The old-school way of keeping the summer heat out of your home
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Re: The old-school way of keeping the summer heat out of your home
#2While all of these might offer some cooling in your home, nothing beats air conditioning.
Re: The old-school way of keeping the summer heat out of your home
#3While all of these might offer some cooling in your home, nothing beats air conditioning.
By what measurement? They all surely beat air conditioning in terms of energy usage.
Re: The old-school way of keeping the summer heat out of your home
#4Re: The old-school way of keeping the summer heat out of your home
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
By what measurement? They all surely beat air conditioning in terms of energy usage.
By the measure of "keeping the summer heat out of your home", which was in fact the topic at hand.
But that is exactly the point. Air conditioning doesn't keep heat out - it burns energy to change the air once the heat has gotten in. There are ways to keep it out in the first place.
FWIW, it isn't either/or - we practice keeping the shades, curtains, and windows drawn when it is hot, open when it is cool.... and we have air conditioning. Best of both worlds.
Re: The old-school way of keeping the summer heat out of your home
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
By the measure of "keeping the summer heat out of your home", which was in fact the topic at hand.
But that is exactly the point. Air conditioning doesn't keep heat out - it burns energy to change the air once the heat has gotten in. There are ways to keep it out in the first place. FWIW, it isn't either/or - we practice keeping the shades, curtains, and windows drawn when it is hot, open when it is cool.... and we have air conditioning. Best of both worlds.
You’re simply never going to get through to someone who has internalized the idea that AC is perfect and free. They have accommodated to the luxury and will burn the planet to keep it.
Re: The old-school way of keeping the summer heat out of your home
#7While all of these might offer some cooling in your home, nothing beats air conditioning.
By what measurement? They all surely beat air conditioning in terms of energy usage.
They are complimentary. Shutters reduce the amount of heat coming in. AC gets whatever heat managed to go in out.
One thing I'll never understand is not having shutters, only curtains. I live in France, almost everyone has shutters. But in other countries it's often different. I lived in Thailand for a couple of years and had only curtains, so the sun would still get past the window pane, heat the curtain, and the AC would then have take this heat outside again. This seemed massively inefficient.
I thing the best compromise is using whatever traditional, passive means of cooling we can, and then AC as needed.
Re: The old-school way of keeping the summer heat out of your home
#8While all of these might offer some cooling in your home, nothing beats air conditioning.
Insulation is way more important than cooling capacity.
Instead of adding a 2nd condensing unit, try adding spray foam and double glazed windows. I can keep my 2400 sqft Texas home ice cold with a small 3 ton system. There are similarly sized homes right down the street from me with 5+ tons of capacity across multiple condensing units.
The biggest problem with oversized cooling systems is latent heat removal. It's much better to have a slightly undersized system running constantly through the hottest part of the day than it is to have a very powerful system running with 50% duty cycle. It's also significantly better for system life (capacitors last much longer this way). During summer months, my hvac system cycles maybe one time between the hours of 10am and 10pm.
Re: The old-school way of keeping the summer heat out of your home
#9The old school way was to go away somewhere else in summer.
There is no replacement for air conditioning. It's a modern marvel. People who hate it should also refuse to have heating in winter.
Re: The old-school way of keeping the summer heat out of your home
#10The old school way was to go away somewhere else in summer. There is no replacement for air conditioning. It's a modern marvel. People who hate it should also refuse to have heating in winter.
You seem to be hellbent on marketing AC. I don't understand why it has to be a polarizing issue.
Clearly it is much different than heating in winter; the latter is a matter of survival, while the former is mostly a matter of comfort.
One could indeed argue that in the precarious state we are in, expending energy for unnecessary comfort should be minimized, something that passive designs can aid.
As we also try to minimize energy expenditure of heating, through insulation and other passive means.