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Comment by Sharlin | Hacker News Reader

This idea is older than one might realize. Ancient Persians and other Middle Eastern civilizations knew how to combine a windcatcher, or bâdgir, with a qanat, an underground channel, to create an effective evaporative cooler.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat

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Also the Romans built impluviums in their houses to catch rainwater to use for evaporative cooling and drinking water.

https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/status/1019056740128600065

I wonder how common this was? What percentage of overall families had this?

Well, a very small fraction of families had a villa in the first place.

God, this reminds me of Paris 6 University, architect thought it would be awesome to create a fully open ground level, turning the campus into a square mile large windcatcher. Even during summer that's often too much air current.

http://www.lessoireesdeparis.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/...

Many people don't understand how effective Qanats are, but they were/are used to store freakin' ice in the middle of freakin' Iranian scorching desert - seen one near Yazd.

Big respect to the builders/engineers. It's 2400 years old

Yes, impressive but the scale had to be sufficient - it wouldn't work well for a smaller residence. That said, a large enough modernized variant may work well for neighborhoods.

Just FYI: You seem to have been shadowbanned for quite a while. I vouched for this comment to let you know, because I didn't see anything obviously deserving such treatment.

He was banned and notified of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13606809

The modern(-ish) equivalents:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-coupled_heat_exchanger

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombe_wall

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