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Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at house. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread.
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There's a lot of talk about getting the right insulation for your house so that you have to use less energy to heat it, but I think that, especially with global warming in mind, focussing on keeping the heat out in the summer should also be a priority. The past week we had a heat wave over here. It was 'only' 32 degrees but when you live in a swamp area the humidity is enough to completely wreck you. The city I live in is notorious for having 1) bad insulated houses and 2) having almost no green spaces to cool down in outside. Most squares are concrete slabs die to the concrete lobby having connections in the government. It is one of the hottest places in the country because of this, with a four degree difference in some areas. My bedroom has been at 31.5 C at night for the past week. I have a rash on my skin caused by the heat. Most people live in appartments without AC and without a garden to chill in. Green spaces outside and better housing conditions are a must, imo.
Anyway, new week, new left wing struggle. I sometimes feel as if I completely lose the plot of living a life because of politics. I'm at a point where I get envious if I see other people living life and just enjoying the mundane, regular life things. I wonder if taking a step back and touching some grass for a while is a good thing to do right now.
Wouldn't good insulation also assist in keeping the heat out? Like a thermos
Yes good insulation helps with that. But something as easy as planting more trees in a street helps as well. Or getting people with gardens to remove tiles and swap them for greenery. I think we should also think about how designing the public spaces can help with conserving energy, cooling down a city, etc. Luckily more orgs are aware of this right now.
Time to live in caves again, best natural insulation
For some off grid climate leftists that seems to be an actual option lol
Concrete foam with a layer of rammed earth is what I hear are the best so fsr
I'm also wondering what's going to happen with heating in general. In Germany for example heat pumps are all but required now for all new heating systems in homes. But why do we need to have one heater per home? District heating can be done far more efficiently than individual buildings, but it's almost never considered. Of course companies can make a lot more money selling hundreds of thousands of gest pumps than they can building a few district heating systems. And those would again most likely be powered by fossil fuels, as existing ones outside of China and Russia are.
Anyway, I've just been thinking that there are alternatives, but instead profits and "individual responsibility" must be prioritized rather than the climate emergency.
They have district heating pumps in Workers and Resources, but I am really unfamiliar with the idea. Also it rarely gets cold enough here to require them (so I turn off weather patterns when doing a local build). Fascinated by the idea though. Probably better for apartment blocks than suburbs, which I also do.
Individual places can still be insulated and better designed. I'm worried about summer, am not enjoying our current number of 40+ degree days :(
Cooling more efficiently is definitely something we need to work on as well. I always imagine a symmetric system which can heat and cool using basically the same infrastructure, but I'm not sure how realistic that is.
District heating has been done, AFAIK, in small cities with smaller apartment blocks, big cities with apartment high rises, and suburbs and villages with primarily one or two family homes. It can also be used for industrial processes. I'm sure there are plenty of issues, such as energy losses during transport of heat from the source to the consumers, but nothing we can't and haven't overcome.
At its simplest, district heating just a central water heater for an area, where the hot water is then pumped into houses to heat water for local heating and hot water needs. It can also be combined with heat pumps on the consumption side to improve efficiency and reduce the need for a high temperature difference.
If it's hot water, you can get water solar panels/rigs, too. Probably not too helpful in some places but many places get enough hours of sunlight to start the hot water going. On top of insulating the pipes, most of the heat lost on the way to the rooms might be gained by being able to start the heating at however many degrees higher than it would be if you pulled it straight out the ground. Also good for jacuzzis in the summer, when you'll be getting 60°C+ water out the panels and nothing to heat except water for pots. It's a luxury but only because water's so expensive to heat and we're aiming for luxury, aren't we?
Good insulation is magical and it is one of thr best tithing science has given us and it makes me impossibly sad that we don't use it everywhere