Healing Appalachia: Sustainable Living through Appropriate Technology

20. Natural Cooling

You may be surprised to learn that passive solar design strategies apply to home cooling as much as home heating. These strategies include proper building orientation, so that the house receives the sun when you want it (in the winter) and keeps it out when you don’t (in the summer); the use of overhangs and shading to control the entrance of sunlight into the house; proper window placement and selection of appropriate windows to limit unwanted solar heat gain; adequate insulation , especially in attics; and the use of radiant heat barriers and ventilation in attics. The simple daily practice of opening up the house at night to allow the cool night air inside, and then closing it up mid-morning before the day gets hot, is another natural cooling strategy. Andy McDonald, coordinator, Kentucky Solar Partnership, Frankfort Before the advent of mechanical air-conditioning, natural cooling techniques were used in residential construction as a matter of course in Appalachia. Higher elevations of the region were cooler and became a favored destination during hot, muggy summer seasons . Virtually no residence at higher elevations with some natural shading requires mechanical cooling at any time of the year. The 2003 heat wave in France killed over ten thousand mostly older citizens. Temperatures were extraordinary for western Europe; thus many Europeans are now considering airconditioning motels and homes. American domestic cooling is a major modern energy expenditure and results in summer CHAPTER 20 Natural Cooling Natural Cooling ❖ 239 electric demand spikes that can result in overloads and blackouts . Cooling and heating use more energy than any other domestic application. Air conditioners alone use up to one-sixth of U.S. electricity and, on hot summer days, consume 43 percent of the U.S. peak power load. They cost $10 billion a year to operate. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, heating and cooling systems in the United States emit over a half billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, adding to global warming. They also generate about 24 percent of the nation’s emissions of sulfur dioxide, a chief ingredient in acid rain. In 1960, about 12 percent of American homes had air conditioners , but that had risen to 64 percent by 1990. Today, most homes are equipped with air-conditioning units and people lacking these are regarded as living downright heroic lives. In parts of Appalachia and elsewhere, underground caves, a constant cool temperature all year around, have been used from prehistoric days to modern times as hideaways or to cool food in the summer. In fact, springhouses and caves went hand in hand. Owners of nineteenth-century American farmsteads without nearby caves built half-submerged springhouses near natural seeps to store buttermilk, clabber for cottage cheese, baked hams, pies, meal leftovers, and ripe fruit and vegetables. These springhouses maintained a constant temperature of 55 degrees Fahrenheit —the natural refrigerators of that day. The cave and springhouse used natural coolness to the advantage of the homesteading family. In this temperate zone, it has always been a challenge to build houses that are warm in winter but cool in the summer. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the preference was for houses built for summer living, since Appalachia had become a mecca for escapees from the river valleys and the Piedmont . In the Buffalo Trace region of Kentucky, where I was raised, there are many large, abandoned brick mansions built between 1790 and 1820. While well built for their day and of historic value, they were built as cool houses for hot, sultry summers . As a youth, I visited my great-aunt and great-uncle in their 240 ❖ Healing Appalachia family place in Fleming County, Kentucky, built in 1812. I remember how cool it was in summer; the thermal mass of the large structure with its tall, airy windows and high ceilings, along with surrounding shade trees, made it a summer dream. Winters were another matter, with the house’s small fireplaces barely heating the space immediately in front of them. That’s precisely why many of these brick farmsteads were abandoned—they took too much renovation to insulate and heat in winter, for these were built for summer, and old-timers expected everyone to wear heavy woolen clothes in winter. My family’s farmhouse was built in 1931. It was eventually insulated and a central heating system was installed. Winters were always comfortable...