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Alternative to Air-conditions?
(lemmus.org)
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this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2026
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Most solutions require engineering the building for little to no use of AC and relying on better ventilation.
One example that can be applied to a house is a central shaft with a fan on the bottom, which will pull in air closer to the ground and blow it upwards - remember, cold air tends to stay down while hot air tends to go upwards. The house will need to have a small elevation, or the central shaft will need some ducts for the air to come in.
There's also the Persian Windcatchers, which they have used for centuries, towers that receive hot air from one side, bring it down to an underground channel and blow off cold air from another side.
Green roofs can also help significantly.
Green as in the color? Or green as in environmentally conscious?
I am having to replace my black shingle roof very soon and planned to do a white one.
You might want to look at metal roofing. White helps and makes sense from a visual standpoint where the base material can only be dyed/painted and not changed, but even painted metal reflects infrared better, which is where the heating energy really exists.
@XeroxCool @nocturne There are special nano-materials they have that blocks all IR heat from entering the building. We shall see how this scales.
A white tin roof is the plan.
Green roofs as in actually having plant life growing on top of them
Even better! But sadly not something my current home could support.
I've seen green roofs on bus stops and favelas in Rio, Brazil, where their roofs have terrible infrastructure. From what I understood, they basically partnered with a local university to try to reduce the heat island effect in favelas, as most of them had no greenery at all
They came up with a cheap solution involving a plastic liner, similar (perhaps the same) to those used in ponds; a geotextile layer of bidim, which is a lightweight material; and plants that don't need soil to grow, like those found growing on rocks or trunk of trees. Which means it is super light and still provide the same benefits as a green roof with soil in it
I have a pitched roof on a mobile home.