Canicule

We are heading into a Level Four heatwave for the next few days and now people will realise that replacing gardens with parkings, and individual villas with apartment houses was a mistake. Now is when people will realise that tarmac gets hot during the day, and radiates heat at night.

Now is the moment that Nyon, and surrounding villages will realise that densification is a mistake, because, by removing grass, and trees, you remove dew catching grass, and shade producing trees.

We are entering the first Canicule of the summer today from Thursday and towards the 23rd of June. During this heat wave Minergie buildings, will climb towards 32°c plus, as will apartments. Cities will gather more and more heat energy and radiate it it. That’s when noisy music festivals can have deadly consequences, but it is also when it makes sense to get up at the crack of dawn for a group run.

I live in a Minergie, which, in theory, means that I never need to worry about climatisation because the building keeps itself warm in winter and cold in summer. In practice the features that make a flat fantastic winter make it awful in summer.

Good in Winter

Large windows, in winter allow heat radiation in, so you use the sun to heat your apartment. From Spring until Autumn it has the opposite feature. It turns a room into a sauna, rather than giving an enjoyable temperature.