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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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We could just start building houses so they don't need them like they do in Hawaii. The well designed houses are designed in a way that allows maximum airflow when the windows are open because the price of running an ac there is astronomical.
There's a lot more regular breeze in Hawaii
Ya, you got me there. You can also build them like termites in Africa do with their hives. They build them in a way to vent heat, and so they catch the minimum amount of light and heat.
There's also windcatchers, the "ancient air conditioners" of Iran.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher
And finally, there’s air conditioning
Let's not go crazy here.
If you've ever been to the deep south usa like Tennessee you would know that's not viable. Temps hit 100 F easily most summers. Humidity is often very high in combination with the scorching heat.
Fortunately it is definitely NOT the norm for homes to be built and/or rented that do not have AC. I've rented numerous cheap homes and apartments in the South, every one had AC. My cheapest rental home was $300/mo and it had all utilities (and central HVAC) working except Internet.
Ah yes, Hawaii, where it gets to a scalding 85F on the hottest of days
But it is done in SE asia where it can reach 40C at even greater humidity... Why not Tennessee?
Because it also gets down to 0C in Tennessee in the winter and houses need to be able to handle that, too
I've been to a house with extremely thick brick walls, it's almost never an uncomfortable temperature.
My dad built two earth-sheltered, passive-solar houses that were always comfortable, required no cooling, and cost about $100 a month to heat over the winter. It's absolutely do-able but you won't get a house that looks like a "normal" house so people won't be interested in buying them.
I've still got the plans and if I had my druthers I'd build a whole mess of them all over so people can see that sometimes weird is much better.
Just isolate the walls well and make sure the window seals are tight. Simple as.
There ARE designs that work. Just not found in the USA. Designs from 2000 years ago throughout the hot and humid southeast Asia that work fine.
If you've ever been to India for example, you'd know. The USA does not have a monopoly on humidity and isn't close to the high for temperatures.
We could just…?
Maybe we could just limit the temps in other hot areas to the same as Hawaii which gets around 85° and rarely goes over 90°?
How about other parts or the US where temps regularly exceed 100° or even 110°? Those airflow designs would do little more than pipe summer heat through their homes.
You can design homes in hot areas to do well, but it’s not an airflow issue. You can do earth berms, thicker walls, much better insulation, and design windows and eaves to prevent the high summer sun from coming in windows to heat the interior. Unfortunately a lot of these kinds of efficient building styles are seen as crunchy-granola and don’t lend themselves to mass produced, cheap material, suburban tract homes and McMansions. The problem is crappy construction and our insistence on the prevalent suburban style.
It is with a great sadness that I do agree with you.
I think the best you can do passively is keep the home at the average daily temperature, which is still uncomfortable in some areas at some times of the year. Average daily air and soil temperatures where I live are typically in the 90s in August. I guess that's better than the 100F-110F highs though. I think I've read it's better to insulate homes from the ground in areas where it's hot or cold both day and night. AC can be pretty efficient in well-sealed highly-insulated buildings.
My childhood friend had a farmhouse that had a back door facing west (I believe that was the direction), and when you opened the door and a specific set of windows, the whole house turned into a wind tunnel. It was pretty cool. I remember his dad saying they'd design the houses that way on purpose.
Can't. Zoning board says it's not in neighborhood character.
Downvoted as irrelevant to the topic of apartment rentals, but it’s a great separate topic with several appealing approaches that could make a big difference
Downvoted for announcing that you downvoted the comment instead of just doing it.
(I took the liberty of downvoting my own comment as well so as not to be hypocritical.)