I often wondered why we no longer build houses to deflect heat in Australia. In the old days many houses had verandas to keep out the sun, but in the 1960’s that changed to take away the verandas. Which was a ridiculous idea. Cheap weather board house were after WW1 due to lack of building materials but they continued to be built up to the 1960’s along with single brick houses. Weatherboard or Fibro as we call it over here were sweat boxes in summer and ice boxes in winter. Houses built from the 1970’s onwards have big floor to ceiling windows and glass patio doors. So in summer we tend to keep the curtains closed to keep out the heat. We have awnings on the outside of the windows to keep out the sun also.
My house actually has 6 window awnings on the outside 4 of which are very big because my house was built in 1974. The hot sun is on the north side of my house most of the day until afternoon and then it’s right out the front. My backyard gets a hell of a lot of heat in summer so my veranda is hot and the back rooms get very hot. In mid afternoon the sun is right in front of my house heating up all the rooms at the front. I have total blockout blinds in every room.
One other thing to factor in is the direction of the sun when building. A west facing house gets the hottest sun of the day. What idiots thought that was a good idea back in the day? The concept was to bring sunlight into the house. Really?? Try living in a hot house without any way of cooling it down, and forget getting a good nights sleep in a hot room.
Why not study the design of traditional houses in the Middle East. They have white paint and white roofs, some of which are used as a rooftop kitchen in the hot weather. White as we know deflects heat; where dark colours absorb the heat. So why didn’t our government insist on building according to our climate from a start? They instead have a northern hemisphere logic to build European style houses. Mediterranean style could be more ideal in Australia or incorporate ideas from hot countries to suit our climate.
Also houses need some air corridors between them to let heat escape. But new houses are being built on blocks of land like a postage stamp; side by side where you can hear everything. The trend in the past 30 years has been to build the houses jam packed on to small blocks of land; without any shady trees either. Many new houses are on knock down-build blocks which used to have just one house; there is no garden and hardly any parking spaces and very small rooms. The only thing that they have changed is the window sizing; which are much smaller but still have a sliding patio door into a shoe box size area.
The houses are surrounded in concrete; which in summer becomes an oven. I had the misfortune to live in such a place in the early 1980’s. It was horrible in summer; and there wasn’t any privacy. The house baked in summer. The back yard was so tiny and paved with cement bricks; all that was there was a clothes line and a small area to fit a table and 4 chairs and that was all. But that’s what happens when builders and governments get together for big profits.
In a country as big as Australia there is no need for this, it’s corporate greed. Building double brick houses though is very expensive in Australia so we need a good efficient way to keep a house cool in summer and warm in winter. Some parts of Eastern Australia are very cold and get snow in winter, where other parts of Australia have a warm or mild winter.
So it makes sense to build with the climate in mind. When you have a hot house in summer it makes life miserable. Try cooking for a family in high temperatures, it’s not pleasant and doing housework with the sweat running off you. Most houses are not air conditioned, many people still rely on a couple of pedestal fans.
Only in the past 20 years have some people installed inverter reverse cycle units in their lounge rooms. Some have one in the main bedroom. Ducted air conditioning is still very expensive so most people don’t have it. But the greens put the guilt trip on people for using air cooling systems and a heater in winter. Air conditioning is only needed for a few of months of the year when it is really hot.
In the heat sometimes the fans are just moving hot air around. Ceiling fans are a must have in every house but there aren’t any laws to make it compulsory to build houses with ceiling fans. To me ceiling fans are not a luxury, they are essential and should be a basic human right to have these in all houses. Think about babies , small children and the elderly; in our heat that are often affected by heat stroke. It can be life threatening. Do you see the climate change nutters asking for this? No definitely not, so why is that?
If they care about the planet they should also care about all life. They expect us to suffer for their communist agenda and nothing must get in the way of the agenda, lives don’t matter only the “cause”.
NOTE: I hadn’t realised this has been in draft for ages, it was written the day of the news article. D’oh! I am still looking through posts to look for my comment about using coloured lights for healing therapy in the future to add to another post, I suspect I did my usual stupid thing and deleted it; because I have spent all day looking through posts and using the search box with key words.
