Off Grid Home › Forums › Technical Discussion › How you design an off-grid home to deal with extreme heat › Re: How you design an off-grid home to deal with extreme heat
It is no wonder that ancients lived in caves, some of which were even cooler with water deep in them. The water is both thermal mass with the cool rock and has an evaporative cooler effect. Thick stone or adobe walls were found to be cooler in the day and warmer at night—thermal mass.
My Earthship has the catchment water tank and transpiration of the plants to also cool it, but the humidity it adds has to be vented. The lower buried tire walls tend toward the ground temperature year around, with the angled glass and brown lower walls and mass absorbing solar thermal gain in winter and releasing over days, and otherwise acting like other mass wall types like adobe and thick rock.
It works well, both the evap, deep underground parts, and mass in dry and warm/hot climates, but in places like England and Scotland the thick castles are damp, and overly cool places.
In places like the southeast US, underground could be done with waterproof concrete type, but would still need that power using dehumidifier.