The Loughborough University team says shaded homes could be six degrees cooler than exposed homes. God that sounds good right now
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.
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…
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 news links still end up being cancerous so I avoid them.
We know about shutters, guys - just open your eyes while on holiday on the Med.
So uh…sun shades…
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?
"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.)
