The Evolution of Indoor Climate | Hacker News Reader

The Evolution of Indoor Climate

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63 pointsmanholio23 comments

> “Take out anything with a screen in your living room”, the critique goes, “there’s no way to tell if your house was built in the 2010s or the 1970s.”

Where I live in the UK, this is very much the case - except my house was built in 1890.

Visually my house looks a lot like any house built today. Yet, the only structural improvements it's had since it was built are that gas central heating/DHW, double glazing and electricity were installed. The fireplace was also upgraded for clean air standards. No AC or ventilation, but modern UK houses still don't incorporate that.

Now there are a bunch of invisible differences between my old house and a modern one, for example it doesn't have a cavity wall so the walls can get pretty chilly on cold days. Also most of the internal walls are brick rather than plasterboard which makes it hard getting good WiFi. It is nevertheless surprising how similar it is to a modern house despite being over 100 years old.

My parents house in the UK was built nearly 40 years ago, and it's basically indistinguisable to new houses build today. uPVC instead of wooden windows, LED lighting and a slightly different colour pallet is about it.

This isn't a good thing though: the UK is really lagging behind other parts of Europe in terms of energy efficient housing. The climate in the UK is mild enough that there is really no reason why you can't have an almost passively heated home. I'm in the process of building a new house in the Baltics (we actually have winter); it's twice the size of my parents' yet will use much less than half the energy to heat. I'm not don't anything special, that's just what the building code here requires.

This definitely was the case, although my understanding is that the standards for new buildings have increased significantly over the last decade or so. Houses don't have to be passivehaus standard, but there is a strong emphasis on air tightness and insulation now.

Of course, this barely scratches the surface. Most houses are old, and will probably not be replaced in our lifetime. We're not doing nearly enough to retrofit energy efficiency.

> there is a strong emphasis on air tightness and insulation now.

Which isn't exactly great without heat recovery ventilation. Either you open the windows to get fresh/non-humid air and lose your heat, or you end up with condensation spots from lack of ventilation. Particularly with modern houses lacking outdoor space in which to dry your clothes...

Besides, most of the tightness and insulation can be fairly easily retrofitted to older houses. It does get harder pre-1930 where they use solid wall construction, but 1950 on isn't too hard to bring up to modern standards. Double glazing, cavity and loft insulation, new tightly fitted windows and you're mostly there.

A quick tap on an internal wall will give you a good clue as to which half of that range the house was built in. Hell, I’ve been told houses are now being built with stud party walls.

> uildings sometimes seem as if they’ve been left behind by technological progress. [...] “Take out anything with a screen in your living room”, the critique goes, “there’s no way to tell if your house was built in the 2010s or the 1970s.”

Interestingly this IMO applies mostly to decently wealthy and very poor families.

Either you live in a house that was well built enough to withstand a century or more or abuse, you have enough resources to properly maintain it, and you can enjoy its charm and character.

Or you're dirt poor, can't afford/get access to a modern house, and live in either a remote or derelict house that has been left in the state it was in for decades, and you have no choice.

There must be people in-between, but I'd assume it's the exception, as in most respect it will be more comfortable to live in a modern house that comes from the get got with good insulation, maintainable weather proofing, electric wiring, modern kitchen, elderly access, more useable floor plans etc.

In the UK at least there is a pretty strong divide between expensive houses and merely ok houses. Everything just looks and smells of money, in a way that is particularly apparent over here because of the way our property ladder is.

I don't mean gold plated toilet seats (I've never met anyone truly wealthy versus rich), but just because I have a chip on my shoulder I like googling bits of furniture or appliances I see, and find it immutably bizarre to see a set of taps that cost more than my computer, especially because they're nearly always made to look "rustic".

At the moment in particular you have to be pretty secure and living in a sparse area to be able to get basically anything done to a house, i.e. because the builders don't you need you as much as you need them so they won't turn up.

> “Take out anything with a screen in your living room”, the critique goes, “there’s no way to tell if your house was built in the 2010s or the 1970s.”

1970s houses have massive radiators in Germany, 2010s houses floor heating.

Radiant heating is very old technology. It’s more expensive and harder to maintain, but as people have gotten weather it’s become more popular.

Combined with heat pumps, possibly geo thermal or other type of ground loops, it becomes a very efficient and pleasant method to both heat and cool a home. Possibly the most successful one in the future. Warm floor in winter! Cool floor in summer!

Sure, energy used in operation is fine.

However, trying to cool a building via cold floors alone runs into condensation issues. Necessitating a separate air handling system which could be used alone, thus the expense.

The only people I know with newer houses seem to be having periodic teething issues around this new move towards air-tightness for energy efficiency. Unexpected lack of proper ventilation/drainage in the exterior walls, for instance.

The linked post doesn't get into these newer standards and such, but it seems like a work-in-progress to get right, so I'm personally gonna wait it out for a while longer. In the meantime I'm lucky and have windows I can open to get good breezes when I want and have come to enjoy that anyway.

Something I've been wondering is how they handle ventilation with the push towards airtight houses. Co2 buildup is common in such environments. Do they implement heat exchanger ventilation systems or something like that?

Generally some form of balanced ventilation (same rate of flow in and flow out) is used. Depending on climate, budget, and comfort considerations, the ventilation can be plain untempered or can be a heat recovery ventilator (HRV) or energy recovery ventilator (ERV). The latter exchanges heat and humidity.

And I've always wondered about something else: on houses which require these systems, what happens when the power goes out? Do you simply crack open a window? What if you were sleeping when the power failed?

Presumably you either get a backup or crack open a window. It will be noticeably stuffy long before it incapacitates you.

The more I learn about energy efficient houses, the more I realise it's basically all about moisture management. The more energy efficient a house is, the more you have to worry about moisture. The biggest problems come when people do things that seem sensible - like insulating, or sealing up walls with render - and don't take into account the never ending stream of water vapour coming from within.

Do it wrong and you get black mould and rotten timbers.

It's obviously worth doing right - because we expend such a vast amount of energy on heating homes. But every aspect needs careful consideration.

I bought a good CO2 monitor a while back, and since then I’ve discovered how difficult it is to maintain an optimal climate in a common house.

Reminder that home construction and indoor climate vary regionally. While every modern home tends to have air conditioning, heating and insulation to some degree, some areas can get away with very little while others need a massive amount and different methods.

It's also interesting how often buildings aren't retrofitted for climate control. Sometimes it's a unit that used to have a fire place but was retrofitted for apartments, or used to have gas or oil and was converted to electric-only. I've been in four rentals in my life where I had to bring my own air conditioner and heater.

Skimping on insulation is probably the peak of ”penny wise, pound foolish”. Insulation will keep you warm when it’s cold but also cool when it’s hot.

Some areas are reasonably pleasant even without AC or heating. Average high temperatures per month in Hawaii range from 79 to 84, and low temperatures range from 68 to 75. Plenty of people use AC and heating, but designing buildings for airflow and dressing appropriately also works.

Nice article, but wrong title: indoor climate is a thing, indoor tech to reach certain climate conditions is another.

Personally in term of indoor climate I noticed:

- difference in humidity, older houses tend to be humid, new ones a bit dry

- difference in air quality thanks to ventilation, that's specially when I wake up in the morning or someone smoke etc

In architectural evolution terms:

- depending on the latitude much bigger windows

- disappeared the concept of a separate kitchen, now a single room with the salon in most cases

- differently designed bathrooms

- more sliding doors and suspended things

> To achieve both of these, builders are increasingly designing buildings to be sealed bubbles of air, where any sort of flow across the outside boundary (air, water, energy) is minimized and controlled.

there's an associated ideology (overall attitude) that is bundled with this mindset (and outlook of the world). That of isolation and control over what surrounds us; a deepening (widening) breach (disconnect) with the natural (wild) world surrounding us.

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