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It's very different for hot/dry vs hot/wet climates

For hot/dry there's usually high day/night variation so the trick is often thick materials that don't let heat penetrate for hours. Stone and mud brick are traditional concrete can be good too. Soil does this also. You then want small openings to prevent heat escape and plants or water for evaporative cooling. Traditional middle eastern and north African buildings are great for this.

Hot/wet climates are much harder. Generally you can't keep the temperature out, you can just put up a very broad roof and then encourage wind flow to your body (windows, electric or manual fans). Construction is usually much lighter (timber and steel)

Below is an example of climate analysis with passive strategies overlaid

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aasem-Alabdullatief/pub...

For windflow it is also important to orient doors and windows so that there are direct paths for wind through the space. In a multistory house, an attic window so that hot air rises out the house.

The modern American house usually lacks such thought.

For hot/dry desert cooler work really well. They are low tech and low cost/power.

For hot/wet, use dehumidifiers in-doors. This allows your sweat to evaporate better allowing your body to better self regulate.

A dehumidifier and an air conditioner are almost the same machine. For hot regions, it makes little sense to buy a dehumidifier and not an air conditioner.

The air conditioner was invented to dehumidify air: https://www.energy.gov/articles/history-air-conditioning

The fact that it was done through cooling was merely a by-product.

We had AC installed in our bedroom precisely for this. Where I live it barely gets hot enough to warrant AC, but humidity in the summer is very high. Compared to a dehumdifier it's quieter, doesn't need emptying and has extra features (cooling / heating).

I realise you're reasoning from a general architectural standpoint, but if you rent, basement apartments are a nice hack. I rent one and it stays perfectly cool even on 30 degree days just because there's much less wall to get heated by the sun. There are definitely tradeoffs though; more bugs and spiders, and flooding might be an issue depending on location.

As for the architecture, one ancient trick is to paint houses white.

> What good alternatives are there to AC, however? The comic gives:

Create a natural flow by opening windows and doors, so at least you get a breeze. Cool lots of ice during the night and use it for cold drinks during the day. If you have any outdoor space, have a little temporary pool that is always in shadow.

> Create a natural flow by opening windows and doors, so at least you get a breeze.

That may not help once air temperatures hit 35C (95F):

* https://www.health.ny.gov/publications/6594/

* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-hot-is-too-ho...

* https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2022/07/15/how-hot-is-too-h...

* https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hypothermia/s...

Yep, creating draft to cool down is a big one. The problem becomes that if you do that at night, you're going to have a million mosquitos invading your room. So it's death by heat or mosquito.

(I chose mosquito since at least I can sleep with them buzzing around.)

edit: planning on getting insect screens soon. Thanks for comments pushing me to.

Perhaps also get some screens for windows. Very common in the US even in areas with low mosquitos

Several years ago I knew an epidemiologist who studied elephantiasis in Egypt. It is acquired by living in unscreened house and being bit by mosquitoes hundreds of times each night. Victims end up in truly awful situations like having to transport their testicles in a wheelbarrow. Completely serious.

Mosquito nets have been a thing for a very long time

yeah insect screens are pretty ubiquitous in the US. Also any home ive been in that was built in the 80s or earlier seemed to have a whole house fan, or at least be setup much better for airflow. Such building features seemed to be lost since AC became the norm and not the exception.

I can vouch for a cheap, adhesive insect screen mesh for your windows. I mean, you can go for an expensive one too, but the cheap one has been enough for me and made my AC-free summer much more bearable.

If you stand the fan noise, mosquitoes can be caught and trapped by a fan that blows a draft across an entrance that is stronger than their wings.

For me it's motorbikes instead of mosquitos. There is no way I could sleep uninterrupted with open windows

Mosquito screens on windows, or mosquito nets may help.

Depends on how bad the building is. I’ve found keeping windows and curtains closed until the temperature outside gets lower than inside in the evening (if you’re not dealing with a intense enough heat where that doesn’t happen) gives you a lot more of cooler time in the house.

This doesn't work terribly well in humid climates as you don't get as much of the evaporative effect as you would otherwise.

When it's hotter outside than inside, you don't want a breeze.

>What good alternatives are there to AC, however

Frankly, (IMO) there isn't. You can mitigate via materials, or use regional venacular only so much. And we shouldn't even try too hard with design outside of suburban density. Can't control what gets built next in dense enviroments that will interact with urban fabric to fuck up passive designs. So many sustainable projects have ended up dramatically underperforming / duds, and they've already benefit from kids of attention/engineering 99% of buildings won't. There are some ways to standardize cost efficient, sensible designs. But better off figuring out how to get power cheaper to fuel those ACs.

> and at night it's hard to sleep.

In Northeastern Brazil, that has a hot and dry climate for most of the year, a very popular solution is to sleep in hammocks in the hot season. Most houses are equipped with hooks in the walls of each room, to set them. They don't bake your underside at night like mattresses, and fans cool both your topside and underside while you're in a hammock. The hooks must be well spaced, so you can avoid back pain in the morning, by laying almost straight in a diagonal position, in relation to a imaginary axis that goes through both hooks.

> "older people insist on going to stores"

> "This is completely preventable already"

Sorry, but some people in some place have no other choice but to go to the store while it's open or face starvation, and when you live in a place where nobody gives a rat's ass if you live or die (because we all know that everyone over 30 should just die because they're worthless, right?), you have to go to the store.

As to "completely preventable", sure. But the problem is that people don't want to prevent jack-shit. They want the world to burn and everyone to die, and sadly, I'm starting to agree with them at this point in my life.

Eagerly awaiting my downvotes, because I already know that nobody wants to hear truth.

The stores here are open during the morning and late night when the temperature is not outright deadly. You're not wrong that some older people don't have anyone to fetch groceries for them and do not have the money to pay someone.. but this is a very needlessly hostile way of saying it?

I'd also clarify that by "older" I mean retirement age. Not 30 year olds who definitely won't die on their way to the store if they don't have a severe underlying condition. Also, I've never met anyone who thinks 30 year olds are old and should die that wasn't a teenager.

I read "older people insist on going to stores during the day" as meaning between 11pm and 5pm, when the weather is unbearably hot, instead of during the cooler morning period.

It's pretty rare for shops selling staples to open later than 9am, at least here in Australia. Most supermarkets open around 7am. There's plenty of time to get your shopping done before the day gets over 25c/80f in most towns, and shops in places like Marble Bar (which is very slightly cooler than Death Valley) open earlier.

I want the world to burn so that a better one can be reforged in the flames. Sadly, I fear there will be needless death on either path we take but I think there will be less suffering overall if we burn it down and rebuild it rather than staying on our current slow descent into dystopia.

> Sorry, but some people in some place have no other choice but to go to the store while it's open or face starvation, and when you live in a place where nobody gives a rat's ass if you live or die (because we all know that everyone over 30 should just die because they're worthless, right?), you have to go to the store.

Do these places not offer grocery delivery?

Which city? I’m just curious how hot we’re talking about, without AC.

Don't wan't to give my location but between 33-39C. Dry heat.

A swamp cooler might be helpful. They can also be cheap and simple to make.

Looking into this, thanks.

Dry heat is easy mode, assuming you have plentiful water.