Talking about heat traps, have you seen the news reports about cage/coffin homes in Hong Kong? For some $320 a month, you can rent a subdivided space about four feet by four feet (15 sq. ft.) in the world’s most expensive property market with no air conditioning or access to windows. The temperature climbs to 34°C (93°F) in the summer.
Most American buildings are heat traps and not designed for cooling during the summer months. Cooling is an afterthought in the US, and builders count on AC to solve the problem. Unfortunately, the cost of AC has gone up substantially in recent years and is now above $500 a year. In my home in Quebec, we have never had AC, but we do use ceiling fans and open our windows in the summer heat. In Canada, we spend a lot of money heating our houses from October through May in an average year, so some of us figure we can put up with a few hot days during the summer months.
Americans used to be experts in designing houses with natural cooling. Remember the shotgun houses on the Mississippi Delta, where you could fire a shotgun from the front door through the back door and not hit a thing. Basically, every room was designed to have cooling breezes flowing north/south and east/west. Remember the wrap-around porches on the old Southern mansions where rich families could sit outside in the shade all day long. The cooling principle of the shotgun house exists in Southern France, where you have stone floors and long corridors from the front door to the back of the house. The doors are metal grilles that can be left open at night to allow air to flow into the house.
Ninety percent of Americans have AC in their homes, while only sixteen percent have it in Mexico and Brazil, which are often very hot during the summer. Britain is an outlier, with only five percent of people having AC. Of course, the British tend to open their windows in the summer and even in the winter for the fresh air, as do the Germans, the Swiss, and the French. Most Europeans use ceiling fans to push the air around in the summer. Let’s not forget that the English like putting up with a little hardship from time to time. The effect of living through the Blitz. A few weeks of summer heat are not going to faze anyone. In fact, they enjoy sitting in airy pubs with gardens in the summer and, like many of us, don’t enjoy sitting in US-style restaurants where the AC requires patrons to put on sweaters against the cold.
There are some 39 million Americans without AC, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Many Americans can’t wait to open their windows and doors after the long winters, so AC is not a priority for them. And of course, there are more and more Americans who simply can’t afford the high energy prices and are obliged to turn off the air conditioning.
Remember ‘The Air-Conditioned Nightmare’ by Henry Miller, published in 1945. After ten years as an expatriate, Henry Miller returned to the United States with a keen desire to see what his native land was really like. He set out on a three-year journey visiting many parts of the country and making friends of all kinds. The Air-Conditioned Nightmare was the result of that road trip. The quality of life in Europe has often been said to be superior to that of the US, and a lot of it has to do with fresh air. In Europe, people feel they can breathe again! Americans, however, never seem to complain about going from a hot parking lot to an air-conditioned car to an air-conditioned restaurant and sleeping in an air-conditioned motel room where none of the windows can be opened. Miller’s book could have been written today!
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