Who was the genius who decreed, a generation or so ago, that thenceforth, all offices would be in buildings with windows that can’t be opened?
I want his name. And his address. I want to go see him. I’d like to rearrange his face for him. Call it an extreme makeover.
I just walked out of the office — oh, around 9 p.m. — and it was gorgeous outside. About 60 degrees, and as pleasant an evening as you could ask for.
And where had I been since early this morning? In an oven.
It was about noon when the temp in my office hit 80. Then, it kept climbing. It finally hit a high of 84, before dropping to about, oh, 83 by the time I left. Not a whisper of a breeze, of course. It was worse in other people’s offices. One guy went to work from home when his hit 85. Nice if you can do that. I had to stay at my computer, because the system I was using is not accessible remotely. Security, you know. My hand was sweating on the mouse to the point that I started to wonder whether I could get electrocuted that way — or, worse, cause a short and lose the column I was working on.
It all has something to do with maintenance they’ve been doing all week. The "chillers," or some such, had to be down while the work was under way. They say they’ll be back up tomorrow afternoon.
They’d better be. If not, I have a brick on my windowsill. And two of the four walls of my office are made of glass.
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My office is like that, and I do work at home. We can’t figure it out. We do open the window, use the ceiling fans, etc., and we can’t get the temp down on a warm day. That is, short of running the air conditioner, which we are loath to do, unless it gets in the 90s.
My Dad was an architect, and designed school buildings. The newer designs (starting in the early 80s, I think) don’t have windows in them. Keeps out the West Texas dust, I guess. But that’s pretty dreary, not being able to see out. Still, the sun streaming through glass without ventilation I’m sure is stifling.
I think it was this supremely unconfident American president.
Ha, ha. Only kidding. A little. It’s really these guys, the folks who own and operate the buildings, and, of course, the architects who strive to meet their needs. Newer or re-engineered buildings do have more flexible air circulation management systems, but the goal for years has been to centralize control for optimum efficiency (lowest operating cost). That means that you can’t have windows that open; the engineer knows what’s good for you.
Sounds like you and Herb have solar issues. Our house was quite cool yesterday thanks to brick construction and all the durn pine trees that shade the house. We have 18” eves that limit sunlight’s entry into the living space too. That of course works against us on cold, sunny days.
If you drive through American’s heartland you’ll notice that the farmhouses have coniferous trees on their western and northern faces and deciduous trees facing the south. Long ago they learned that a windbreak was peachy in the winter when the cold winds whip out from the northwest, and that any solar heating was great that time of year, but not a good idea in the summer. That’s what drove their landscaping decisions: practicality.
Drapes or blinds on the windows can help. Herb might consider stapling a layered aluminum solar shield on the inside of the angled part of his roof or consider light-colored shingles next time the roof needs attention. How’s the attic ventilation? An attic fan or one of them turbo-whirlies might help (although the latter can hurt you on cold, sunny days.) A whole-house fan strategically mounted can really help, but that depends on the layout of your house. I installed one when we lived in Virginia – it was wonderful, but you need to have an electrical cut-off in the attic (or wherever its installed) so that you can put a nice blanket of insulation over it in the colder months. There’s no place to install one in our current house for aesthetic and structural reasons.
My sister’s house in Virginia is in a newer development with big houses, tightly built. Most are frame with siding and brick facades on one or more sides. All heat up on the second floor on sunny days because of the large windows and heat transferred through the siding to the living quarters. Of course, there are no trees to help shield the houses from the sun.
Thanks, Mike. I copied what you wrote and will take it to a contractor friend for advice. I didn’t understand half of what you wrote, but I figure all I need is someone who does, right? (You would never know my Dad was an architect — none of it brushed off on me, and I mean 0.)
Anybody in South Carolina use solar panels on their house? I’m figuring that would do nicely as a roof shield, and provide some power as well. But I’m assuming that solar energy is too expensive to be worth it, or maybe the power companies aren’t cooperative? I’ve seen a few homes in Germany with solar panels — of all places.
Oh, by the way, on the coffee in churches, there are exceptions. Wonder what an angelic chai latte costs?
There may still be tax credits in place for solar and other alternative energy capital investments for consumers, so you have to figure that into your costs.
The Germans generally use solar energy to warm up water for bathing, not for electrical generation — one neighbor in Bonstetten, Germany had a home-made solar unit for that purpose back in 1979. Think about it for a second: how could solar save you some loot over the useful life of the system? The cheapest (acquisition cost) systems heat / warm water. You’d need to store that warm water in an insulated tank which would in turn feed your hot water heater.
As you know, many Germans use an on-demand (instant-on) hot water heater for bathing; the heater may be gas or electric, but operates only when hot water is needed. There is no storage tank. It’s a neat system that can save energy, but does have drawbacks. Each heater needs a dedicated electrical circuit or gas line, and one demand heater is required for each room where hot water is needed, generally the bathing room (as opposed to the toilet room in Europe which generally does not have hot water) and the kitchen. (European washing machines usually have a built-in heater.) We had an electric one in an apartment in Augsburg and had to be careful when showering because a drop in pressure could boost the temperature noticeably. The trick was to pay attention to the water flow and move the showerhead to the wall when you noticed a pressure drop.
We Americans love our hot water and have more bathrooms than homes in the old country have, so central water heating has made more sense. Our energy has traditionally been cheaper, but thanks to artificial (political) restrictions on exploration, our costs are going up. I have written about this on my blog here and here and here.
Installing solar for electrical generation is generally not cost-effective. While the relative cost of collector panels is decreasing, the storage media (batteries) and inefficient transformers / converters (to step up the voltage and convert DC to AC) generate heat; batteries wear out and have to be replaced, something that hybrid owners haven’t found out yet. If your are building from scratch, you could design in a parallel solar-powered DC system for lighting and / or add water panels for pre-heating water. I saw such a home in the Florida Keys 15 years ago, but the owner / builder did it more to prove that it could be done than to save energy. The whole place was quite unusual and expensive.
Finally, you have to acknowledge the tradeoffs. You could build a tight, energy-efficient home and then discover that you’re plagued with indoor pollution. In this area, mold is a problem, and you need air flow to combat it. Carpets, lumber, paint, and alls sorts of stuff emit chemical fumes of one sort or another, as does cooking, laundering, and even ironing. Did I mention beer-driniking? Open up the house a bit and you find that our almost year round vegetation emissions aggravate your allergies. Then there are bugs. Insects and their activities are troublesome too, as are the chemicals we use to control them. Pets? You are dead meat.
Herb, you’re durned if you do, durned if you don’t. Whoa! Time for espresso and a digestive!
Thanks, Mike. Except that you’re a bit behind on the current state of construction in Germany. The water heaters you’re talking about were pretty much standard 25 years ago, but not anymore, at least not in new home construction that I observed down in the south (Friedrichshafen). It’s all heating oil and boiler units (whatever you call those things here in the US), with good size hot water units. The dependency on electricity here in SC surprised me, but I guess that is partly due to the temperate climate.
At our youth center in Germany, when we built a new staff building, the architect wanted us to install an electric heating system that stored the cheaper electricity available at night, but we decided against that, and stuck with the standard heating oil (for one thing, the electric storage unit would have filled up a good size room in the basement, much bigger than we needed for the boiler and oil tank). (I’ve often wondered how many Mercedes diesel cars driving around Friedrichshafen were actually fueled by heating oil. The taxes on diesel fuel are about 3x as much as heating oil, but, as you know, both are basically the same stuff. Only you didn’t want to get caught in Germany at tax evasion.)
I’ve lived in several different places, but I never knew what allergies were until I moved to SC. Now I sneeze for at least 15 minutes every other morning.
You really should charge tuition, you know.
Oh, and Brad, here is another issue that might warrant putting under the adolescent society heading. I didn’t know that college students needed a sex awareness week in order to be aware of sex.
Forgot to provide a link to that youth center I mentioned in Germany, just in case someone was interested.
The house we rented 1979-1981 in Bonstetten had oil heat and hot water – a really big tank too. Friends still report demand heaters are popular in apartments. Wasn’t it in the 1980s that Germany did the first of the big natural gas deals with the then Soviet Union? With the popularity of diesel vehicles, I imagine that heating oil is pricey. With the change in government, I suspect that the Germans will re-think their policy of shutting down the nuclear power plants.
Electricity has been big and cheap in SC because of the co-ops and Santee Cooper. Look at those rates!
It has an interesting history, with some folks regarding words like the following as evidence of the plot to steal textile mills from the northeastern US:
The fight to privatize Santee Cooper boils over every few years, as do brouhahas over board appointments and the like; I’ve decided just to turn all of that over to my Electric Monk.
A previous owner replaced the electric water heater in our house with a gas unit. I compounded the shift by having a plumber run a gas line for a clothes dryer several years ago when we bought the place. Figure in the gas furnace, gas range, and gas fireplace (now disconnected), the only way to skimp is by staying hungry and dirty in the winter. Er, we don’t skimp, of course, it annoys the dog.
I meant to add that the school looks pretty durn nice. That’s an accomplishment to be proud of.
I stand corrected on the heater issue in Germany. Wasn’t much into apartments, at least not the last 15 years after we got to live in a house.
The real fun was living with our four kids in the top apartment of an old farmhouse from ’77 to ’85. The apartment had 4 oil stoves for heat. (We were blessed — the owner had installed a centralized pump, so we didn’t have to cart buckets of fuel oil up and down the stairs.) We used to turn on the one in the bathroom every evening, in case one of the kids got sick, and we needed warm bath water. The farmer couldn’t figure out why we would waste energy for that. After all, Saturday was the day you took a bath. Come to think of it, Saturday was the day we took a bath when I was a kid, too. My, times have changed.