The Loughborough University team says shaded homes could be six degrees cooler than exposed homes. God that sounds good right now
"Air conditioning is going to be a bit of a problem for us at the moment because the electricity grid is not able to cope with that amount of electricity demand, " he said.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the demand on the grid for heating in winter always gonna be higher than cooling in summer? I’m not an HVAC-savvy person but just from basic science, raising the temperature by 20C has to be more energetic than lowering it by 5C. What am I missing here?
Fair enough AC is monstrous because it rejects heat into the atmosphere and should be avoided, but I didn’t consider it a potential strain on the grid.
Edit: nvm I found out. Gas is the heating medium and is easier to deliver, whereas AC uses electricity and the grid can’t push that much. (But on paper AC is 4x more efficient than central heating at changing the temperature.)
Well, that was fluffy science reporting if ever I’ve seen in a long while, right up there with spaghetti grows on trees.
No mention of eaves, of double glazing, insulation in the walls, shade cloth, natural foliage, colours, types of paint, roofing materials, or anything else worth investigating.
Instead we’re reporting on a University that installed an awning, a black one at that, on a house and put heat boxes, fancy word for egg incubator I’m guessing, to simulate human heat, rather than actual humans who might live there.
Is this the Assumed Intelligence future we have to look forward to?
Making the awnings black really was a power move
It’s funny to me how every couple years, I see an article “discovering” passive cooling techniques that have been in use for centuries.
We know about shutters, guys - just open your eyes while on holiday on the Med.
I too saw that Technology Connections video.
The what?
Oh come on, don’t try to tell me you’ve never seen a video from Alec before, especially given that we’re on a platform full of nerds and geeks. Everyone here knows Technology Connections.
Like how everyone is American everyone?
No. The channel provides useful information regardless of where you live. Quit being stubborn and just check it out.
Awnings and ceiling fans are in vogue again. We’re back in the 1920s!
Jokes aside, this is good. We should learn from the past and make use of these energy efficient cooling solutions, and not do what the Americans do with just blasting AC blindly at the problem
Why not both…
Most people rent and most landlords ain’t paying for this.
There are houses in the Netherlands that were built with those types of shades. In the frigging twenties and thirties.
They invented… Shade. Call the Nobel committee, we got a winner
open loft hatches
I’ve always wondered about this: to close the hatch to the attic, or open it. And when, at what point? Open it the whole day, or only when outside temperatures drop below in-house ones?
It’s not mentioned in the article if they tested this but I open mine at night to try and get a bit of hot air to flow up.
oh, to let hot air flow up? So your attic is cool?
Seems the opposite of my situation: I would open it to draw the hot air out so it stops warming the rooms beneath after the sun is down. 😀
Attic is hot too but it’s well ventilated, hot air rises so allowing airflow from the house up into the attic means cool air is drawn in through the windows as hot air escapes up into the loft and out through the vents.
yep. houses with attic fans and flow-through layouts were hella popular in the early 1900s-1940s. you could open some windows and doors front and back and let air move, and an attic fan would keep it from getting too hot and aid airflow at night.
same thing with covered patios (my grandfather grew up in places like singapore, the philippines and oklahoma where you’d sleep on the patios under large ceiling fans) - we sealed everything up when AC came along and forgot how to do shit.
My attic was boiling! The insulation in the floor kept it up there.
Bought a motorised sunshade for our south facing window when ‘Technology Connections’ did a video on them.
It’s been fantastic, one day I might set up Home Assistant to get it to deploy automatically to the correct distance depending on heat in the room, weather and time of day.
So uh…sun shades…
Shhh… nobody tell Europe about air conditioning.
This post would belong better in a “Not the Onion” community.
Did you read the article?
“Air conditioning is going to be a bit of a problem for us at the moment because the electricity grid is not able to cope with that amount of electricity demand,” he said.
This helps when your AC stops working because everyone’s using AC and there’s a brownout. It also helps you need less AC
Thank you. I confess I have a reflexive aversion to clicking news links because no matter how persistently I use adblock extensions & pop-up blockers etc, most links still end up being cancerous so I avoid them.
