The UK’s houses are still designed to retain heat. In an age of global warming, that needs to change.
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?
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/
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.
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.
My first thought too: this post doesn’t really stand true
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.
Thought for a while i need some kind of window shutters. Seems obvious to stop the sun getting to the windows keeps house cooler
Really good white-coloured blackout blinds will get you most of the benefits with a much lower outlay. Well worth sticking a cheap roller blind on pretty much every window that gets the sun.
Houses, public and commercial buildings, everything needs to be rethought. Currently visiting the UK from a much warmer and more humid climate in the states. It’s bizarre that it’s pleasant outside but almost uniformly uncomfortably warm (and frankly, more important humid) inside. Out hotel room is supposedly air conditioned but stays a uniform 25-26c no matter what the thermostat is set on. It’s “working appropriately” according to management and their 3 different maintenance staff that have “adjusted” it, but it is not handling the humidity well. The only saving grace is one of the windows will open ~6in to allow us to open it at night. The bigger picture is how this heat and humidity are going to effect the buildings and their contents. It doesn’t take all that long a time for humidity and high indoor temps to allow serious mold issues to start taking hold. People forget the original use of ac wasn’t for human comfort but to keep goods (specifically paper) dry so it didn’t curl and become unusable by a printing company.
Serious mold issues are already a thing over here, in most public housing it’s a serious problem and some kid died from an infestation
Yes! I visit almost every year and coming from America with constant A/C and newer houses it’s very jarring. But the brits I’ve asked about it have been (characteristically) very stubborn about this.
