Re: How you design an off-grid home to deal with extreme heat

[elnav]

Admin had written:

“Traditional Homes in India and the Middle East are built at low cost to withstand extreme heat and promote cooling breezes, but that kind of lesson is not learned in most modern American homes”.

The lesson has been learned by architects but the general public has ignored it. I first heard of such simple and inexpensive house building tricks in the sixties when I worked summer jobs for an architect. Later on I saw several designs applying these techniques but the general public kept ignoring such design innovations. I don’t know if it is a case of the building industry seducing people away with more appealing looking houses or simply because people were more interested in fashion and status than practicality.

Most libraries will have books on how to build solar and passive designs. The information is already there you just have to dig a little bit to find it.

Here in the north mobile homes are often fitted with a ‘winter roof’ consisting of a peaked roof over top of the mobile. The steeper angle sheds snow and coincidentally provides shade with an air gap below, but above the original mobile roof. This alone provides for about 15 degrees reduction in interior temperatures on a hot summer days. In the interior mountains it is not unusual to get 100+ degree daytime temps.

Shade and ventilation and some evaporation goes a long way to alleviating summer heat even if you do not have utility power.

Keep ‘er cool!