@sng I'm not knowledgeable about architecture for weather, but I know that cold tiles high ceiling makes everything a lot more comfortable. sadly one can't easily elevate the roof or top floor neighbour, but tiles are doable. I'm sure there's more architectural techniques in countries from hot places (and also from places like Texas and Arizona before they started relying on air conditioning to import European-style houses into the desert).
@elilla The American southwest traditionally mostly used adobe construction. With really thick roofs. Sadly for most Europeans this only works in dry environments. Also we use evaporative cooling a lot. In the old days non-electric and these days mostly “swamp coolers”. The indigenous people in the area tended to build down or deep into caves and use structures similar to stepwells. A lot of the settler methods were, naturally, adapted from Spain. And you can still see a lot of that in the Iberian region in Europe. Sadly for most Northern Europeans these techniques tend to assume low humidity.
@elilla The American southwest traditionally mostly used adobe construction. With really thick roofs. Sadly for most Europeans this only works in dry environments. Also we use evaporative cooling a lot. In the old days non-electric and these days mostly “swamp coolers”. The indigenous people in the area tended to build down or deep into caves and use structures similar to stepwells. A lot of the settler methods were, naturally, adapted from Spain. And you can still see a lot of that in the Iberian...
@elilla These are non expert observations from my life in that region. The areas the indigenous peoples tended to live in the summer were also, usually, at elevation. So the days would get really hot but the temp would drop dramatically over night. So while it might get into the high 90s to low 100s at peak heating it would drop into the 60s overnight. So a lot of their building methods were designed to trap that cooler air over night. When I was a kid I’d often go camp “up the mountain” in the summer. Go up a couple of thousand feet and things are a lot more bearable. Humanity in general losing the wisdom of going where it makes sense to be for the season was a fucking tragedy. Sorry about the units in this post. Don’t have the energy to look up conversions right now.
@elilla These are non expert observations from my life in that region. The areas the indigenous peoples tended to live in the summer were also, usually, at elevation. So the days would get really hot but the temp would drop dramatically over night. So while it might get into the high 90s to low 100s at peak heating it would drop into the 60s overnight. So a lot of their building methods were designed to trap that cooler air over night. When I was a kid I’d often go camp “up the mountain” in the summer....
@elilla I asked the archeologists studying the Anasazi about a billion questions and anytime I could find a Navajo person willing to tolerate me I’m sure I drove them crazy asking way too many questions.
Gregory's Server
@sng I'm not knowledgeable about architecture for weather, but I know that cold tiles high ceiling makes everything a lot more comfortable. sadly one can't easily elevate the roof or top floor neighbour, but tiles are doable. I'm sure there's more architectural techniques in countries from hot places (and also from places like Texas and Arizona before they started relying on air conditioning to import European-style houses into the desert).