Alternative to Air-conditions?
I am completly opposed to Air-conditions propagandized as a solution to climate change. What is the wright approach to combating this state of temporary relief except from old-fashioned fans? Don't get me wrong. They do the job for me. I am reffering to finding a solution for people more with health issues or large facilities that are in need of something more drastic.
109 replies
There is no alternative in hot, humid regions (cryopaint is not proven). In dry ones swamp cooling and fans help.
However, I'm not sure many people are saying air conditioning is a solution to climate change.
Many are saying it's an adaptation necessary to survive in warming humid regions. The human body cannot thermoregulate in wet bulb temperatures above 35c. Fans don't help as the body cannot evaporate sweat into saturated air that is as warm or warmer. Air conditioning not only cools, but removes humidity.
If you get a severe case of influenza, it comes with a fever. The fever is a symptom, not the underlying cause of the illness, but it can kill faster. As a result, you need to treat it as well as the flu, often with acetaminophen. Air conditioning does not treat the underlying cause, but it can mitigate the symptom that kills fastest.
Urban planning wise: I think ivy walls, or other greenery covering residential buildings.
For reference, you might want to look up Bosco Verticale in Italy, or lush green roofs in Norway.
I know this isn't a catch-all solution, but it could help mitigate climate crisis impact in addition to other options people offered here.
We grow a grape vine on the south wall, over a large window, using a set of stand-off cables. Warmth and light in the winter and green shade in the summer.
We are growing it for the foliage, but the delicious table grapes are a nice bonus.
If you can come up with an alternative way to cool the air indoors that’s less energy demanding and environmentally friendly that could be a revolutionary invention on a global scale
Not gonna debate A/Cs merits as a fix for climate change but the ability to chill and cool a place at will is one of the overall more important human innovations ever. Food storage and preservation as well as tons of medical/scientific research and development is dependent on refrigeration.
It’s also really gonna depend on where you live in the world to be able to rely on standard fans, which still rely on electricity and if the humidity gets too high for your sweat to evaporate may not even cool you down properly enough to prevent wet bulb heat deaths. Bangladesh for example will cook in the coming years without something to break the heat and muggy air.
Some ancient middle-eastern architecture (can't remember the name) is a low-tech and permanent air-conditioning tower. We gotta go low tech. We also need trees everywhere, white buidlings and roofs, rain water collectors, etc etc.
@turip youtu.be/AAz5D3TnQ_k This video lists basically every option you can have. I posted it already, but building a city to create air corridors and using water-porous asphalt when you have to have it, which allows for evaporative cooling during the summer, as well as using ponds and water to create a cool island effect, can significantly reduce heating.
Oh, I just remembered this video I watched. There is this guy on youtube that does a lot of material-sciency kind of stuff using common household ingredients. One of his videos he makes a salt-based phase change material, which basically works as an icepack that freezes at around 18 degrees Celsius.
The idea is that it takes a long time for the material to melt from 18 degrees to 19 degrees so it can keep you comfortably cool if you put it in a plastic bag and wear it in a vest to keep yourself cool. If you have a cool basement, then it can pretty much re-freeze by putting it on the cold floor.
DIY Supermaterial Could Save You From Heatstroke: Salt based PCMs
Its an interesting watch.
Edit: Actually the more I think about it the more Solarpunk it seems. It requires zero electricity, and rather than cooling a whole area you only cool the people in it. Even better, you aren't trapped inside to avoid the heat, as it works outside just fine.
Dig and dont stop digging. Make a burrow
The alternative is architecture designed to keep a building cool.
There is only so much you can do to achieve that. If temperatures are in the upper 30s for an entire week. You can't keep the heat out forever
Yeah, if you build with conventional stick and fibreglass.
Thermal mass and earth-cooled air and shading can achieve a lot.
Planting trees and bushes and plants around the property helps cool down the air around it too
Best I can do is clear cutting to build a neighborhood and then an HOA that won't let you plant trees.
I don't think I've ever heard of an HOA in Canada, yet.
At least not in Québec.
Or modifying what you have already.
Take a south or west facing window with a balcony & railing in front. By installing planter boxes on the railings and growing black eyed susans / morning glory / any climbing flowers, letting them grow up bamboo poles space 4" apart, you can create a heat absorbing barrier. The plants block and use the energy that would have been absorbed by your house. Unlike shades/screens they won't heat up and begin radiating heat themselves.
Female Hops are another great planting option. They cannot reproduce without a male plant, and every year they will grow back stronger. Train them underneath your building eaves and they will reduce the amount of heat energy your house absorbs while producing aesthetically pleasing "cone" flowers.
....
Also insulation. In Canada we need lots of insulation under our roofs for the winter. So while during the summer our black top roofs absorb a lot of heat, not as much of that heat is transferred to the indoor air as a roof with less insulation.
Its important to mention that this does require some maintenance and to be sure that the outside of the building is structurally sound (ie. gaps, rotted wood, crumbling morter,etc.)
Especially if you go with permanent plants. Like I suggest against Virginia Creeper cuz it will obscure any developing issues.
I second that! I am not too sure about hops tbh, in the sense that they don't seem to thrive/survive where I live, but the idea of using vegetation is helping greatly to cool the microclimate. The downside is that you will need at least a balcony, the bigger it is, the more vegetation you can have, and the more you have, the cooler it will be. If you have a garden, it's a whole other level, in the best possible way.
This approach is also great because you can plant eatibles, and have your own veggies and fruits.
Hops need LOTS of dirt for roots, water, and something to climb. I live in Zone 6a but our summers peak at 35°C so they might be more viable than you think.
If you do them in raised bed you 100% cannot have a sealed bottom.
And hot in the winter.
Heat exchangers are a good step forward IMO. They just need a small fan to function if there is like no wind.
If you are looking for passive alternatives, then I've got bad news: you have to design them before you build a house.
In Iran, before electrical power became available, they used wind towers to draw up ground-cooled air through the qanat (underground aqueduct) system. It works without external power, but you have to know you need it before you build houses.
Also, simply a house with very thick stone walls (expensive to build), a cellar (possibly with a cistern) and no south-facing windows will stay cool during summer peaks.
There are a few things you can add to an existing house:
The south-facing comments would need to be the other way around in the southern hemisphere too.
That is kinda like earth tubes isn't it? Which you could retrofit. More powerful cooling can be achieved by using the tubes as part of a geothermal heat pump. Bonus there is that its also even more efficient than a regular heat pump in winter too.
The best you can do quickly and for free is to close blinds to let a small amount of light in when its hot, and when it's below 20°, open windows and have as much ventilation as possible. This is easiest and I find that in some rooms it can cool them significantly.
An Awning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhbDfi7Ee7k
Most solutions require engineering the building for little to no use of AC and relying on better ventilation.
One example that can be applied to a house is a central shaft with a fan on the bottom, which will pull in air closer to the ground and blow it upwards - remember, cold air tends to stay down while hot air tends to go upwards. The house will need to have a small elevation, or the central shaft will need some ducts for the air to come in.
There's also the Persian Windcatchers, which they have used for centuries, towers that receive hot air from one side, bring it down to an underground channel and blow off cold air from another side.
Green roofs can also help significantly.
Those roofs are for architectural projects or custom homes for Hollywood celebrities. Nightmare in costs and they don't last.
Look up succulent roofs sometimes and you might change your preconceived and mostly false opinion about green roofs 🤷
Those are cheap, low maintenance and last forever.
Green as in the color? Or green as in environmentally conscious?
I am having to replace my black shingle roof very soon and planned to do a white one.
Green roofs as in actually having plant life growing on top of them
Even better! But sadly not something my current home could support.
I've seen green roofs on bus stops and favelas in Rio, Brazil, where their roofs have terrible infrastructure. From what I understood, they basically partnered with a local university to try to reduce the heat island effect in favelas, as most of them had no greenery at all
They came up with a cheap solution involving a plastic liner, similar (perhaps the same) to those used in ponds; a geotextile layer of bidim, which is a lightweight material; and plants that don't need soil to grow, like those found growing on rocks or trunk of trees. Which means it is super light and still provide the same benefits as a green roof with soil in it
I have a pitched roof on a mobile home.
Sounds cool. Did you DIY? Do you have to move often?
I don't think pitch is a problem as those plants cling to trees at 90° and the layers are glued, but I understand it is not a solution that can be installed anywhere :)
You might want to look at metal roofing. White helps and makes sense from a visual standpoint where the base material can only be dyed/painted and not changed, but even painted metal reflects infrared better, which is where the heating energy really exists.
A white tin roof is the plan.
Eeeexcellent, I'm excited for you.
Insulated attics make roof material irrelevant. Heat comes in from walls.
Unnecessarily reductive. It's both the ceilings and walls. There is no single solution. We also have no idea of they have an attic or vaulted ceilings. An attic full of hot air is a heat bank that will radiate into the living space all night. All insulation will do is slow the transfer. Really good attic floor insulation will help retain heat in the attic, so you still want to improve attic ventilation. But, if you reduce the amount of heat going into the attic in the first place, you reduce how much insulation and ventilation you need to reach a certain cost/benefit ratio. It's usually more feasible to do half a job addressing each than it is to make just one variable perfect. So, when it comes to replacing a roof covering that needs replacing anyway, doesn't it make sense to do that as best as feasible?
Tour a home with an infrared thermometer camera in summer. I promise you, the ceiling is warm, too. You just don't hang out 3 meters up.
@XeroxCool @nocturne There are special nano-materials they have that blocks all IR heat from entering the building. We shall see how this scales.
I've seen some science channels posting these over the last few years, making coatings that emit radiation in the "atmospheric window" I think it's called, but have not yet seen proper products on the market. I could be out of date though. Still, I'd question durability, but I suppose it'd be at least no worse than normal materials, right?
Heat pumps. Work as heating and cooling, far more energy efficient
What’s the difference between a heat pump and an air conditioner when cooling?
Absolutely no difference. An AC is a heat pump.
If you're an aussie, you know it as a reverse cycle. A shockingly large amount of the rest of the world only know window unit air cons
When cooling they act the same way (and similar to a fridge, it's pretty basic tech, scale is what makes them more efficient) but if your climate makes a heatpump viable you're trading out a heavily polluting heat source instead. Swings and roundabouts
Nah you know heat pumps are just air conditioners running in the other direction. Its the exact same technology.
Except it's not, and, as previously mentioned, they are more efficient.
I hesitate to contradict you but they really are. Many use more efficient parts, but the mechanism is the same.
Similar but not the same. They both use refrigerants but the mechanisms do differ. Mostly in that AC uses fans ehich increase power consumption. I'm sure there are differentiations on both sides to prove me wrong, but I'm just speaking in general terms.
And how does the heat or coolness get distributed? Magic.
Almost all heat pumps also use fans. It's simply more efficient.
The difference in your diagrams is not related to heat pump/AC, but forced air v. water.
Extremely good insulation, possibly building things underground, and then air conditioning. You said people with health issues. If you need to make sure something is a a specific temperature because of health concerns, you need air conditioning to be certain. Really making sure you've got incredible insulation is really all you can do. Tall trees that block the sun around the building can help. Using blinds and curtains as well instead of letting the sun in.
Building anything underground is extremely expensive and energy intensive, as you have to constantly pump ground water and pour concrete to keep walls from breaking under pressure of tons of soil.
So yeah, underground could work, but better used sparingly when benefit outweighs the costs, like maybe in areas that could go literally uninhabitable on the surface. Otherwise not worth it.
Most of North America built bungalows after WW2. All your dramatic concerns were addressed 50 years ago, and no, they were not extremely expensive and 8" concrete walls with French drains and sump pumps work well.
@JackbyDev @turip Problem with insulation is that there isn't a good way to retrofit old buildings with it without mold building up, as old buildings were designed to breathe.
Not true.
There is not a magic solution that is perfect in every scenario. Air conditioners decrease humidity as a side effect, though.
You can ventilate periodically, air doesn't hold that much thermal energy. You can also use heat recovery ventilation, should work in reverse to keep the heat out too.
Back to the caves. Literally.
I'll answer your question first, but I have some issues with the framing you're using around that question. The two other main methods of practical temperature management available to us are evaporative cooling and geothermal. Your body has a built-in evaporative cooling mechanism called sweat. Fans take advantage of this. But not everyone has equally effective bodies for this, not all climates are particularly effective for it (high humidity makes it extremely ineffective) and not everyone finds it comfortable for their situation. Swamp coolers are a different form of evaporative cooling that move the evaporation process onto a substrate which then cools things down with a fan. You can also find natural evaporative cooling working for you in many places, for example around large bodies of water. There is an externalized cost here if you're trying to make evaporative cooling work in an environment that's unsuitable for it, and the cost of fresh water is a significant line item on the energy budget too. Don't neglect that by assuming evaporative cooling is a clear win that is automatically preferable to an air conditioner. All these evaporative solutions share the reality that they're going to add (often very significant amounts of) humidity to the air. Air conditioning on the other hand can actually remove humidity from the air, and is one of the few practical methods of doing that. It's solving the issue in a different way, but it's a significant and important difference.
The other option is geothermal. This is genuinely underutilized today and I think we can certainly save a lot of energy budget by accessing stable and susprisingly comfortable temperatures underground basically year-round. Geothermal heat pumps (which use air conditioning technology) are by far the most practical way of doing this in our current situation, but older solutions involving buildings that are deeper in the ground or that have airflow going through the ground can provide access to this temperature too -- with the caveat that you'll often run into problems with water, flooding, or condensation/mold unless you're in a particular sort of environment where this is not a concern.
As for the framing: You have to look at it systemically I think. We do a lot of things that seem dumb on the surface, and sometimes they are dumb, but more often they are making tradeoffs for particular reasons and a lot of times those turn out to be the right tradeoffs, there's just a lot of complexity to the system that you're glossing over. You can certainly argue those reasons, and try a different path, as long as you understand them first. Some of the reasons might be invalid or the tradeoff might not be the right trade, but I don't see the benefit in making blanket value judgements without understanding what they are and why they're happening. But I think you'll find it more challenging than it seems to come up with a better solution in the long run.
What is your specific objection to air conditioners? Temperature is a huge line item on any energy budget, and it has to be managed somehow. There are few places on the planet where humans can live year-round without some form of temperature management, and quite often that requires energy. Firewood is not always a given and not perfectly sustainable at least the way we use it. An air conditioner is not propaganda it is a tool, and you have to figure out if it's the right tool for the job but that's never going to be a binary true/false. I think saying you're "completely opposed" to them and calling them propaganda might be blinding yourself to what the actual goal is and what tools you can use to get there.
Using an air conditioner to live in a hot place is, at least as I understand it, still more energy efficient than using any kind of heater or even a heat pump (which is just an air conditioner in reverse) to live in a cold place, and hot places also have more readily available sources of other energy, typically, so this is not necessarily the wrong choice as transmitting energy long distances is not always a good call either. But you have to understand the tradeoffs you are making. This is why it might seem like propaganda, but it might just be that someone's done the math and come out to this answer. If you are looking at different numbers, or missing some of those numbers, you might come to a different conclusion, but the air conditioner itself is not the problem, the disagreement in the numbers and the context you are putting those numbers is going to be the root cause you need to figure out.
There's plenty we can do, but all interventions are somewhat limited in effect. With the trend of increasingly intense heat waves, we're likely going to have to do all of the non-AC interventions and install AC in lots and lots of places.
All help, but when the temperatures start hitting 40 C with high humidity, you're basically out of luck without an AC, that can pump out the heat and lower the humidity.
Window awnings can help a lot in summer and are relatively easy to retrofit on an existing building.
I think they are a viable solution, as long the energy comes from renewable energies. Where I live, the time you need cooling, ist also the time when energy prices almost go negative. If wind turbines are switched off, because the energy cannot be consumed, I think using them for moderate cooling is ok.
Heat-pump.
That's what an AC is
First thing is to avoid air conditioner entirely so that your body climatizes. If you're sitting in AC at work than that's part of the problem.
Block the sun from hitting your house. Outside the window not inside.
Use evaporation to cool your body / the air. Swamp coolers for the house but also neck coolers for your body.
If/when it drops below 20°C get as much airflow as possible. If you can use thermodynamics to your advantage by forcing hot air upstairs out while cool air from lower comes in.
Swamp coolers do nothing in humid summers.
Almost no one mentioned roller shutter. They need to be installed outside to actually work, but they are very good at reducing temperature inside (I had them installed on my southwest facing windows). Air conditioning is ok, but it's also such a lazy solution and it seemingly prevents people from even trying to come up with different ideas.
Hadn't even considered it. I think most people assume they're just for security. But ya makes sense.
Alright, I have phrased my question wrong. English is not my first language and I tend to be a bit absolute. I meant that I am opposed to A/C because I feel that we -as society- have postponed our responsibility towards eco-friendliness. Additionally A/C worsense the heat outside of your house. My conserne was not only about A/C since as pointed out heat-pumps or evaporative coolers can cost (money and energy wise) if not more the same. I made this post to hear thoughts on how we can combat heat collectively and not how as individuals we can protect ourselves temporarily. I found a lot of ideas quite interesting. I believe that small changes could have an impact. So far I think the points bellow would help:
A/C and "heat pump" are the same technology
@spazzman6156 @turip They are similar, but a heat pump is a much more advanced version with a lot less energy loss.
What people refer to as a "heat pump" is just an air conditioner that can run in reverse to provide heat in the home as well as cool it. The cooling part is the same technology as a non- heat pump air conditioner.
Heating this way is more efficient than resistive electric heat
Cooling is the same mechanism as standard air conditioners
Biggest efficiency difference in A/C (cooling) would be if the compressor is inverter-driven or not
No, and there are cooling systems that are advanced.
@turip Trees, trees, and public transit. And yeah, passive solar, underground trenches the Amish use. And drinking water isn't going to fix it. There will be parts of the world where the wet-bulb temperature will literally be unlivable and will require ACs. People are also more stupid and violent when they overheat.
I have to say, drinking water in extreme heat is not nearly enough unless it’s iced or at least cooled. You can drink all the water in the world but if the humidity and temp are above certain levels your brain will still fry. Dehydration is only one part of the danger
Drinking iced beverages in extreme heat is a good way to get heatstroke.
Your thermoregulation sense will think you're cooler than you are, and you'll stop sweating.
Seems counterintuitive, but hot drinks in hot weather is wiser
A/C is indeed not a solution for solving climate change. It's merely a solution to survive the transition that we are trying to do. The solution is in how you produce the electricity, among others, to feed the A/C.
There is some additional heat that an AC system will create, but the heat that goes out of the external block is not heat that was created by the system. It's heat that was displaced and that would otherwise come through other ways in the atmosphere.
A theoretical perfect heat pump would not heat the atmosphere at all, despite having a heating part. The heating would be perfectly balanced by the cooling part.
It is a bit counterintuitive when you think about machines as creating heat or creating cold. A better way to look at it is in terms of energy evacuation.
A house without any AC will radiate heat because humans inside, machines inside, they do produce heat. So that heat goes out in the atmosphere through the walls and through the windows when the inside is warmer than the outside. An AC creates a sort of channel for the heat to go all through the external block and it blasts hot air at a specific place. But what you don't see is that as a result your colder house radiates less heat and actually may to some extent cool the atmosphere around it.
Both effects balance each other out. There is a difference because a heat pump is not a 100% efficient system. So you do have additional heat that gets there as waste. But it's not on the same level as what gets blasted out of the external unit.
Native trees mostly, but external shade in any form you can get it.
There are all sorts of alternatives. But they are all really expensive, difficult to deploy and tend to be viable only in certain locations. Earthships are one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship
I've seen some people do closed-loop earth tube systems. But they collect mold and have drainage issues.
Older homes and barns use to have Cupolas or widow’s walks, also historically called a roof walk or captain’s walk. The hot air rises and is vented out the top of the house.
https://www.architerms.com/cupola
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widow's_walk
You may hate AC but for some locations and situations it's the best solution. If not the only solution.
Earth tubes could pump water instead of air and then pass it through a car radiator or similar kind of heat exchanger.
I find the idea interesting but haven't actually tried it. Could cost a bit and not sure how effective it would be.
That's a buried coil closed heat pump system. Very expensive.
CAN be very expensive. If you are doing it with a car radiator and a hose pipe it costs very little and there isn't even a heat pump involved.
You can take it up a step by using a heat pump of course. Which you can also do fairly cheaply if you are willing to modify a portable AC unit or tbh anything else with a heat pump in it. All you need to do is water cool the hot side of the heat pump and send that water through your ground loop.
Depends how much you want out of it. Are you heating and cooling the entire house year round along with providing hot water. Or are you just taking a few degrees off the peak summer temperature in a room or two?
Yup. But my answer was getting kind of long. There are tons of solution from all over the world. You could write a book on this.
Ground source heat pump operate like earth tubes.
https://youtu.be/ZD_3_gsgsnk?is=N1ik1F2FFUZ_8Eat
Depends what you are finding most uncomfortable. Water cooling could be an option, had thought of making a water cooled blanket to stick on my bed as I was finding the bed its self getting uncomfortably warm where I was laying on it.
Use a heat pump to cool down the water could also increase how much it cools you down, but then its just AC directed at your body instead of the room. Far less energy used though.
Fascinating idea. I bet that'd be a hit with the weighted blanket crowd
@HerbGrower pc
I have used a cold water bottle in bed a couple of times lately. Fairly successful.
Wouldn't cold water get warm very quickly? I have thought of ice though. If you wrapped it up enough so that it takes up heat fairly slowly.
@HerbGrower
Yes, that is the problem. It only lasts an hour or two at most. I used a two litre plastic milk container rather than a normal hot water bottle.
IIRC the latent heat of fusion of water is about 333kJ/kg. So 666kJ for 2L. With ice that averages out to about 23w over a nights sleep. Heat capacity of water is 4.2kJ/kg/k, so even if its 0c as a liquid, to warm up to body temperature is under 300kJ.
TLDR: Water going from a ~0c solid to ~0c liquid takes more than twice as much energy as ~0c liquid water warning up to body temperature.
The ice also only melts to 0c, so you get that benefit as well.
I mean solarpunk could use all sorts of cooling techniques and future scifi ac that isn't bad for the environment
Afternoon siesta. There is a reason most hot climates have a culture of an afternoon nap in the shade.
Don't forget to drink lots of water. Not soda or coffee, simple water. Carry a water bottle with you everywhere and make sure you empty and refill it regularly. As the scout camp I was at last week constantly says "Hydrate - or die!"
@turip youtu.be/stvTwCY-8IU Here is an option, but you will need a powerful dehumidifier, which might use the same amount of energy as a good heat pump. Or we can go with the China option of treating cooling as a public utility that saves up to 50% of the energy that AC uses. youtu.be/AAz5D3TnQ_k This video lists basically every option you can have.
https://youtu.be/AAz5D3TnQ_k
Similar to what others have already mentioned, you may want to look into passive heating and cooling design concepts.
I see other folks have mentioned it but most everything actually effective needs to be done at the infrastructure leve of your home. I lived with my brother that had a split leve basement type thing. So first floor in the front had the main rooms while the bedrooms where half a floor up in back with a basement half a floor below. The basement also mostly faced south for its half windows and the bedrooms were built out further than the basement such that those where shaded by that and further there were trees in the back yard that gave more shade. There was also a crawlspace under the first floor main level that was accesible from the basement. Anyway the basement could be way cooler. Like not just a little but over ten degrees easily. You could get it even a bit cooler by opening the crawlspace access. Did nothing for humidity though.
I've been fascinated by this concept of passive radiative cooling, where you have some material that radiates heat to space in an infrared window where the atmosphere is transparent. Apparently, a sheet of such material can be a fair bit cooler than the ambient temperature without any consumption of energy? It would not necessarily be an alternative to air-conditioning, but it could potentially reduce the energy costs quite a bit, while lowering the heat island effect in urban areas.
There are some interesting applications where a radiative surface that is shielded from radiation coming back the other way can emit radiation to cool itself by a few degrees below ambient temperatures. There's one paper from a few years ago that describes being able to cool to 5°C below ambient temperature even in direct sunlight with some exotic materials.
Interesting stuff.
Looks like this paper on the topic was only released yesterday. It's more focused on the practical issues of deploying PRC panels, where other papers I've read seem to discuss the tech in a lab setting that may or may not be scalable?
read it as "air condoms" and thought i was about to learn about something highly kinky
Climate change means some places will get colder. Are you also opposed to heating? Or is only being hot acceptable self-flagellation?
the self flagellation is funny but on a serious note cold is easier to deal with analog, layers and blankets.
eta: by analog I mean without the use of electricity (patently not what analog means lol)
In 2021, the polar vortex caused sub zero temperatures in northern Mexico. It was -7 in Monterrey. You don't deal with -7 with just layers and blankets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_2021_North_American_cold_wave
i have dealt with sub zero in a sleeping bag in an Adirondack (building with 3 walls, basically outside)
Wow you must be so much tougher than Monterrey's toddlers and old folks then. 💪
Houses built to last to begin with, so nothing US cost efficient flimsy panels stuff, and opening a window or door in either end. As simple as it gets, because it just works.
It actually doesn't when humidity is above 80% and air temp is above 85F.