Re: Passive Solar COOLING - For Hot Humid Climates

[CharlieMcBarley]

already a zed fan. regarding the two comments below, photo-voltaic, appealing as it sounds vs. solar thermal, produces the "wrong" kind of electricity (direct current, while your house likely wants alternating current) you lose some juice having to convert dc produced by pv into ac current. solar thermal produces heat, that you can do alot of productive things with, including air conditioning your place. here in the hot humid southeast, we're rooting for ya ZED.

[csreeves]

I think it's sort of funny how ZED talks about the heat problem of an attic. And the answer is to solve by "addition"...of reflective barriers, evaporative cooling plants, etc.

One could make a pretty strong argument that a cave in the hills of Afghanistan has better climate control.

Here's an idea...don't build homes with attics. In other words, I'll bet there are A LOT of heating and cooling (i.e. energy consuming activities) that could be solved simply by "subtraction"

[kelltiozim]

PVA= Photo Voltaic Array; these generate elec. through ions in sunshine. No new tech research required. Put on the roof they allow electricity generation as well as shade cooling the roof in the summer. But I am in total agreement that "modern" house construction is the worse concept possible- in the lame joke catagory. I think my dream house I'm going to build though would be like that rock roof covered house with grasses and plants on it and very efficient passive heating designs. Thanks!