On Architecture

Low-Cost or No-Cost Cooling

Being in a tropical country, we have always been looking for ways to keep our interiors cool throughout the year. So when we began designing for our house, the opportunity presented itself to incorporate as much passive cooling (and daylighting) features as possible. Although what are used and listed below are essentially common sense features, I cannot emphasize more how effective these are based on our experience after having moved in to our house half a year ago.

1. High ceilings help. High ceilings provide space for warm air to rise above level of a room’s occupants and therefore keep the working space cool.
2. Put in as large windows as possible in all rooms including walk-in-closets and toilets. This not only helps avoid stale and humid air, but also avoid using electricity for artificial lighting.
3. Place windows on at least 2 sides of a room (preferably on opposite walls) to allow wind to cross through (cross ventilation). Without a way for wind to exit, you would not be able to maximize breezes through the interiors no matter how large your window is.
4. Take advantage of outside landscaping. Carefully study existing trees and shrubs how these affect the light and wind that enters your house. Change or modify these if needed & plant new landscaping if needed. Landscaping can be used to sheild the house from unwanted sun and heat, and to capture breezes or direct wind to cool the interior spaces.
5. A stairwell is a good vertical collector of unwanted heat from adjacent spaces or those spaces that open up to it. Use it but provide windows or other means to vent out the accumulated hot air out from the top of the stairwell.
6. Use ceiling fans when really needed. They cool rooms more efficiently while consuming almost the same amount of power as desk or stand fans. For those times that air conditioning is really required, using ceiling fans can help circulate conditioned air, thereby cooling the room faster. Hence the power required to keep the airconditiong compressor working is substantially reduced.

All these, higher walls for higher ceilings, larger windows and additional landscaping, entails some additional investment upfront. However, I find it cheaper to spend for these now than spend for more power costs for cooling, ventilation and lighting down the line.

Labels: "energy conservation", architecture, cooling, design, ventilation

posted by GMananghaya @ 9:40 AM