Post No. 799 - Thoughts from a heat wave

We really are going to have to build better houses. The thought that, in a hot region one doesn’t have to think of heating, or in a cold region one doesn’t have to think of cooling, has always been utterly moronic – the coldest I have ever felt was in Brisbane, a sub-tropical city, and some of the hottest times are here in Melbourne – the current heat wave is not one of those, but it is extremely taxing, nevertheless.

There is a presumption amongst too many that one deals with heat by turning up the air conditioning. Well, not all houses have air con, and, in any case, air conditioning uses a lot of power and thus stuffs up the planet!!! Are people really so stupid as to forget that –in this day and age, post the Paris climate agreement???

I have also come across an equally utterly moronic viewpoint that one can use passive solar design for both heating and cooling. Bull****. The air itself is HOT – having shade during the hottest part of the day, or cross-flow ventilation using 40°C+ air is NOT going to be cooling!!! I started this at 7AM, when the sun was low enough that it would be below the eaves of passive solar designs, and already the temperature is hot. Perhaps such advocates think they can rely on air conditioning for the more extreme events. Well, such an approach has the benefit of reducing greenhouse gases during other times, but to cope with the extreme power demand that such would generate, (a) power stations must be built with a very, very, very large capacity, (b) distribution systems must also be built with a very, very, very large capacity, and (c) based on my experience with peak events, the greenhouses gases generated during such an event can far outweigh the savings at other times.

There are better alternatives.

We, in Australia, need houses that are properly built – not brick veneer (when I was working in Mongolia, I spoke with a British ex-pat there, who had been through the -50°C winters there + freezing winters in the UK and Europe, and he said the coldest he had ever felt was in a brick veneer house in New South Wales, Australia), something with proper inherent insulation, something designed to cope with up to one full week of days with 50°C temperatures and nights that don’t get below 30°C – otherwise we are going to be killing the vulnerable, and generating greenhouse gases needlessly. The problems the establishment have with mud brick and rammed earth (Pisé de Terre) need to be overcome: I consider such problems similar to the problems that many engineers have with lagoons – a limited, but effective, low cost alternative, often better suited to developing nations than activate sludge and other high tech “solutions” –which is that it is not flash or fancy or “elegant” enough. That attitude is particularly pronounced in many (not all) researchers I have encountered, who want to work on something new, something they consider exciting, rather than something which appears simple, old and boring (I would love to have the opportunity to do some research on a series of test lagoons to answer the questions that I know, from my real-life practical experience, need to be answered).

(One of the other problems here is that many engineers tend to think, well, let’s see what we can get by fiddling with existing stuff, and thus get a few percent gain when a more radical change is needed. As an example, I know of cases – and I apologise for the jargon - where people have used filters to reduce nitrogen out of lagoons by around 10 – 15%, whereas they actually needed a biological polishing system to make the 50% reduction needed).

Geothermal heating/cooling, where air is circulated through buried pipes (using a solar/wind powered fan), thus using the Earth herself for heating and cooling, is, in my opinion, going to be an essential for the future.

There are technical issues to sort out – for example, the transfer mechanism needs to be by air flow alone, to avoid having to have high power compressors used in air conditioning, and that means the buried pipe system needs to be large enough to do its job without having to resort to the fluids used in our compact air conditioning systems. I’m aware some people use water: that would possibly be a good approach for large commercial buildings, but using air flow also means we can start using (relatively moderate – don’t ant to get into compressors) air expansion/contraction to make the transfer process more effective, but that needs a diagram I am too hot to think of preparing today.

We also need to go back to verandahs around the east, north and west side of all Australian houses, and to re-learn some of the older folk wisdom – such as coping with heat in Melbourne by keeping the house dark – close blinds (and, of course, windows) to keep the radiant heat OUT during the day, and then open up if the night air is cooler than inside the house. We also need to remember the obvious point of staying inside, out of heat – which means those who cannot do so, such as firefighters, ambulance workers, police and other essential service workers, are in my thoughts and concerns. Everyone else has no excuse. For more on this, see here, here, here (although that suffers from having a Queensland bias), here, here, and here.
Another couple of useful tricks are wetting teatowels, putting them in the freezer for a while, and then wrapping them around one's neck, and wrapping freezer blocks in a teatowel and using them to coll oneself. Don't use them without wrapping first, as you can actually get a form of burn. Also, before going to bed, put a few freezer blocks (wrapped again, but to control moisture, this time) in one's bed to cool the mattress before you get into it.

This post, incidentally, has been posted a couple of days after being written.

 

[1] BPM = Balanced Positive (spiritually) Mature. See here and here for more on this.

[2] Please see here, here, here and my post "The Death of Wikipedia" for the reasons I now recommend caution when using Wikipedia. I'm also exploring use of h2g2, although that doesn't appear to be as extensive (h2g2 is intended - rather engagingly - to be the Earth edition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy").

[3] I apologise for the formatting: it seems Blogger is no longer as WYSIWYG as it used to be, and there are a lot of unwanted changes to layout made upon publishing, so I often have to edit it immediately after publishing to get the format as close to what I want as possible.

Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr, Pagan Energy Worker, Wéofodthegn

(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear"; ... aka Bellatrix Lux … aka Morinehtar … would-be drýicgan or maga ... )

My "blogiography" (list of all posts and guide as to how to best use this site) is here, and my glossary/index is here.

I started this blog to cover karmic regression-rescue (see here and here), and it grew ... See here for my group mind project, here and here for my "Pagans for Peace" project (and join me for a few minutes at some time between 8 and 11 PM on Sunday, wherever you are, to meditate-clear for peace), and here for my bindrune kit-bag. I also strongly recommend learning how to flame, ground and shield, do alternate nostril breathing, work with colour, and see also here and be flexible.

The real dividing line is not between Christianity and Islam, Sunni and Shia, East and West. It is between people who believe in coexistence, and those who don’t.

Tom Fletcher, Former UK Ambassador to Lebanon

• If your “gut” (your instinct/intuition) is telling you something is wrong, but logic and the available evidence is saying otherwise, the proper conclusion to draw is that you need better, more personally credible evidence. Your “gut” could be wrong, right, or missing the nuances / “shades of grey” . So could the available evidence.
• All of the above - and this blog - could be wrong, or subject to context, perspective, or state of spiritual evolution ...

Tags:climate change, environmental, housing, society,

First published: Manadagr, 21^st December, 2015

Last edited (excluding fixing typo's and other minor matters): Monday, 21^st December, 2015