Low-Tech Air Conditioning Guide

The best air conditioning is none at all, but in much of the country that just isn't possible any more. The development of affordable central air conditioning after World War II made the development of the Sun Belt possible; almost nobody lived year round in southern Florida or Arizona before it.

In more temperate parts of the continent, the development of central air conditioning changed the design of our cities and homes; Opening windows got smaller, cross ventilation was ignored, giant picture windows faced the sun. Soon you couldn't live in an apartment or modern home in the suburbs without air conditioning. In our "Low Tech Tips" series, we looked at a number of techniques for designing, hacking, or otherwise planning for an easy to cool environment, without all the fossil fuels, and reprise them here.

What is Low-Tech Air Conditioning?

Traditional techniques for keeping cool, designed in an era before air conditioning, that can be applied today.

Plant a Tree A tree is as sophisticated as any electronic device around; it lets the sun through in winter and grows leaves in summer to block it. A properly sited tree can cut cooling costs by as much as 50%. And not just by shading; evaporative cooling reduces the air temperature around trees. More: Low tech Tips: Be Cool and Plant A Tree

Install an Attic Fan In more temperate parts of the country, just moving the air and having good attic ventilation could eliminate the need for AC much of the time. Much of the heat gain is through the roof, and the main function is not to move a lot of air, but to cool down the structure by drawing off the hot air. Low Tech Tips: Install an Attic Fan

Keep Cool with Awnings The Department of Energy estimates that awnings can reduce solar heat gain--the amount temperature rises because of sunshine--by as much as 65 percent on windows with southern exposures and 77 percent on those with western exposures. Low-tech Tips: Keep Cool with Awnings

Get Working Shutters What would call a device that controls sunlight while allowing ventilation, that provides personal security without looking like bars on the window, that protects your windows in time of hurricanes and terrible weather, and looks good too? You certainly wouldn't call it low-tech.

But that is what shutters were designed to do, before they were stamped out of plastic and screwed on the wall beside the windows and everyone forgot how they actually worked. Low-Tech Tips: Get Working Shutters

Plant Vines Green walls are all the rage these days, but traditional vines work just as well, and can dramatically reduce the maximum temperatures of a building by shading walls from the sun, the daily temperature fluctuation being reduced by as much as 50%. Low-tech Tips: Plant Vines

Tune Your Windows The windows on your home are not just holes in the wall that you open or close, they are actually part of a sophisticated ventilation machine. It is another "Oldway"--People used to take it for granted that you tune them for the best ventilation, but in this thermostat age we seem to have forgotten how. Low-Tech Tips: Tune Your Windows

Get a Front Porch The new urbanists are trying to bring them back, for good reason; a shaded front porch is a great place to sit, it connects you with your community, and acts as an extra outdoor room. Good Front Porches are Science as Well As Art

Design appropriately for Where You Live In the Southwest, when they built before air conditioning, the walls were thick and the window openings small; it was cool at night and the thermal mass of the walls would keep the interior cool through much of the day. In Florida, they built on stilts; Cooler and fewer bugs. In Mississippi and Louisiana, every house had a porch and through-ventilation.

Paint Your Roof White By reflecting the heat instead of absorbing it, your attic and home will be a lot cooler. It could also help reduce climate change, heat island effect and smog. Lighter Roofs Could Save $1Billion USD Annually. And don't listen to those who say that dark roofs save energy in Northern parts of the country; Arguments Against White Roofs in Northern Cities are Specious : TreeHugger

Why we like it

If people used a mix of these techniques and technologies, they would need a lot less energy for cooling, if they needed any energy at all. It also puts us more in touch with our surroundings; if you live your life at 68 degrees F, you are reluctant to go outside when it is hot because the change is so great.

What we worry about

How much of our housing stock, build since WWII, is unsuitable for these techniques. We expected that electricity for cooling would continue to be cheap, and we were wrong.

In the south, planting trees and vines would put more pressure on the water supply; these kinds of plants are not endemic to the areas.

And we have been spoiled. When air conditioning didn't exist or was a luxury, we all did without it, rolled down the windows in our cars and sat outside in the summer. But as we adapted to the new technologies, we became comfortable in a much narrower range of temperatures. We have to get used to it again.

Eco-factor of Low-Tech Air Conditioning

Electricity is expensive and heavily reliant on coal, and now natural gas. Any thing that we do to reduce our consumption of it reduces our production of greenhouse gases.

Cost of Low-Tech Air Conditioning

All of the low tech techniques are cheaper than air conditioning, both in installation and operating.