A severe heatwave gripped much of Europe on Sunday, with temperatures nearing 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), prompting nationwide warnings, transport disruption and signs of strain on wildlife and at tourist hotspots.
The heat surge on June 21, the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere and typically the start of the three hottest months of the year, raised concerns of an early and persistent onset of extreme conditions.
Yeah, my house was built for extreme heat in the traditional Spanish way - it has every trick available to stay cool without needing electricity.
During heatwaves these days, however, it gets heatsoaked and becomes too hot inside. So, we’ve gotta put in a heat exchanger :-/
What are all these tricks?
Being buried underground helps. Like unironically, as heat and cold waves continue to get worse, we may see people shifting towards underground homes. They’re already fairly common in parts of America (mostly in tornado alley where being buried helps protect against having the entire house being ripped off the foundation and thrown across town) and they are extremely energy efficient.
Your walls basically use geothermal to transfer heat directly into the earth. Like how being buried in sand at the beach will keep you nice and cool even when the beach is hot. Especially if you’re buried below the frost line, which makes winters easy too. So it’s not like it’s a new building technique that would need to be invented. It’s just that we’ll probably see more of it in places that didn’t traditionally have them.
That’s really smart. You could have just a garage above your house.
Sooo …
A light coloured Roman tile outer roof, supported by vented bricks that allow airflow, above a vented attic space, above a concrete ceiling also lined with vented bricks (essentially a second roof).
Then it has external shutters, shades (again with a top of Roman tiles) that stick out enough that sunlight doesn’t hit the windows directly through the hottest part of the day.
The walls are thick, double-skinned with an air-gap, and painted white on the outside.
Inside, all foors are tiled over concrete so they act as a heatsink, too. Plus it’s built partly into the mountain side.
Since moving in we’ve added some ceiling insulation, double glazing, and redone the chimney so that it’s well sealed and doesn’t allow warm air in. Next up is heat exchangers, probably one on each end of the house.