How Did People Survive Before Air Conditioning? (Image credit: Everett Collection/Shutterstock) Probably everyone has had this thought at least once a summer, while sweating through their clothes on a subway platform or in a parking lot, desperate to locate their car: how did people survive before air conditioning? Although we may not be able to imagine summer without it, prior to its invention in 1902, people did still manage to live and go about their business in New York, and even in cities like Savannah and New Orleans. Here's how they did it. They built their houses differently. We may not think about it much, but the invention of the air conditioner radically changed the way people built buildings, especially in the south. You may have noticed that older buildings tend to have much higher ceilings: this allowed heat to rise so that inhabits could enjoy the cooler space below. Deep eaves and porches protected windows from the heat of the sun, and it was common to plant trees on the east and west sides of a house for additional shade.

In addition to this, rooms were designed with windows on opposite sides of the space, which allowed for cross ventilation. Air likes to have a place to go, so opening up a single window won't generate much air movement. But open two windows right across from each other and you can get a nice breeze going. In cases where it wasn't possible to have two windows on opposite sides of a single room, architects would line up rooms in a row, allowing air to flow between them. new ac unit arizonaYou can see this in old shotgun homes in New Orleans, or in railroad apartments in New York.what is the best hvac unit to buy Currently the porch, like the fireplace, is a charming but somewhat vestigial architectural feature. ac unit for house pricesBut in the past porches were incredibly important, not just for shading the windows of a home, but also for providing a place where people could sit outside, out of the glare of the sun, and perhaps enjoy a breeze.

These days, when it's hot, people flock inside, but in the past it was the opposite: temperatures indoors and out were more or less the same, and the porch was much less stuffy than the rest of the house. This led to a whole culture of people sitting outside on their porches after supper, which has essentially disappeared. Some older houses were also built with sleeping porches, screened-in porches where one could sleep during the summer, enjoying the breezes but protected from bugs. New Yorkers replicated this by sleeping on the fire escape on especially hot days. One way to cope with the heat of the sun is by changing your schedule. People in parts of southern Spain still do this — they nap during the hottest hours of the day, resume work later in the afternoon, and then shop and socialize once the sun has gone down. People in the American south used to do this too — witness the scene in Gone with the Wind where all the ladies take naps. They... went to the movies? Even after the invention of the air conditioner in 1902 (and the window unit A/C in 1939), air conditioners were prohibitively expensive and still out of the reach of most people.

The one place in most towns that was air conditioned was the movie theater. People would flock there to enjoy the artificially cooled air, which helped contribute to the rise of the summer blockbuster. We have a post on Apartment Therapy, one that I find particularly fascinating, about how people who don't have A/C stay cool. There are all kinds of crazy solutions in there, from cuddling frozen water bottles to braiding ice into your hair. People in the past were equally resourceful — in my reading, I encountered anything from hanging wet laundry in doorways (creating a sort of swamp cooler effect) to (allegedly) placing one's underwear in the icebox. Unorthodox — but if my A/C were out, I might be tempted to try it. Mental Floss: Life Before Air Conditioning Time: A Brief History of Air Conditioning The Boston Globe: How to Live Without Air ConditioningSleeping on the front porch after a hot summer day was a straight out necessity. The upstairs of the 1940’s farm house had turned into a sauna and sleeping in the upstairs bedrooms was not possible.

Even after the sun went down, the upstairs seemed to get hotter. Let's look at some ways to cool a house without air conditioning? Now that I spend time trying to figure out how a home can be more energy efficient, I think back to those hot summer days and wonder two things: 1. Where was the air conditioner? I have seen several articles floating around that talk about air conditioning as being an unnecessary appliance. That people have gotten soft, and if people would just handle the heat like a caveman, they wouldn’t need those energy wasting air conditioners. Growing up in that Northwest farm house, air conditioning was not expected. Sleeping on the front porch a few times a year was. The air conditioner was only for city folks that were not lucky enough to live on a farm. Where was the air conditioner? It was still in the J.C. Penny catalog. 2. Why did the upstairs get so hot in the evening? When you’re sleeping on the front porch and your 10 years old, you don’t really care why the upstairs is so hot.

It’s not something you try to figure out before you find yourself sleeping on the porch again. You like sleeping on the porch. If the upstairs is too hot for sleeping and you would rather not risk sleeping on the porch, or anywhere else outside, then considering why the upstairs and the whole house is so hot in the evening becomes an important issue to solve. Air conditioners are fairly energy efficient appliances, but they’re not free to operate. With the constant grinding of the A/C and the power bill increasing by the hour, a person has a tendency to think about why the upstairs is so hot and ways to cool a house. The old farm house was being moved to a new location and I had a chance to look in the attic while part of the roof was removed. Instead of the attic being the dark, spooky cave of my childhood, it was an inviting place to explore with plenty of natural light. I was surprised to see that the attic had nothing in it. No old magazines, no old socks or toys, no old carcasses of rats or cats.

Of course, there was no insulation either and I could look down the chimney chase from the attic clear to the basement. This is a good place to start to answer the question of ways to cool a house. The roof had no attic ventilation at the roof peak or the eves. The only ventilation was provided by two gable vents, one at each end of the attic. The roof shingles were always a dark color. I understand very well now why the upstairs of this old house was so darn hot after a hot summer day. The attic collected the heat all day and then shared it with the downstairs all evening. How to keep the attic from overheating and ruining a good night sleep. Here's 10 ways to cool a house before you add air conditioning. These will help your attempt to keep the home livable in the evenings - try these retrofits and improvements. 1. Solar powered attic fan A solar powered attic fan works very well and is a one time investment in the amount of $450 to $800. When installed on your roof, the self-contained solar unit exhausts hot air from the attic whenever the sun hits the solar array with enough bright direct sunlight to operate the fan.

Best operation occurs when attic ventilation is added along the eve’s and the roof peak ventilation is limited. Well, it works on flat commercial buildings, might work on homes too. Anything that will cool the roof surface will help keep heat from radiating into the attic space. Unfortunately, this may increase your water bill substantially. Sprinkler and hose, $20. Water bill around $300. Shade the roof and you have a cooler attic and a cooler home. If you have a two story home and you’re just getting around to planting shade trees, this solution may take a while to materialize. One redwood tree 12 inches tall, $4.95. Expect shade in 40 years. 4. Air sealing the attic floor Especially before adding insulation - don’t add insulation to the attic floor without air sealing the air holes and penetrations first. Best process, good drop light, knee pads, and a can of Great Stuff spray foam insulation. 5. Adding Additional roof ventilation Ways to cool a house starts with attic ventilation.

Most older homes simply do not have enough attic ventilation. Ventilation should allow air flow from the eve’s to the peak. Take out solid bird blocking and add screened vents at the eve’s. Add manufactured metal or plastic roof vents near the peak. During the installation of new roofing is the best time to add attic ventilation. Eve Soffit vents, $8.50. Roof peak vents about $12 After air sealing, install insulation. Insulation will help slow the transfer of heat from the attic to the living space below. The more insulation the merrier. Building codes keep adding insulation, in some of the colder parts of the country, insulating to R-49 is code. That’s about 16 inches of insulation. Don’t worry, this could be a do-it-yourself project. The big building supply stores have the material and the equipment you need to do the job. Add insulation in the colder climates to keep warm, add insulation in the warmer climates to keep cool. Add 12 inches of blown fiberglass insulation for about $1.25 to $1.75 a square foot of attic floor space.

7. Sealing the knee wall floor connection. Many older, two story homes have knee wall attic space. This is the space along the walls of an upstairs room that has reduced headroom along the sides of the room. You know, your standing upstairs and you must be careful to stand in the middle of the room to keep from bumping your head. The problem is the knee wall attic is often open to the space between the floor of the upstairs room and the ceiling of the downstairs room. This means the hot air in the knee wall attic can travel right under the upstairs floor and help heat the whole house. Stuff some insulation in a plastic bag and stuff a bag between every floor joist opening in the knee wall attic. This will keep the hot air from traveling between the floor and ceiling. Sealing these floor joist openings is important during the cooling season and the heating season. Plastic bags $.50, insulation, $1.00 a bag. In older balloon framed homes, the chimney chase is often open and allows heat and cold transfer between all floors, clear from the attic to the basement.

For effective cooling and heating, these chase corridors should be sealed off. Spray foam insulation, $7.00 a can. 9. Place Fans in Upstairs Windows Place one or more big box fans in upstairs windows. Install them so they are blowing out the window. Close all other windows and exterior doors but leave the interior doors open all the way to the basement. Draw the cooler basement air up through the house and out the upstairs windows. Basements are always cooler and can help cool the rest of the home. Hopefully, you don’t have a smelly tank of stove oil in the basement! A good box fan about $30. Usually when you install solar panels on a roof, the panels are placed on a racking system that holds the panels off the roof about 3 inches. The panels keep the suns rays from hitting the roof surface and slow heat transfer to the attic space. One of the advantages of solar panels on a hot day is the shading they provide the roof. Maybe not as good for shade as a big redwood, but it’s still shade.