so far, in our area of the country we have had a pretty mild summer. the temperature has reached into the 90s (farenheit), but most days the high has been in the mid-80s. we came home last friday after running some errands to find the interior of our home to be somewhat warm. when we checked the thermostat, we discovered that the inside temperature was 80º, though the central air had been set to keep the house at 77º. i fiddled with the control a bit to no avail. our cooling system just wasn't working. i immediately called the repairman and asked him if he could come on monday. since it was already late friday afternoon, i figured we could get by over the weekend, rather than pay an exorbitant price for an emergency repair. after all, it wasn't predicted to be that warm for saturday, sunday, and into monday. we have ceiling fans, and the house could use a good airing out. for me, the house temperature was quite agreeable with just the fans and open windows, but my wife is more sensitive to the heat so it was a little unpleasant for her. i brought extra fans out of storage and plugged them in to make her more comfortable.
i remembered a home we had lived in thirty-five years ago. it had been built in the early 20th century, and had twelve foot ceilings, abundant windows, and was long and narrow. the narrow ends of the house faced east and west, while the long sides were shaded by large trees. down the center of the house was a long hall, and all the rooms of the house opened onto this hall. there was a large attic fan in the hallway. during the evening hours, we opened all the windows and turned on the attic fan. in the bedrooms, we also put small box fans in one of the windows to pull in more of the cool night air. often, we slept under blankets because the bedrooms were so cool, even when we were in the hottest part of the summer. during the day, we turned off the attic fan and closed the windows. the rooms we used most had ceiling fans that ran twenty-four hours a day. though we had window air conditioners in the west-facing den, the kitchen, and one of the bedrooms, we seldom needed them. the one in the den was used for a few hours in the early evenings on the hottest days because the den was warmed by the afternoon sun, and, if we cooked a lot in the afternoon, we might run the kitchen air conditioner until we finished eating supper.
this house was built to be comfortable in the warm, humid summers in the southern part of the state during a period when air conditioning was non-existent. the design of the home did its job remarkably well. i miss the summers in that house because the home was filled with fresh air while keeping the summer heat at bay. having our current home open to the outside and fans in front of the windows pulling in the cool evening air has been a wonderful reminder of our years in that home of many years ago. i've been so comfortable that i haven't cared if the central cooling system is fixed or not. my wife would disagree with me, i'm sure, because the heat bothers her much more than it does me.
all this goes to show, that as our technology has advanced to keep us more comfortable in our homes, we've forgotten some design principles that our forebears used to make their homes pleasant during the hot summers. it is amazing what giving space for the hot air to rise well above our heads, shading our homes with large trees, providing many operable windows, and positioning our homes to minimize heat gain will do. our energy consuming comfort machines are warming the earth as we sit in mechanically chilled air. maybe our planet would be better off if all our air conditioners broke down, so long as we remember how to build homes that don't need them.
may we look at how people used to endure what we now consider unbearable summers in the southern part of our country. may we build homes that are smarter and better able to function in our climate. may we find ways to reduce our consumption of energy generated by fossil fuels, realizing that the old ways are not always inferior ways. shalom.
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