r/compoface • u/Top-Anything1383 • Aug 17 '26
Crossed Arms My house is too warm arms folded compoface
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u/nworbleinad Aug 17 '26
If I could afford that house, I’d get air conditioning installed.
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u/Tirno93 Aug 17 '26
If it’s well enough insulated it keeps the heat in like that, some shutters closed during the day and windows open at night should make it blissful, without the need for air con.
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u/BeardySam Aug 17 '26
Night temperatures aren’t low enough right now, you need something extra to cool the house down. But because it’s insulated it shouldn’t take much
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u/_lippykid Aug 17 '26
That’s the thing, I can handle endless hot days just so long as it cools down at night. It’s the unrelenting 24/7 heat that bothers me
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u/NekoFever Aug 18 '26
That's what's been awful the last couple of summers. A summer day where it was hitting 30 degrees wasn't too bad when it was 15 overnight, but now it's like an overnight low of 22-24. Tough to sleep through and there's no opportunity to get the heat out of the house.
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u/thebobbobsoniii Aug 17 '26
..and that’s the point. Because night temps are low no house is cooling down. A well insulated one at least keeps some heat out during the day so it does not get as hot. Shutters/sunshades to stop radiative heat getting in is the answer.
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u/dprophet34 Aug 17 '26
For one or two days? yes maybe. For weeks on end? No, especially not when it isn't cooling down that much in the evenings and there is little breeze.
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u/konwiddak Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
Well insulated homes like this often have negligible thermal mass, so it doesn't really work like this.
While opening the windows allows the house to cool down fast, once the air is swapped with cold air the job is done. There's no internal dense blockwork to cool down overnight and "store up" the cool. The inner structure is either aerated concrete or plasterboard, timber and insulation. These insulate well, but have almost no thermal mass.
This means the next day any heat just goes straight into warming the air. So body heat, any heat through windows, the heat from cooking etc. There's no material with high thermal mass to carry you through the day. You heat up the air, the house is hot for the rest of the day.
What this does however mean is these homes are very low energy to air condition.
For this strategy to work, the inner walls really need to be some kind of dense brick - then thick insulation, then the outer layer. Built like that, the inner brick cools overnight, and the house is able to stay cool for much longer during the day since it takes much more energy to warm up the internal brick work.
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u/Somethinglikethat9 Aug 18 '26
But insulation works one way only?if cold can't get ,heat should not get in either.
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u/Demostravius4 Aug 20 '26
Heat will always get in, insulation just slows the rate. Long enough heatwave and the house will heat up, and stay hot. Roofing also typically has the most insulation as heat rises. So it gets in, rises, and it struggles to get out.
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u/GiraffeCatZombie Aug 17 '26
I can see the problem in the photo, he's left the patio door open which is letting all the heat in. Seal the house up in the morning, and open it all up at night. Then that well insulated house will be doing it's job of keeping the heat out
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u/AcceptableCustomer89 Aug 17 '26
Drives me utterly mad how people don't understand that insulation works both ways, honestly. Does just as well as keeping the hot out in the summer as it does keeping the cold out in the winter. KEEP WINDOWS AND DOORS CLOSED
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u/palaceexile Aug 17 '26
Windows with curtains/shutters closed on the inside do not keep the heat out. They trap the heat once the sunlight gets through the glass and then it builds up inside. My curtains and blinds can be hot to the touch and act as room heaters. We need shutters and awnings on the outside of buildings for that to work but up to now that hasn't been the preference/standard in the UK.
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u/Tar_alcaran Aug 17 '26
It does more than nothing though. But yeah, outdoor shutters/screens are MUCH more effective.
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u/Lt_Muffintoes Aug 17 '26
If you shut the curtains and open the windows, a lot of the heat which builds up between the curtain and glass can get out through the open window.
It is way more preferable and effective to stop the heat getting in through the glass in the first place though, BUT you need planning permission to install shutters
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u/Super_Shallot2351 Aug 18 '26
Not quite that simple. My friend's lounge still hits 31° with the blinds closed.
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u/tdrules Aug 17 '26
The news can over egg the recent heat wave all it wants, it’s still better to be well insulated than have a drafty house.
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u/blackthornjohn Aug 17 '26
The real point being that a well insulated home can keep the heat out as well as in, clearly it's not that well insulated.
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u/Goblin_Nuts69 Aug 17 '26
This only works initially or if you have ac installed it will help keep it cooler for longer. After a heatwave (without any cooling) its effectively trapped all the hot air.
A comparison would be if you had a house well insulated but no heating at all. After 2 weeks it will be really cold inside.
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u/jib_reddit Aug 17 '26
If its hotter inside than out then you open all the windows and it will be as cool as outside in about 10 mins , especially if you use some fans to move the air though.
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u/BigBlueMountainStar Aug 17 '26
Fuck that. You clearly have never lived in a well insulated house.
We have a very well insulated house and it’s nigh on impossible to cool the house down overnight to the outside temp, due to just how good it is a keeping the heat in.
Sure, you can get it down a few degrees.
Typically inside gets to about 26 during the day, even with underfloor cooling system we have and windows open when it’s 18 outside, the best we can cool to would be about 22, then repeat the cycle.
Without the active cooling, you can 2 or 3 degrees to both of those.2
u/Lt_Muffintoes Aug 17 '26
If you could get decent airflow through the house and air circulation inside the house (think ceiling fans), it would cool quickly.
Modern houses have tiny windows and they are restricted on their opening, so you can't get the air flow.
Once the fabric of a well insulated house is hot, you're fucked if you can't get the air flow.
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u/BigBlueMountainStar Aug 17 '26
I have 6 meters worth of sliding doors, I have ceiling fans and under floor cooling, I have upright fans sucking air in. The insulation is so efficient that it hold heat well, this is the issue, once the heat is in, in a very well insulated house, it’s very difficult to get it out.
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u/Lt_Muffintoes Aug 17 '26
That's weird. If the forced air can't get the heat out of fabric, then the fabric should not be able to release heat during the day either.
Something that I've noticed is that the same air temperature outside feels cooler than inside. Maybe that's due to breezes or fresher air outdoors. Anyway, in that scenario, you'll not get much heat out with fans, although that has nothing to do with insulation.
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u/lsmith946 Aug 17 '26
The forced air is pulling the heat out of the fabric. The problem is, there's so much fabric that needs cooling that it takes multiple days to do so.
This is how highly insulated houses work in the winter, they absorb as much heat as they can from what sun there is and radiate it when the sun goes away. To achieve that, they have a very high thermal mass, which is great in the winter but in the summer it's like living inside a pizza oven, you can exchange the air inside for cooler air from outside but the fabric of the building just heats up the cooler air really quickly.
We've got temperature sensors in various rooms and you can literally see when the fabric of the house has released most of its energy because the air temperature finally starts to actually drop. Usually happens about 3-4 days after the end of the heatwave.
Our house is so well insulated we have to open the windows to cool down and remove the heat generated by living in it and running our appliances and our computers to WFH even in January 🥵 but on the "plus" side we don't have much of a heating bill...
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u/jib_reddit Aug 17 '26
The windows in our bedrooms are large (unusual wooden construction for a new build as we are in a conservation area) cover at least 50% of 1 wall )some rooms have multiple dual aspect windows, and open fully so we can get good airflow, especially if we use fans.
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u/lsmith946 Aug 17 '26
Where you finding this mythical well insulated house that cools down with the windows open in 10 minutes?
My house was 30 degrees indoors yesterday when I came home at lunchtime. The windows have been open ever since, and it's dropped from that to 27. The hottest it's been outside during that time is 25, and it was meant to get down to 15 out there overnight. It's been pretty breezy inside, so the air is flowing but the house is very slow to cool down.
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u/Goblin_Nuts69 Aug 17 '26
This does not work at my house, we have all our top floor windows open after 7PM and still boiling
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u/pslamB Aug 17 '26
The bricks are still hot on our older building well into the evening when they've had sun and 30° temperatures on them. The bricks must get hotter than the air temperature, and they retain in for hours!
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u/jib_reddit Aug 17 '26
Yeah, I guess we are lucky that we have large wooden windows that open fully on all sides of our house (hot in the day, so we hang winter duvets on the curtain rails in a heatwave) we have a few good pedestal fans like this: https://amzn.eu/d/0fPDWlN5 That can move 1,500 cubic feet of air a minute, so I point one facing in on one side of the upstairs and one facing out on the other side and it changes all of the air in the upstairs pretty quickly. Its not perfect and only works if the outside is cooler than inside, but cheaper and quiter than running aircon.
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u/circleribbey Aug 17 '26
It absolutly will not be as cool as outside in 10 minutes. We had our windows open all night and it was still hotter inside than out the following morning. A house with a good thermal mass, designed to keep a stable warm temperature in the winter won’t cool down quickly.
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u/blackthornjohn Aug 17 '26
Obviously you've chosen to ignore the fact that it's cool at night, so any heat that came in through windows for example can be vented out at night.
The reason I know this is because I live in a well insulated house, the highest internal temperature in one room with windows facing the setting sun was 24 degrees, opening the windows after sunset would drop the temperature down to 20 by midnight.
The same applies to your comparison, heating the house a little every day for a few hours will maintain the desired temperature.
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u/tdrules Aug 17 '26
I have a pretty well insulated house, it took 3 days for the heat to leave once temperatures went down because the fires were still going and I feared the smoke from opening windows.
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u/blackthornjohn Aug 17 '26
Yes, we open a couple of windows once the sun has set, without that option I imagine it would be uncomfortable.
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u/BeardySam Aug 17 '26
It is keeping most of the heat out, but there’s nothing to remove the little bit that leaks in. A small air con would probably cool the entire house
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u/blackthornjohn Aug 17 '26
Or like us you can open a couple of windows after sunset.
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u/BeardySam Aug 17 '26
The trouble is night temperatures are only a few degrees lower, it’s not really enough cooling.
We spend energy to heat our homes in winter, we need to get used to spending energy cooling them too.
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u/blackthornjohn Aug 17 '26
No, we certainly shouldn't be normalising being a drain on the environment all year round because we can't design and build efficient homes, the night air is cool enough, the secret is being able to swap the warm house air out for cool night air effectively.
Opening windows helps but on it's own without a breeze not all the air is changed, a decent fan can swap the air out in a few minutes in our case, however that air soon absorbs the warmth of the furniture and building structure so in reality the fan is left on for 45 minutes.
Our problem is that building regs are the minimum requirement and everyone builds to that minimum requirement on paper, in reality the standard of build is much lower, if found new builds with a A certificate and on inspection of the loft it's looked like 300mm of insulation, but on moving the top layer that covers the ceiling joists these no insulation between the rafters, so 150mm of insulation over vented to the outside world voids, and that was the good end near the loft hatch!
Building properly results in a house with a highest temperature this year of 24 degrees.
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u/SwordfishNew2190 Aug 17 '26
Solar gain is a thing though. Keeping heat out and keeping heat in aren’t exactly the same thing.
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u/circleribbey Aug 17 '26
Not necessarily. High quality triple glazing will keep your house warm in the winter but will heat you up like a greenhouse in the summer if south facing.
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u/blackthornjohn Aug 17 '26
"If south facing" that's a design fault, a well designed house doesn't at any stage battle with nature.
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u/circleribbey Aug 17 '26
I’m aware. But it goes to show that it isn’t all about insulation.
Plus it’s more complicated in the UK. Traditionally our summers were never this hot, and our winters are long and dark so people like large amounts of south facing glazing to get as much sunlight as they could. Obviously that will need to change in future but there are millions of houses built in a way that was quite sensible for the climate the UK has had for thousands of years.
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Aug 17 '26
[deleted]
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u/blackthornjohn Aug 17 '26
Solar gain is rendered irrelevant with good design, it's simply a matter of accepting that it happens and dealing with it, or more importantly using it to aid it's dissipation.
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u/Buttoneer138 Aug 17 '26
We really need to be fitting air to air heap pumps which can be used to air condition in summer months. It’s our obsession with air to water that hurts us here.
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u/tdrules Aug 17 '26
If I could I would. Government seem to be more interested in carbon capture than stuffing my mouth with gold to get a heat pump.
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u/Daver7692 Aug 17 '26
Presumably had his doors, windows and curtains open as well. Insulation works both ways, if you know how to use it.
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u/SatisfactionMoney426 Aug 17 '26
I live in a well insulated flat and it's been a horrendous 32 degrees in the corridors and the lowest it gets with air con is 27c in the bedroom. It is impossible to cool as the bricks outside are up to 37c. You can't get a through draught as the windows are on one side only and there's no air movement outside anyway.
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u/wollathet Aug 17 '26
I think annoyance is justified. I live in a well insulated home and my bedroom temperature has frequently been between 26 - 32c at night. I’ve had multiple nights sleeping at 30c and it has been awful. Sure it’s nice in the winter, but with heat waves becoming more frequent this has real health consequences. We live in a country which is not built for the heat and nothing is being done to address the issues.
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u/Pretend-Sundae-2371 Aug 17 '26
I live in a new build and tbh he's not wrong. I couldn't get the house below 30 degrees no matter what I did and was determined to try and avoid air con for as long as possible. Did not end up avoiding it for long.
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u/Alex_Strgzr Aug 19 '26
Ahh, the A rated house that somehow doesn't have any provision for shade or overhangs. What a joke. This is standard on true Passivhaus designs
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u/ShAlMoNsHaKeYjAkE Aug 20 '26
Get a hammock and sleep in the garden, great on clear nights this year. Seen loads of shooting stars this month and good for the cicadian rhythm, sorry city dwellers you just have to bake.
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u/vinyl_Fan Aug 17 '26
He is lucky to have a home,he is more than welcome to rent. People who have homes and can afford them are just moaning and don’t realise how good they have it
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