Greetings,
We are hot, humid and fairly windy. Breezes blow in off the Gulf. We
do cool off at night and temperatures over 100 are not a daily
occurance. I am the list owner of the Houston Renewable Energy Group,
and over the 12 year history of that list, many contractors have
lamented the idea that more insulation is better. It is not always.
Past a certain point, it doesn't help and can hurt. We can't use swamp
coolers here, but we can and do use a sprinkler system on our roof to
keep it cool.
Houston get the Gulf Coast breezes, they help. I am about 125 miles
from the Gulf, but the breezes do help keep the house cool. The main
point is that the heat has to have a way to leave the house, not get
trapped. If it is 72F outside, and the AC is set at 78F, it should not
come on. Most homes here hold the heat and continue to run long after
the external temp is lower than what you want the internal temp to be.
Bright Blessings,
Kim
donald1miller wrote:
> The people in the house are still going to generate the same amount of heat with or without more insulation. Same goes for cooking, laundry and other household activities. If you keep as much external heat from entering the house as possible, you can still use ventilation to remove the internal heat and you are ahead of the game. Wide porches are keeping the sun off the building thus keeping the external heat from entering the building same as insulation does. Doors and windows to catch breezes are fine if you have breezes. It has been my observation that places where it is hot and excessively humid do not always have dependable wind and breezes still neccessitating some some sort of powered venting. I have never been to Houston but where live in Arizona, the summer temperatures regularly get to 115 to 118 and never drops below 100 until after midnight. The wind blows a lot and when you open a door or window you get 115 degree heat coming in which is not good to say the least. The interior heat must be cooled somehow. I use swamp coolers which work well till the humidity goes up which it does in July or August. They still work, only not as efficiently as when the humidity is low which it is most of the time.Of course out humidity is not the same as Houston or most places in that area or the Midwest or South. I live off grid so it is not practical to run AC as it uses too much power. By keeping the sun off the building with shade cloth, trees and overhanging porches combined with radical insulation in the building itself one can keep reasonably cool. One must also realize that a lot of the people promoting passive cooling and heating are dealing with theories and many have never actually put these to work. Online forums of all kinds have a lot of people with theories that may or may not work. I have also read a lot of stories where people have had elaborate homes built using passive heating and cooling only to find that they don't always work as advertised.
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