.
I think it I tried to modify my house to be cooler in the summer such as by rendering it white or installing shading to mitigate direct sunlight from the building, the local planning authorities would be upset. Despite being a property without any heritage value, it is located on a typical modern housing estate and I could imagine doing anything to make the house look different to all the other copy-and-paste houses in the surroundings would not be popular. So part of the solution must be ensuring flexibility in our planning systems to implement changes, as well as changing the mindset of sticking to uniformity.
Living in AZ, Phoenix is a prime example of urban heat island effect. It is also sits in a valley. The cities are planting trees and desert type plants at a much faster rate. In Southern AZ, we use closed cell foam or sheets of foam under the stucco. We also use double and triple pane windows with PVC/fiberglass frames. It’s a process and it’s not cheap either.
Have you captured water from roadways too, like is being done in Tuscon? They break the curb/berm to allow water to pool around trees in the yard instead of just sending it down storm drains.
@@kittimcconnell2633 I don’t because I would need a pump and additional storage. The layout of my property doesn’t permit for me to do this. There are more and more homeowners doing this but I don’t recommend it. Too much brake dust and other contamination in that type of water. When we get those torrential downpours, that’s a lot of water to capture and store. Not to include the gray water from washers and bathing
Las Vegas to everyday
I found a perfect green solution for my single family house. Well two solutions actually. One is proper insulation, both for summer and winter it is a win win. Yet I noticed that despite the insulation sometimes the house walls do heat up despite of insulation which is extremely unpleasant. I noticed it during the heat domes which come over for a few weeks a year at a time. So I needed a backup solution and since I am not a fan of large electricity bills, I went solar. I have used solar panels, and created separate independent solar circuits. When it comes to heating and cooling, one solar circuit about 8 kW during peak, is used for two systems - aircond the old inefficient one presented here. And heated floors in rooms which are not the bedroom. And even during heat dome effects (when it can get +40*C for weeks each day) my house is cold. I even had to adjust the temperature because I caught a cold. But to be fair I did "slightly" overkill the aircond and installed a 300 square meter capable unit (the heat exchanger) to my 120 square meter single family house.
Downside is - if you go outside from a house where I keep 19*C to +40*C in shade... your body is not happy. And also the other way around going from hot to cold after a few hours in the garden.
living in the high desert in California where the temperature could exceed 100 C , running the A/C in the summer cost me $170+ a month compared to $37+ in the cooler months or winter. luckily, when i lived alone, i was able to just have fans blowing, cold showers then air drying in the buff, wearing a damp shirt around the house, and just hours long tub soaks. Window fans at night when the temperatures were lower helped. I also heard that in Egypt, they go to bed with slightly damp sheets that are amazingly cooling so I did that too......I miss living alone lol
very well done. I enjoyed your review and solutions. We need more content like this.
I keep cool in the summer by living in Britain.
If it gets above a certain temperature and I need to cool down I take off one of my cardigans.
In an electrical substation we had a high temperature inside. This substation was lacated in a second floor and had air conditiones . For reduce the temperature we made to holes in the first floor to make the wind can flow easily. This wind flow reduced the temperature in the second floor and the energy consume was reduced.
I have a thermopump in my house but I rarely use it in cooling mode. I have several fans to refresh myself where I am in the house. When it is not sufficient anymore, I use my dehumidifier. Reducing humidity enhance comfort and it reduces the sensation of heat.
Radiative cooling panels are a great cooling technology that doesn‘t need any power. I think it‘s not alot of people know of it but there are lots of possibilities that are all very simple and cheap. Everybody can use/build them at home. Thats how simple radiative cooling in general is. If such cooling panels are installed on roofs just like photovoltaik panels are (also at similar scale) average temperatures of citys could be brought down rapidly.
How would you transfer the heat from the air in house to that radiator on the roof and not the other way around?
If the condition is such that you won't need a heat pump and the energy to drive this to do that, then I think you don't need that radiator, too: just open a window or door.
@@Apollorion The simplest way to use radiative cooling is at night. Have you ever touched a table or a cars roof in a clear summer night? All these surfaces are way colder than the surrounding air even while constantly absorbing heat from the surrounding air. These surfaces aren‘t even „tuned“ for radiative cooling. What i am trying to say is that you can build a simple panel with a water in and one outlet. A big waterpocket basically. Lay it flat on a roof/garden and comnect it to an insulated 1000L watertank. The water will cool at night way below the air temperature. You can pump the cold water through existing radiators or a car radiator with a few pc fans if you want it fast and cheap. The 1000L of water hold enourmous amounts of heat energy or in this case the cold water can absorb huge amounts of heat. If you where to tune the panel surface to radiate IR in the i think 10nm wavelenght and increase the panelarea and tank size and also insulate the watertank very well you have free cooling with very little energy consumption. Another idea is that people start using these panels on rooftops. If you watch Nighthawkinlights latest video on the „panels“ i am talking about you know what i mean. The sheer amount of heat energy radiated and reflected away by all these panels will reduce the airtemp. arround all the houses. Even in full daylight. This way people with air conditioners won‘t have to use them as much. In some way we do use radiative cooling in our house as well. Our house is well insulated. On a hot summer day we close all windows and roll down all shutters to block incoming heat from the sun. Then in the night we open half of the windows in the house. Also we have a window installed on the highest point of the house. If you open this window you can even feel a very strong downdraft from the cold air outside which did cool by radiating heat into space. In the morning we close al windows and shutters again. We don‘t use A/C or anything. Still we have 20C in the house all summer long👍 The panels that cool at night are meant for citys etc where the air doesn‘t cool as much as in rural areas. There are endless possibilitys. I think lots of people just don‘t know about this. It is so simple and cheap yet so effective. If everybody doesn‘t just think about their own wellbeing and installs a few of such panels they cool the air for their neigbours too and the other way arround.
I'm part of the 10% of the US who doesn't use an AC. I'm lucky to live in an area that peaks at maybe 29C. With average temps being 21C.
Window fans with blackout curtains and ceiling fans are good enough.
My grandfather taught passive solar in the 1970s. I live and work in passive solar buildings, and even though we have had more days over 100 here than we have ever had, inside it never got over 80, even with my kids interfering with the window routines.
I recently was in Kobe Japan and saw a building that was used to store big blocks of ice in back in he olden days. And it gave me an idea if I’m ever going to build my own house.
I love this stuff! All the traditional stuff rocks! Very much looking forward to it being combined with the new tech daytime radiative cooling surfaces that are coming out of the lab right now. I think it'll be a game changer relative to urban heat, esp in the developing world, because of how cheap/effective it is.
I live in India and my home has never had an AC , doesn't have an AC even though this summer is the hottest by far. We keep the doors open for air circulation and the fans running. From someone who had to survive summers in a dorm without AC -
Dampen your mattress during the daytime and let it evaporate. It will become cooler to sleep on by evening.
Keep a wet towel in the room and put the fan on. It will dry and circulate cool air. Really nice in hot, dry summers.
Table fans and pedestal fans are your friend. But small fans that you can position towards your face/head.
Wind blowing through my appartment, from 3 directions. That has always kept the temperature pleasant at home, even when it has turned climate deadly hot outside. I live at 4th stock.
Next step: keep the sun light away from the windows, meaning covering the windows from outside.
Small windows helps too.
Thank You for covering that topic. Please follow it up in the upcoming years so that we can have an eye on the case and if governements of rhich and poor countries as well as the populations of our countries (we😘) really do their work on that topic to stop the climate crisis.💚🌹🙏🏼
I am adicted to AC especially at night and I feel guilty about it... great video thank you for what you do!
White roof with cavity air space under 50 - 100 mm, then a double layer bubble foil aluminium insulation. Ridge venting hot air out. 2.5m eaves overhang veranda all around, so no sun on exterior walls, windows can open in all weather, trees and plants all around to cool air entering. Keeps our house min 5c degrees cooler than others, so we don't use AC.
I rent a bottom floor apartment mostly because of the lower cooling requirement. I run my a/c for a few hrs at night and leave it off all day. This and last summer we experienced 105°F/40°C+ temps and the warmest my 2 bed/2 bath apartment got was 75°/24° despite leaving the a/c off all day. My power bill ranges from $10/month in Apr/May and Sep/Oct to $40 in July/Aug. In the cold months, I usually stay around $20-30/month. I also utilize curtains and blinds to help manage temperature and box fans. I will place one fan in a window in my bed room blowing air in and another in the guest room blowing air out to create a cross breeze.
When I was a child in the mid 1980s We didn’t had the resources to have air conditioners, so we only had oscillating fans for cooling. Fast forward to the 1990s we moved up to a home that had central air conditioner and ceiling fans and that has been the method for cooling ever since. I have grown accustomed to it and when it needed repairs, I couldn’t even function or do anything without it and that was just 24 hours on interrupted service. I can’t think of living without air conditioners paired with ceiling fans.
We cool our apartment by opening the windows at night or during cold days and because the house has relatively good insulation it stays cool for a couple of days and we don't get many nights above 20°C as often here in southern Germany.
i live in a hot/humid tropical area and just use a fan to keep cool, getting up to a second floor has cooler wind than ground level under the trees etc, I also have a huge bucket of water that I can use to dip my feet in if its really hot or something.
I was hoping for an interesting video about passive cooling, but all I got was climate change rammed down my throat.
There are 4 solutions that stand out:- (1) colour, (2) improve ventilation through area planning and interior fans, (3) centralised cooling to increase efficiency and to reduce heat being released at street level. (4) shading through airing panels and trees. Creating cooling architectures increase land use and material use greatly, and which create transport and services inefficency isn't a solution at all!
If you can cheaply dehumidify not only the living space but also the incoming air then you can use evaporative cooling that isn't limited to arid locations. Problem is that currently dehumidifiers don't have a way to hook up for that and they currently cost more than a cheap AC unit.
I'm surprised many more people don't build their homes underground, or surrounded by soil or thick stone as insulation. Cellars and caves always remain cool in the summer and are easier to keep warm in the winter. I've even seen "hobbit home" designs where a structure is dug into a hill or mountain, or buried with feet of soil. I'd love to do something like that when I get some property.
Several years ago, the US Department of Energy granted a whole lot of money towards research for alternative, non compressor based AC. I would love that you do a follow up on this. What happened to magnetocaloric and thermoelastic cooling technologies? What about skycool technologies? Are they there yet?
Hey there! There is still research going on for magnetocaloric air-conditioning. This report is very recent and explores a prototype 👉www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140700723000786. The same applies to thermoelastic cooling (still research going on). If you mean the technology by the SkyCool company: It is not commercial yet, they are currently working on that.
In Finland many homes are heated by district heating. Thoughts of district cooling haven't been given much attention. Buildings, especially homes, tend to be situated so the rooms get natural light year round (south southwest facing windows) which does make them heat traps if the summer is warm/hot. I close window blinds and curtains and open doors/windows in warm weather and add two small fans for hotter weather. I've tried to add plants outside my window/patio area to increase shade and add coolness, but building management isn't keen on this because the idea is still predominantly "let the sun shine in"
My parent’s house does not have ac, my partner’s parents house does but they don’t use it because of the cost. When my partner and I move out into our condo next year it will have a/c and I will use if mindfully, but this is a problem I’m quite fascinated by and I truly hope the situation improves in the future. I try to spread awareness when I find opportunities to my friends and family because I believe this is a problem that a large majority of the average population are not yet aware of
I moved from a dry climate to a hot humid one and I was quite gratified to see that the humid air is much better for my skin and I look younger. So I found other ways, instead of air conditioning which is drying, to cool my house. I made it of hollow block and concrete, with covered breezeways on all four sides of the house, a ceiling one meter higher than normal, a wide central hall in the middle that encourages cross-ventilation from one end of the house to the other, an open design, ceiling fans in each room and white exterior paint on both outer walls and the cement flat roof that also serves as a viewing deck and where we can take advantage of the breezes.
It would help out if other countries had dark window tint and black out curtains as well as a way to condense the Co2 then sell it or turn it into energy.
How do you keep cool in summer?
In the UK, currently just fans
Though my attic seriously lacks insulation. The aim is to super insulate it and employ PassivHaus principles
That way, I'd seriously lessen my requirement for AC even as demand for AC grows in the UK. If however I had enough money to build a house, I'd definitely build a true PassivHaus house.
On the opposite end (ie: for heat), I believe there are community ground source heat pump initiatives which is very good especially given it's much better than gas
need more Ground Source Heating and Cooling
I live in San Antonio, and have two HVAC's; one for the main floor, and one for the upstairs gameroom. My (3100sf) house was built in 2013 so I have very efficient ac units and a well built, well insulated house. I have a bunch of oak trees in my yard, so the outside temp usually doesn't reach 100F even when the rest of the city is well above 100. Also spent nearly 18k improving the insulation and solar powered vent fans in the attic. My summer electric bill is usually around $140. I keep the daytime temp at 75F inside.
I've been freezing in Germany, wearing my hoodie over my shirt right now. As for days when it's hot, opening windows at evening/night to cool of the walls and then closing them during the day does the job!
when the air con didn't work i'd drench a t-shirt in water and sleep in it. it kept me alive!!
I keep the house cool in the Philippines by installing a solar powered 12v home made ventilator. Made out of 12v 100W solar panel powering a 12v radiator fan in a mushroom shape fiberglass. It cooled the house a lot than before.
when it gets hot i go outside to sleep
Thank you for the informative video.
However: This video suffers of the disease of many youtube videos: superfluous and distracting background music. It's tiring attending to the narration over the background music, masking the topic of the video and mostly adding nothing to the content. Narration or music is fine but one on top of the other is annoying.
The music is probably used to cover microphone hiss.
@@jamesphillips2285 So instead of annoying microphone hiss we have to listen to superfluous music?
there’s also heat radiating paint. basically it radiates heat at a specific frequency that’s not well absorbed by the atmosphere, so instead of bouncing around and some eventually making it back, it just goes right on thru
I am corrently renovating a building build in 1963 in GDR. My goal is the "Passivhausstandard" which means that you have lots of insulation, make smart use of shading during summer und use a heat pump for the remaining required heating energy in winter. Power comes from PV-Modules on the roof. Yes, during summers i use AC units as shown in the video but due to the thick insulation just one unit of 1000W electric power is sufficient for the whole house and since power comes from the sun, its basically free to run.
Living in the woods in western Pennsylvania, the main reason I run the A/C is to keep the humidity in the house under control. The cooling is nice, but high humidity ruins food, makes you sticky, etc.
I was surprised to learn that in some places air conditioners were only used to control humidity and cool the air. Growing up we only used it in winter time to heat the house after it got dark but before nigh time. Now, I never use the heating feature, but I do use it all day in summer because it's just unlivable otherwise. The temperatures haven't increased that much, but the pollution levels are making the city too hot.
I’d like to learn more about the efficiency and cost of alternatives like heat extraction. In more temperate cities, like here in Vancouver, I find that those who can afford A/C tend to go for the cheapest options. Since it’s only required for a few months out of the year, it takes a lot longer to recoup the initial investment on a more efficient, costlier system.
I have, thankfully, also noticed an increased focus on cooler more efficient architecture here. With the west coast modernist style emphasizing a connection with nature and sustainability, a lot of new constructions have implemented design elements from mid-century west coast architecture. Things like retaining as much existing foliage around a structure as possible, extending roof eaves & creating partitions on glass-heavy exterior facades stop the sun from directly contacting windows and transferring heat inside. Unfortunately, this is most prevalent in more expensive single-family developments, rather than the more affordable & sustainable medium-density housing that we lack (not just here, but across the *vast* majority of Canada and the US).
I have read on tin coated glass that creates a mirror finish to reflect heat for large buildings. I have also read articles from the steel industry that uses expanded steel mesh over the exterior of the building. When the sun strikes the steel mesh it creates heat but the air flow quickly removes the heat and keeps it from getting absorbed into the building's structure. Expanded steel mesh would be most useful for heat reduction in the plains & southern Midwestern USA where the air is constantly in motion at a higher than normal velocity. It creates a modern looking structure that isn't often used in high rise buildings. Expanded steel is not expensive and readily available in the USA. ( elsewhere I don't know if the latter would be true) Ground temperature within the Continential USA is around 50 to 55°F ( 20 to 22.8°C) at a depth of 8 to 9 feet. ( 2.44 to 2.74 meters) Running a long trench and using fan blowen air at this depth should provide excellent cooling. One needs to find a way to deal with the water condensation and possible sanitation problems when the moist out door air is cooled to these temperatures within your air pipes in the ground.
I live at the base of a mountain range that has glaciers and cold rivers that eventually run into the ocean after about 200 km. I live along one of those rivers that has relatively cold water, year round. I have an irrigation ditch in the summer that has a slightly elevated temperature compared to the river because sunlight raises the water in a shallow ditch. However, my domestic well goes down into the cold water lens and aquifer that goes into water than is mostly formed in the winter.
Being a meteorologist that understands the thermodynamic solution that Willis Carrier used, I concocted a similar solution. I take the cold water from my well and pump it through a heat exchanger (it looks somewhat like a car radiator), with a fan pushing air thru the fins of the heat exchanger and exit out of the house to a hose I use to water plants.
The only electricity I use is to power the water pump and a fan to blow through the heat exchanger. Under the heat exchanger is a tray to collect water that condenses on the heat exchanger. My summer humidity is very low, so there is not that much water that is condensing on the radiator. I simply take the condensed water that collects and put it on plants. Air conditioners use a small tube that the collected water drains from.
My system is much, much, more energy efficient because I'm not compressing a CFC gas (it requires a phase change, which is very energy inefficient) and then expanding it to cool ambient air. My system is using sensible heat (no phase change) that is based on the difference between the temperature of the air in the house and the temperature of the water from the well . The colder the water and the higher the ambient air temperature is, the more efficient the system is.
My system is within the house and dries the air, not raising humidity like a swamp cooler does. Swamp coolers will not work in areas like the Southern states such as Louisiana. However, this system would work to lower humidity of a house in the Southeast. Actual cooling would be marginal because a shallow well in the southeast does not have a large temperature difference between the well water and the air temperature in the house. Nonetheless, lowering the temperature say 15 F or 8 C is very attainable, even in the Southeast.
When temps were 120 F in the Northwest U.S. a few years ago my household temperature was 60 F, and my electric utility bill was only slightly elevated. Had I used a solar water pump I would have had free air conditioning. The theoretical coldest temperature that you could have coming out of the heat exchanger is the temperature of the well water.
Cooling by opening the windows, heating with radiators and a central wood chip boiler on the farm. Mountainous rural Norway, so YMMV.
We usually only have a week or two during summer where it's too warm for a good nights sleep.
I think the radiative cooling paints are interesting, as making panels made with those can maintain colder than ambient temperatures simply by pointing them at the sky, and the heat is radiated into outer space. Even in direct sunshine.
Good to see that the Asian care about the problem and it looks like they are going to take innovative but pragmatic approaches. Germany is a cold country so Germans don’t know what it is like if you have to sleep at night when it is 28 degrees outside and very humid. Economic development in hot areas of the world is literally impossible without ACs.
It's amazing that something as rudimentary as painting buildings white hasn't already been in use in modern developments.
These are called "Swamp Coolers" and WILL NOT REDUCE HUMIDITY, but actually increase it. Say hello to mold and mildew. The best they can do is to approach the local wet bulb temp. They only work in dry climates.
Also something worth considering:
~10+ years ago letting in more natural light was an energy efficiency measure.
The LED equivalent of 100watt glow wire is 14 watt LED tops.
People tend to forget how much energy lighting used to need just a few years ago.
A 100watt LED lamp could replace an xray for some applications. (Then again this much light might cause more trouble then it's worth, just the risk of eye damage for starters.)
Yeah man, the units themselves for A/C are expensive. However there are new units that when running only pull 1-5 amps. Bosch released some. Way cheaper on energy
I open my loft window and back door.
This causes an air current from the back of my kitchen to the front, up the stairs, through my bedroom and then out through my roof.
It does miss many of the other rooms in the house though.
I live in Appalachia. Nightime lows in the summer are on average 65°F. I open windows at night to cool down the house, and close up the house during the day, trapping the cool air.
Growing up inthe tropics I can confirm A/C is heavenly during the summer
In the southeastern USA, the humidity is the buzzkill. When I was a child, in the 1960s, we had an attic fan that was fine during the day, but at night the window screens would actually trap beads of water and the curtains would get wet.
75 degrees in a fog is not comfortable for sleeping.