How To Build A House That Stays Cool? 2023

How To Build A House That Stays Cool?

How To Build A House That Stays Cool

How do you construct a home without air conditioning?

Place windows strategically – When it comes to ventilation and cooling your home, windows may be your most significant tool. Specifically, cross-ventilation is based on the idea that by installing windows of comparable dimensions opposite one another, air is pulled into the home, cools the body by assisting in the evaporation of body heat, and then escapes out the opposite windows.

This results in a pleasant natural wind.
The key to achieving effective cross-ventilation is determining the direction of the wind.
Vivan Loftness, a professor of architecture and former dean of the department of architecture at Carnegie Mellon, advises, “Make sure you open windows on the west and south where you can pick up those breezes, and then you need to get the wind back out.” “The more windows that can be opened, the greater the airflow throughout the home.

If you wish to increase the speed of the wind, however, you should have less open on the windward side and more open on the leeward side.” Loftness is alluding to the Venturi effect, a fluid dynamics theory that states that the wind speed will rise if it is forced through a tight hole, such as wind tunnels between tall buildings.

Eight Ways People Kept Cool Before Air Conditioning Midday, windows and doors were kept closed to keep out the heat. Cooking, baking, and household duties should be postponed until the cooler evening hours. The windows were left open at bedtime to allow in the cool night air. Spread fans across ice chunks.

Does placing water on a home’s roof cool it?

Would installing a sprinkler on the roof of my home assist to cool it? Yes, water on the roof will assist to cool the structure. Evaporative cooling with a little amount of water (such as a periodic sprinkle) is far more effective than cooling with liquid water from a sprinkler.

As 1 gallon of water evaporates, 8000 BTU are used. If you apply one gallon of water to the roof every hour and it evaporates, you will have the same cooling impact as an 8,000 BTU air conditioner. (They are rated in BTUs per hour of heat transferred.) That’s the equivalent of a 0.66-ton air conditioner dedicated to cooling your roof! (In HVAC, a ton is the amount of heat required to melt 1 ton of ice in 24 hours, or 12,000 BTU each hour.

Thus, 8000 BTU divided by 12,000 BTU is one ton of cooling). If you add too much water (or too frequently), it will begin to run off and not all of it will be used for evaporative cooling. Normal heat transmission is occurring via thermal mass, which has a significantly lesser influence.

It takes 1 BTU to raise 1 degree Fahrenheit in a pound of water. If 1 gallon (8.34 pounds) of 70-degree water sealed in plastic is placed on a 160-degree roof and warms to 130 degrees, 500 BTUs of heat from the roof have been used (60 degrees x 8.34 pounds). If it is not wrapped in plastic and evaporates, you will burn an extra 8,000 BTU per gallon.

Once the evaporation has cooled the roof to a temperature of, say, 100 degrees, an extra gallon of 70-degree water can only reheat up to 100 degrees, a 30 degree rise, using just 30 x 8.34 = 250 BTU. Simply simply, your cooling system is highly effective if little to no water is lost.

Add as much water as possible without any runoff for best cooling effectiveness.
In industrial buildings, this type of evaporative cooling may reverse the heat flow and make the roof a cooling element, in addition to reducing the heat coming in from the roof.
An evaporation-cooled roof might lower the roof surface temperature down from 165 degrees Fahrenheit to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, therefore removing heat from the structure.