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Cooling the body by raising the room temperature.
I want to share the following true story with you. It describes and proves the wonderful adjustment capacity of our bodies.
Around 15 years ago, I had a desperate telephone call from my mother. She was retired and living in Torreveija, Spain. Torreveija is one of the warmest locations in Spain and there was a heat wave. She explained to me that it was around 40-45 degrees C (ca.110F) during the day and around 30 degrees during the night with near to 100% humidity, she could not sleep and was suffering enormously. It was of course not possible to install an air
conditioning unit immediately because the que was 2-3 month to get one. I was at work, around 1,500 km from her.
I knew that she had a very small electric heater. I asked her to close doors and windows to the bedroom during the night and put the heater on in the bedroom. She resisted the idea very much and it was really difficult to persuade her to try it for one night only, but finally she agreed to do it.
The day after she called me and told that it was the first night in two weeks that she had a good sleep. She felt fantastic and for the rest of the heat wave she slept with the heater on in the bedroom. Later in the autumn, when the rush was over, I installed air conditioning for her.
This is not a general advice, because you have to know that the person is in good health. But the body system is fantastic if you give it a chance to work and lowering the humidity level by heating the air was enough. By heating the air, her body temperature was lowered.
It shows the weakness in only calculating and specifying air temperature as a comfort criteria. The specifications used to build computer rooms are smarter and therefore need coolers with variable output. The body has the same or more complex needs to be comfortable. For some reason it is not considered. This presents large possibilities to make more energy efficient designs. The new AC driven air conditioner units, has variable output and will therefore somewhat compensate for over-dimensioning. In most cases this produces considerable energy savings.
In a way it also exposes the simplified and energy wasting way of modern engineering. Old knowledge, developed through hundreds years of experience, has during a few decades been replaced by principles that are based on
constant temperature and that the energy needed always is proportional to the temperature difference outside - inside. (this factor of proportionality is commonly named the "U-value")
There are many situations in life, where nature help us to get relief from heat waves or cold weather. Traditional building methods and use of material grew from experience with climates. I always find it very exciting to study very old farm houses and palaces, from the view of sustainable living. With the expansion of the Earth's population and modern urban and industrial structures, it is not possible to generally apply the old ways. We cannot use cows and horses as heat sources in modern apartments, but we can learn a lot about energy efficiency.
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