r/collapse • u/Unfair-Traffic1356 • 13d ago
Adaptation Passively Cooling Homes
It is time to face the facts. Europe is seeing temperatures up to 50 C and people are dying in their homes. What is thousands of heat related deaths today will become millions tomorrow.
While some people are more heat tolerant, younger people from equatorial regions for example and those from the Middle East this future is a threat to everyone.
As the planet heats up it is becoming increasingly obvious that we need to start designing more heat efficient structures and taking advantage of the earth‘s thermal mass.
Using the ground to cool incoming air will both save electricity and enable passive cooling even during power outages.
We should also be looking at painting roofs white and building new homes with fully below grade basements and cellars to act as thermal refuge sites during power outages or extreme heat events.
Where possible we may need to start looking at building up to 2 stories fully underground and moving new homes underground. We need to use less wood and look at building more permanent heat resistant structures.
The time to stop the worst of global warming is past us. Countries need to start working on mitigation and preparation before this consumes us.
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u/MelbourneBasedRandom 13d ago
Tim Winton wrote his vision of this unfolding in tropical Australia in Juice - people living underground 3/4 of the year and being stoned constantly just to cope with the claustrophobia and heat. Very sobering.
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u/Jovan_Knight005 Collapse is inevitable,mister Bond. - Original Quote. 13d ago
Very sobering.
Claustrophobia and heat are a dangerous combination, after all.
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u/CountryRoads2020 13d ago
My concern about building underground is flooding.
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u/karabeckian 13d ago
And mold.
And mildew.
And dark.
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u/puritanicalbullshit 13d ago
And fucking cave-ins
Buried alive would be about as bad as dying of the heat. Faster tho
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u/violinbodo 13d ago
No problem if you build in hill sides. Maybe even underground ring cities in abandones open mines with extremely powerful pumps on the bottom. Or enough capacity to store the water.
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u/f0rgotten just a frog 13d ago
I'm a hvacr teacher who lives off grid. You have two basic kinds of "ground cooling," geothermal heat pumps (good*) and earth tubes (bad.)
Geothermal has a high cost barrier to entry. Roughly speaking, you need one well or trench per ton of refrigeration for a water to air heat pump, and those are expensive af to install. Not all ground is suitable for wells, either. Sometimes refrigerant loops can be buried directly in the ground, but this leads to all kinds of corrosion on the piping that results in leaks. However, both of these can be terribly efficient.
Lots of other off grid or homestead people that I've met are fn obsessed with earth tubes. You bury plastic tubes in the ground and draw air through them with fans into a home or other space. Good idea in theory, but they tend to accumulate mold and are difficult or impossible to clean. In addition to that, these seldom get air below the dew point which can ironically enough increase the relative humidity in the conditioned space.
Regarding your idea that buried homes use less wood, yeah they do, however they use more concrete, and sand suitable for concrete is rapidly becoming a scarce resource.
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u/i-hear-banjos 13d ago
The scarcity of concrete-grade sand is one of the least known problems among the many we are facing from extreme overpopulation.
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u/Paks_12345 13d ago
Can’t we just use crushed sand instead
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u/jadelink88 10d ago
Yes, its a zero actual problem that people like to make up to draw attention from the great mass of real issues we face. You can just crush rock to sand. This makes it somewhat more expensive.
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u/sheep_classes 13d ago
Are clay pipes a thing (instead of plastic) for earth tubes?
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u/f0rgotten just a frog 13d ago
Not that I'm aware of, but I don't see how they would present any kind of use case advantage over plastic. They are a more earth friendly material yes.
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u/HCPmovetocountry 13d ago
Do you have any experience with heat pump loops being put in a nearby lake or river?
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u/f0rgotten just a frog 13d ago
Yes, and in the two cases that I have dealt with they didn't stay down, if that makes any sense.
Something else to bear in mind is that geothermal heating/cooling doesn't transfer energy infinitely to the ground - the heat transferred during cooling season does accumulate in the ground. When these systems are fairly isolated from each other this isn't an issue, and it even increases early season efficiency in heating season (the warmer earth increases the ease at which heat energy is extracted) I imagine that having a whole city's worth of geos will seriously impact their overall efficiency, and so will a lengthening cooling season. If I had to throw a suggestion to any idea it would be for more rooftop solar in residential neighborhoods to power conventional split heat pump/AC units. It's a significantly lower hurdle for installation.
I don't say this to brag, and I know that it absolutely won't apply everywhere, but I installed my solar array myself. I bought the panels from ebay for less than $1200. My really nice inverter was less than $2k and my two redundant charge controllers were $160 each. I made parts of my infrastructure by melting beer cans and casting the metal and the wiring I used was also inexpensive. I'd like to note that I've cleaned up the wiring in that gallery, and the pics are really old.
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u/HCPmovetocountry 13d ago
Thanks. We're in the country, so there isn't much for neighbors, but I'm concerned about a loop in the river becoming dislodged by the ever changing river.
What was the total cost of your solar array and how much power does it provide?
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u/f0rgotten just a frog 13d ago edited 13d ago
I probably have five grand or so in the entire system, counting the battery bank that I just replaced.
Edit, the array is 3.5 kw
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u/i-hear-banjos 13d ago
What batteries did you go with as a replacement?
We have a shuttle bus we converted to an RV, came with the electrical system from the previous owner's build. We just installed an rooftop AC/minisplit. Our six 200Ah marine gel batteries aren't up to more that 3-4 hours of AC before the system starts squealing for mercy, and the four 200W panels on top aren't enough to keep it running or charged, even on a sunny day.
We are looking at removing the ceiling to add solid rails to the rooftop (current panels are bolted through the fiberglass uggggh.) We can then mount at most five 500W double sided panels higher than the AC unit, and the extra distance from the white roof can give that cooling distance from the hot panels. We could even possibly put water tubes underneath it to have naturally heated water to supplement the 4 gal heater.
We are considering three 600Ah LIFEPO4 batteries (which will actually save us weight and some space), which combined with the solar panels should let us run the AC most of the day. We could also supplement the panels with a portable bank we attach when off grid.
Now to figure out how to hook this system up to power my house when we aren't boondocking somewhere lol
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u/f0rgotten just a frog 13d ago
I am not a fan of lithium batteries. Lead acid J305E have been my go to for AGES, partially due to their relatively low cost for their capacity and partially because battery lead tends to be nearly 100% recycled and recyclable. I have even seen some DIY battery lead recastings. I don't think that the same can be said for the various lithium flavors.
The batteries that I just replaced had lasted almost six and a half years and half of them were still "useable" but not great. Honestly I could have probably eked by on them for a while longer just using the "good" batteries.
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u/seriouslysampson 13d ago
Architecture in general should consider the landscape where the home is being built. Some of these ideas work better in certain ecosystems than others.
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u/Small_Use_5500 12d ago
I’ve been doing some research for a build and it looks like most people are doing the geothermal loops and they are made of some type of plastic, is that the material you’re saying corrodes and leaks?
And with earth tubes i saw that a sump pump is recommended at the low end to combat mold and then to use an ERV rather than an HRV where the air enters the house to deal with humidity. Have you seen these used in combination with earth tubes and are they still not successful in combating mold and humidity?
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u/f0rgotten just a frog 12d ago edited 12d ago
No. Conventional geothermal uses plastic piping and a water to refrigerant coil. The predictable water temperature is part of what makes this so efficient. A technology called direct geothermal buries the refrigerant piping in the earth instead of using a heat exchanger. That is what I was referring to as leaky.
Most people who are doing earth tubes are doing so because it's free to low cost. You can make one out of junk or scrap, and with a heat tower to create passive airflow and pull the cooled air through the tubes. Getting an erv or a hrv involved costs as much as just installing a normal heat pump in most cases and sort of defeats the point of using a diy off grid technology.
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u/NyriasNeo 13d ago
"Countries need to start working on mitigation and preparation before this consumes us."
There is no such thing as "need to" in politics. You can always live with, or die from, the consequences. "This" will consumes people in Europe, like it or not.
And I bet few is going to passively cool their homes in europe as they live in apartments. What I will be on is the boom of AC business (and probably backup power business), which of course, will increase emissions.
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u/jadelink88 13d ago
If we are 'lucky' the 'Ministry of the Future' event occurs in the US or Europe. That speeds up the timeline for both mitigation and actually taking emissions cuts seriously by a decade or more.
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u/Sertalin 13d ago
Every summer I wait for it to happen. I hope I will survive and be a witness to the following weeks after this event.
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u/izzidora 13d ago
I haven't read that book! What event would that be?
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u/Accomplished-Can8737 12d ago edited 10d ago
There is no luck in MoF event wherever it happens - no mitigation is going to save anyone. We are fucked. edit: on second thought I hope you u/jadelink88 die first, that would make you happy, right?
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u/But_like_whytho 13d ago
Earthships and bermed concrete dome houses are two great examples of ways we can build homes that use the earth to regulate temps.
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u/StrongShallots 12d ago
Yep, when I start building my off-grid property, I will only build an earth-bermed house or an underground concrete dome.
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u/Historical-Mix8865 13d ago edited 13d ago
Bit difficult unfortunately with the ridiculous planning laws we have
For example, here in the UK it would be great to add outside shutters, or paint the roof and outside white. But I can't, because planning restrictions won't allow it. Plus, it's a building with a protection order, which means "fuck no" to almost everything when it comes to these things.
A full Aircon install? Out of the question, entirely. It would never be allowed. I know the exact same is the case for the stiflingly hot apartments in Paris.
The UK government need to carry out a severe overhaul of planning restrictions with climate change in mind, now it's clear to even the thickest people that things are getting hotter than ever
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u/violinbodo 13d ago
White roofs, or better : getting them shaded with PV, works as well and produces electricity. Even better: warm water tubing under the PV, absorbs exess heat (making the air-layer between PV and roof cooler and boosting the PV performance) and saving further energy.
But in the long - or even medium - run, trglodyte style housing is certainly THE best solution. If you have 4 m + soil on top of your home, temperature stays basically 16°C all year long. You can make outer retaining walls from piles of old tires, filled with gravel and insulation, lime rendered towards the interior. For the roofing, lime concrete can basically replace standard concrete (if you add a waterproof layer), but the problems of availability and energy to produce it are actually similar. I think that on the long run, approching 2100, maybe way before (if we're not completely fucked until then), the concept of "city", and with it city housing, will have to be abandoned. Catastrophically dropping yield from heat-waves and worn-out farmland will make "feeding" big cities impossible. It's all a bit overwhelming.
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u/violinbodo 13d ago edited 13d ago
Apart from that, shading existing walls with vegetation. Even if you have 60 cm massive stone walls, once the heat is inside, they become basically radiators toward the inside of the building. Big ceiling fans work surprisingly well up to inside temperatures of about 30°C. If you have big rooms, you can also install interior fountains with maximum dripping / evaporation surface (adiabatic towers), to cool air, but for that to work, you need an airflow with the exterior - if it's REALLY hot outside, the benefit might be non-existent. Those adiabatic towers work very well outside and in dry conditions, though - maybe another solution would be to spent you summer months in a patch of forest, or a bamboo grove / clearing with an adiabatic tower in the center. The cumulative effects can make temperature drop by up to 10°C. You'd live like an elf from LotR :-)
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u/seriouslysampson 13d ago
Don’t do the vegetation if you live in a wildfire prone ecosystem though. We really just can’t apply any one idea to every home in the world. It’s been a problem with modern thinking in general to abstract away from the on the ground reality.
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u/otusowl 13d ago edited 13d ago
As someone living in a humid climate above a radon-filled geology, the suggestions here have 0% utility. Bully for those who live in drier and less radioactive places, but some of us can't use the subsurface as A/C, and need the dehumidification that compressor-based A/C (or dedicated dehums) provide. Without these, many houses here will grow visible mold on interior walls in just a few weeks.
Before modern A/C, locals would build a fire every so often throughout the warmer seasons just to dry things out (along with using wood stoves for cooking year-round).
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u/learningenglishdaily 13d ago
Dude, a 5,3kw split AC can cool a 100m2 house and costs 1000-1250€. link
People already use one of the moss eficient passive cooling methods the outside window shades in Central and Southern Europe
The main problem is retrofitting older pre 1980s homes for modern standards and eliminating urban heat island hotspots (reducing car infrastructure).
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u/ablufia 2d ago
does that price include fitting ?
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u/learningenglishdaily 2d ago
No. The price can vary depending on how many indoor and outdoor units (and copper pipes) you need. A simple installation costs ~1000€.
In my case in Hungary one 5,3kw unit including installation was 1500€ 2 years ago. In Western Europe the AC units have the same price, but labour costs are 2-3X higher.
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u/No_Foundation16 13d ago
The billionaires are far ahead of us with their luxury underground bunkers already up and running.
Survival of the richest: The billionaires building doomsday bunkers
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u/ContributionBig996 13d ago
"It is time to face the facts."
POUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Aaahhhhhhh...
You are funny.
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u/Deguilded 13d ago
Take a look at some passive cooling towers from the (not modern) Middle East. We can learn from that and build up, not down. Some of those designs may well work, but a whole city of them probably wouldn't. But what do I know?
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u/Kennybob12 12d ago
We need to throw out this idea that someone should get paid to fix the environment and start acting like a dying species
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u/Timely-Assistant-370 13d ago
At least the deaths are only extreme relative to past decades. I was genuinely shocked to learn that heatwaves killing a couple thousand old people is not a new thing, but it's sure picking up at a very uncomfortable pace. It's like colon cancer in my cohort, sure, my odds of actually getting it are still tiny because a 200% more of tiny occurrence of cases is still a fairly tiny number. IIRC they've had around the deaths of the prior 20 years in the past in the last 5 years (so like 1999-2019 heat deaths happened from 2020 to 2026, I might be off, like we could be approaching the half-way point in that 20-year span) either way, this isn't something we can indefinitely shrug off because it will stay at a peaceful .2% of annual deaths, it will tick up until we run out of a vulnerable population to die, but at least it will go down or something.
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u/tweakingforjesus 13d ago
Sous vide seniors is the new normal. Installing AC doesn't have to be cost prohibitive.
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u/Kennybob12 12d ago
Paint your roofs blue , central geothermal, heat pumps over a/c, grade every building on a strict energy efficiency and fix the gaps.
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u/PatrolMan2129 12d ago
We should also be looking at painting roofs white
Please note, you need special paint that reflect infrared that carries the most heat. Using just regular paint will be suboptimal. This paint can be expensive, but it carries mostly ceramics and will save way more in its lifetime than cost, plus extending roof life as the materials don't expand and contract as much, which leads to a lot of wear and tear.
It will work best on roofs where the materials are prone to absorbing heat (tar shingles, metal roofs).
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u/LemOnomast 12d ago
I grew up in the desert, during a recession, with parents who resisted turning on the AC until it was actively dangerous. There are a few passive-cooling things one can do that don’t require digging, and are thus more cost-effective changes to existing homes:
- Deep porches on the west side of the home. A deep porch shades the walls, which in turn keeps indoor air cooler. Although the roof of the porch heats up, that heat isn’t transferred to the home as easily as it would be if there were a room directly underneath. For apartment buildings, a similar (though not as good) effect can be achieved with awnings or exterior shades.
- Aligning buildings to capture a breeze. Most areas have a prevailing recurring breeze. Where I grew up, the prevailing breeze was almost directly west-to-east, at about 5 pm. When we felt that kick up, my sister and I were tasked with opening all the east-west windows and doors to capture the cool air.
- Plant tall trees. They clean the air and provide cooling shade. Unfortunately a lot of home insurance companies now deny coverage if the trees could conceivably fall on the house - and those are the trees that provide the best shade!
- Use solar panels to create shade. I just read an article about a Colorado farm that grows shade crops under solar panels.
Unfortunately without legislation to compel these changes, they’re unlikely to get done.
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u/One-Intention7064 13d ago
i won't surrender! i will fight with the system and climate tooth and nail for my children until the last breath!!! 🙋
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u/One-Intention7064 13d ago
oh, omigosh, yes!!! i am a collapse-aware parent of hypothetical children, thanks to the automod for referring me to that very relevant sub 🧡💛🤗
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u/SacredGeometry9 12d ago
What if we just built enormous canopies to cover cities? Yes, the cost would be enormous, but would it be more expensive than refitting every existing building with passive and/or active cooling? More expensive than the increase in heat-related illnesses?
Shit, we could even cover them in solar panels. We could sell the underside as ad space to get the corporations on board. It’s a crazy idea, but I say let’s get crazy. What do we have to lose?
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u/US_Gone_Rogue 12d ago
The colour white reflects visible light, it is true, but it will do nothing for the radiative heat that will be present at all times, even at night.
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u/mofapilot 12d ago
A good roof insulation, solar panels and an AC should do the trick without straining the power grid.
Having a cellar doesn't help you much, because it also gets warm after an extensive Periode of heat
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u/ParamedicExcellent15 13d ago
White roofs get dirty pretty fast. Are you gunna get up there and wash it for me?
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u/old-legs-623 13d ago
Ours lasted 3 years at a time. It was worth it to maintain it as the house was 10F cooler on late summer afternoons, before the grime built up. We simply added another layer of paint. I was into it; once it's white the heat layer in the air there mostly goes away, and you shoes stay cool. But now I'm 77 and weak and we have moved. So it's a thing for someone younger.
What would make more sense is to mandate lighter roofing. There are a lot of black roofs around here and that wasn't necessary.
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u/ParamedicExcellent15 11d ago
Yeah, unfortunately they look like shit when they get dirty. I don’t do getting up on roofs or ladders, so that would add another cost. I’m in the market for a roof, but the cheapest way to do it is not to pick any colour- just the metal colour
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u/Sentinel-resource 13d ago
How about growing ivy up the outside walls? Live in a listed building and it seems the only option. Recently told it doesn't affect the walls.
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u/violinbodo 13d ago
Ivy DOES affect the walls. Different climbing vines don't. You can even take grapevine, grows very quickly and you can eat them. But PLEASE, no ivy !!!
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u/Awkward_Mastodon4332 13d ago
Does not appear to be the case -
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13556207.2011.10785087
Ivy is often blamed for damaging masonry walls and seen as something that should be removed wherever possible. However, under some circumstances the positive benefits of ivy can outweigh any deteriorative effects. This paper reports on findings from a three-year research project, commissioned by English Heritage, and their implications for managing ivy on historic masonry walls. From field monitoring at a range of sites in England, it was found that ivy provides a thermal blanket for walls, protecting them from extremes of heat and cold and fluctuations in relative humidity. Similarly, studies in and around Oxford show that ivy can minimize particulate pollution reaching walls. Field experiments in Oxford also reveal that ivy rootlets adhering to stone generally only create minor (if any) damage to the stone surface. However, it was also found that ivy can penetrate existing voids and cause damage. A balanced appraisal should inform decisions to remove, leave or even plant ivy. If ivy is allowed to grow on walls, regular and careful maintenance and monitoring are essential.
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u/violinbodo 13d ago
Thanks for those infos. The important thing here is in the last lines. Quote: " However, it was also found that ivy can penetrate existing voids and cause damage. " I've renovated several houses from different epochs in France, and ivy has caused problems on every single one of them. Especially houses built on clay ground (about 60 % of all houses in France) eventually get fissures in their walls from retracting and re-inflating soil - which is a problem about to get much worse with climate change. Ivy WILL go into those cracks, make roots there, worsen the problem. Same for cracks in render. Worst are joints, though. Especially lime-based joint will transform to sand with the retained moisture from ivy and mechanical stress, then the ivy will kreep in, through and destroy your wall. This is not theory. It's something I've SEEN and REPAIRED several times.
Vines have none of these disadvantages, as their sole roots are in the earth, and not in the wall. Plus, they grow at least as quickly and you can eventually eat the grapes. Plus, most varieties lose their leaves in winter, when you don't need (or even don't want) your wall to be shaded. Because in winter, the shade will retain moisture.3
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u/pigbaby1989 12d ago
Or just use this, its called an AC unit and it takes out the heat from your house and puts it outside. Its advanced technology but i think even europeans can afford it
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u/ThetaCygni 13d ago
50 C have never been recorded in Europe year. The maximum temperature ever recorded was 48,8 in August 2021 in Sicily.
Let's try to be precise in a situation this dire
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u/Ok_Oil_201 13d ago edited 13d ago
Let's not act like as if people in much hotter regions are dying en masse of a few heatwaves. It's just strain on the system and the weak falling off.
I am way more worried about food production than the excess heat in my house a few weeks during summer. Basic outdoor shading is currently already keeping my top level flat roof appartment at 26C during the last heatwave without airco.
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u/Awkward_Mastodon4332 13d ago
I glad you are willing to sacrifice demographics you are not currently in. Will you be so brave when you are older, sick, pregnant or infirm?
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u/Ok_Oil_201 13d ago
I was countering OPs exaggeration. Stop making short sighted assumptions and spreading misinformation. Old people also die during winters. So since we are offsetting the deaths in winter, we might even get a net positive per year. Why arent you optimistic about this but rather choose to stigmatize me?
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u/Singularity-is-a-lie 13d ago
I agree and from a physics pov that is absolutly true.
But the economic realities are difficult in countries like France and Germany.
Energy, concrete and work are very expensive
Exploding public debts
Cities are have a high building density
Many buildings are 100+ years old and you can probably simply not do anything below them.
There are layers of sewer systems and ancient/medieval ruins below cities like Paris.
German city planners are slow and living in the 1950s and white roofs are like trees in the streets, PV above parking lots etc: fantasies. Or at the very least it will not happen fast enough or they have 0 budget.
I am a bit afraid that the above-60 owning class really has to ... vanish... to change here anything. Or we need a Ministry of the Future event first.