Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Passive cooling

[Casey Morrigan (cjmorr]

Regarding cooling, I wanted to add to the list of possibilities.

We have concrete floors with radiant heat installed.  What I wasn't
expecting was the effect that this would have on keeping the house cool in
the summer.  The floors have a great deal of thermal mass and contribute
greatly toward cooling on hot days (it gets over 100 degrees for several
days every summer; days in the 90's are common).  (We happen to have a
southern orientation and in the winter the sun warming the floors helps warm
up the place even without turning the heat on.)

Casey Morrigan
Two Acre Wood
Sebastopol, California


> -----Original Message-----
> From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
> [mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of Terri Hupfer
> Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 8:30 PM
> To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Subject: [C-L]_Passive cooling
>
>
>
> Here in Pleasant Hill we have a variety of passive cooling
> methods built in
> to avoid the need for central air. First is a metal
> reflective roof, then
> metalized insulation sheets under the roof, then 2 x 6's
> instead of 2 x 4's
> giving thicker walls and more insulation. Most of us have
> whole house fans,
> to blow off the hot air and suck in the cool at night. We
> have double-paned
> windows and many have double-celled mini blinds which we keep
> closed in the
> heat of the day. There might be a couple things I missed, but
> those are the
> major ones.
>
> I moved here from SF, where it's always cool. Chuck Durrett
> promised us it
> would work, but I was not a believer till I saw it in action.
> I came home to
> my house each summer day (days it was often 90-100) out here,
> to a house
> that was 75 degrees cool (felt like air con) downstairs, and
> at worst 80
> upstairs. Each night when it cooled off I ran my whole house
> fan for 1/2
> hour, and cooled the whole place down. There were only 2-3
> nights the whole
> summer when I was too warm, and that could have been fixed by
> getting my
> ceiling fan up in the bedroom!
>
> Chuck claims this works in places as hot as Tucson. I almost
> believe him!
>
> Terri Hupfer
> Pleasant Hill Cohousing
> Contra Costa County (east of SF)
>
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