Cool

There is the idea that the way to fight against heat is to add air conditioning to every single building. This would be true, if we were in Dubai and the temperature never went below 20°c at night, but in Europe it very often does. This means that a mosquito net is more interesting than air conditioning, and far cheaper.

Air conditioning is great when you deal with heat for weeks or months, without the opportunity to get rid of that heat at night. In Europe, nights are usually cool enough to lower the temperature inside buildings. As I write this I have the balcony door opened fully, trying to vent residual heat from this Minergie building.

People think that to be comfortable on a hot day you need to rush to an air conditioned room or building but that idea is wrong. When I worked on one building, for three years, I called it “air conditioned hell” for a simple reason. For the body to cool it needs air flow to help evaporate water. When there is no air flow it feels stuffy, and we interpret this as being too hot.