General > General Technical Chat
Building thermal insulation.
Benta:
--- Quote from: tom66 on July 19, 2022, 10:08:46 pm ---A few homes around here have shutters that can cover their windows, I think this is a fantastic idea and will definitely be something to investigate before next summer.
Of course there does come a certain point when air conditioning is necessary, and while the UK does not currently get all that many 40C days even a 30C day can be uncomfortable if a few similar days have preceded it. So I will certainly be installing it in our property.
--- End quote ---
Perhaps you need to embrace the South German building style using exterior roller shutters.
https://www.neuffer.de/en/roller-shutters.php
Works wonders on the sunny side of the house.
Concerning air conditioning: I don't know the size of your garden, but a ground source heat pump will heat your house in the winter and cool it during the summer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump
And you'll save a heck of a lot of money on energy.
Halcyon:
Thermal insulation is used extensively in house construction in Australia, both within the walls and the roof. It's designed not only to keep heat you generate inside the home from being lost, but also to keep the heat in summer from entering.
If you go into very old homes that don't have insulation (or very little of it), you can definitely feel the difference. They are like sweat boxes in summer and chilling in the winter.
Someone:
--- Quote from: Zero999 on July 19, 2022, 07:58:05 pm ---Yes, it's not nice being here when during a heatwave. To those who say it's nothing, temperatures today have been 10oC hotter than the usual hottest summer day and over 18oC hotter than average. Overnight lows have been between 20oC and 25oC, 7oC to 13oC above normal.
--- End quote ---
Its not "nothing" but its not a dire emergency, you can say its blah degrees more than normal but thats only what you are acclimatized to. The overnight minimum is a good measure as thats the best case possible with perfect insulation and no air-con, and often most disruptive (preventing sleep/rest). Australian city highest overnight minimums in the last 10 years (just the south east, no tropics):
Melbourne: 28
Adelaide: 34
Canberra: 27
Sydney: 25
All these places see daily maximums over 40 C routinely, yet air-conditioning is not universal: Adelaide 90%, others 70%.
Yes, heat is a bigger threat to life than cold, but that seems to have some strong acclimatization or behavioral content that London does poorly with:
https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/heat-and-health-2/assessment
So the rest of the world will rightly point to the UK (London) and say learn to adapt with high and low temperature extremes, everyone else seems to survive better.
David Hess:
The insulation works equally well both ways. Opening a couple windows at night and using a fan to pull a draft through helps if you do not have air conditioning, but can be counterproductive if it is humid and you do have air conditioning because it will load the air in the house up with water which the air conditioning will have to remove later.
If it is hot and dry, then a swap cooler is nice.
SeanB:
Remember during Gulf War I (the retrocon name given later) at work with us all watching TV to see the live war coverage. Helps to be in the same time zone as Bhagdad, and CNN popped over to the London correspondent about the current UK heatwave, with temperatures hitting the highest of 31C. Asked my colleague when was it 31C by us, and he replied it passed that at 07H15, and was, when he went through to tea, just a shade under 45C indoors. AC unit for our section having kind of moved large chunks of compressor off the roof a few months before when the compressor decided that throwing a rod was only the final thing, and threw heads off along with the rods.
Peak we measures was 75C 1m under the concrete roof, and we went through 100l of water a day, between the 12 of us in there. People looked at me funny when i remarked a few times how cool it was outside, only 41C, till they came in at lunch time. Most popular room was the ATE system, with it's separate AC system, made from 3 Defy 36000BTU console units, and those would be repaired post haste, as otherwise there would be no flyable aircraft.
Plenty of people came for winter holidays, and dropped dead from heatstroke, even before noon, while us that had been through a summer or two were out wearing jerseys, because 25C was cold to us.
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