The UK Is a Hot Country. It’s Time to Build Like It
The UK Is a Hot Country. It’s Time to Build Like It
The UK's houses are still designed to retain heat. In an age of global warming, that needs to change.
The UK’s houses are still designed to retain heat. In an age of global warming, that needs to change.
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Climate change can mean more extreme temperatures. We need to be able to keep warm, and keep cool. The better you insulate a house, the better it can keep cool after cooling down at night, and keep the heat out when you do use air conditioning.
One thing helping with this is airtightness, and MVHR. Couple that with good insulation (keeps hot out, as well as in), and things like shades above south facing windows to block the sun when it's at it's highest/hottest, and we see a lot of improvements. MVHR especially helps to distribute heat between rooms, and provide fresh air without completely heating/cooling the house.
What's MVHR?
Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery - basically you pull fresh air into the house and push old air out and transfer the temperature of the old air to the new air. This means you aren’t having to heat or cool the new air but you still get fresh air.
Mechanically Ventilated Heat Recovery system. It lets you get fresh air without losing heat / cool as the expelled air heats / cools the inlet air transferring its energy over.
https://www.greenbuildingstore.co.uk/information-hub/heat-recovery-ventilation-mvhr/
MVHR especially helps to distribute heat between rooms
Never thought about this aspect of it. Was going to just get single room MVHRs for the bathrooms and kitchen, but now considering this... Downstairs gets quite cool at night while upstairs is still hot as balls, so distributing that heat with vents makes sense.
If you've got an attic, you can try opening the hatch to it. The heat will rise up in to the attic and cool your top floor a little.
Im considering importing American tech when I eventually renovate my house, they have some great HVAC systems over there now.
If not I might put in some sash windows instead and buy the cheaper window aircons they use over there.
Im going to reder my house in brilliant white to reflect as much light as possible and also put in mirrored glass.
My house is completely south facing, which is great a lot of the time, but in this heatwave the rooms inside at hitting 30c by night. Fans arent enough anymore.
All that said, im glad we are getting some decent weather these days compared to summers of the past.