The US uses 17% of the world’s energy and has 4% of the population. Buildings use 40% of the fossil fuel energy in the US overall. Heating and cooling are a significant percentage of that. So it would make a real difference if we can reduce that. This is a win-win situation because if you reduce your energy use, you save money, as well as reducing pollution.
In Florida, 27% of electricity usage goes toward cooling and it costs the average homeowner $2000 per year. Wouldn’t it be nice to reduce that sum while polluting less?
The use of fossil fuels to heat our homes is only a couple of generations old. How did people deal with it before then? You might picture people sitting around an open fire in a hut, but in fact there were many innovative ways to stay warm.
Danish earth berm.
In Northern Europe and other cold climates, earth berming was often used to keep houses warm.
Dietikon, Switzerland, architect Peter Vetsch. A modern version. This is a luxury home. This version allows a lot of natural light into the home but needs little or no heating or cooling because the earth maintains a constant temperature.
Air conditioning was non-existent a few generations ago. How did people stay cool? They didn’t just sit in their concrete boxes and swelter. People around the world had many innovative ways of cooling down their structures before air conditioning, some of them quite comfortable.
So let’s take a look at a few ways that people have kept themselves comfortable by creating passive heating and cooling through design, and ways you can replicate this in existing homes.