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Two houses can sit side by side under the very same sun, and one is a furnace inside while the other stays cool and easy — and neither has any air conditioning. The difference is the house itself. Most folks, when their house bakes in summer, think the only answer is to buy a machine and pay to run it all season. But the old builders knew a house can be made to stay cool on its own, by the way it is built, shaded, and vented — and it comes down to three plain things. Understand those three and you can pull the heat out of near any house, small or large, for little or nothing. In this video I show you why your house gets so hot, and the three old ways to cool it.
I am Elias, and I keep up this Lancaster County place with no tie to the public power company — so no grid air conditioning, ever. I have had to understand how a building itself holds heat or sheds it. I made you videos already on cooling your own body in the heat and on placing a fan to move the air, so I will not tread that ground again. Today is about the house itself — the shell of it — why it heats up and how you make it st
https://eliasyoder.com
Two houses can sit side by side under the very same sun, and one is a furnace inside while the other stays cool and easy — and neither has any air conditioning. The difference is the house itself. Most folks, when their house bakes in summer, think the only answer is to buy a machine and pay to run it all season. But the old builders knew a house can be made to stay cool on its own, by the way it is built, shaded, and vented — and it comes down to three plain things. Understand those three and you can pull the heat out of near any house, small or large, for little or nothing. In this video I show you why your house gets so hot, and the three old ways to cool it.
I am Elias, and I keep up this Lancaster County place with no tie to the public power company — so no grid air conditioning, ever. I have had to understand how a building itself holds heat or sheds it. I made you videos already on cooling your own body in the heat and on placing a fan to move the air, so I will not tread that ground again. Today is about the house itself — the shell of it — why it heats up and how you make it st
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00:00Two houses can sit side by side under the very same sun, and one of them is a furnace inside,
00:07while the other stays cool and easy.
00:09And it is not the air conditioning that makes the difference, for neither has any.
00:14It is the house itself.
00:17One was built and kept in a way that keeps the heat out, and the other lets it pour straight
00:23in.
00:24Most folks, when their house bakes in the summer, think the only answer is to buy a machine and pay
00:30to run it.
00:31But the old builders knew that a house can be made to stay cool on its own, by the way
00:37it is built and shaded and vented, and it comes down to three plain things.
00:43Understand those three, and you can pull the heat out of near any house, small or large, for little or
00:51nothing.
00:52Today, I am going to show you why your house gets so hot, and the three old ways to cool
00:58it.
00:59I am Elias, and I keep up this Lancaster County place with no tie to the public power company,
01:06so I have no grid air conditioning to fall back on, and I have had to understand how a building
01:12itself holds heat or sheds it.
01:15Now, I have given you videos already on cooling your own body in the heat, and on placing a fan
01:22to move the air,
01:24and I will not go back over all that here.
01:27Today is about the house itself, the shell of it, why it heats up, and how you make it stop,
01:34which is a different thing, and the deepest fix of all.
01:38There are three old principles, and the old builders lived by all three.
01:47Insulation, ventilation, shading.
01:50Let me take you through each.
01:53Quick word before I go further.
01:55The old methods my family uses, there is more of it than fits in any one video.
02:01I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com.
02:06The book is the long version.
02:09If you want it, it is there.
02:11I will not mention it again.
02:13When I was young, I could never understand why my grandfather's old stone farmhouse stayed so cool on a blazing
02:22day
02:22when the newer frame houses roundabout were like ovens inside.
02:27I asked him once, sweating, why his house was cool as a cellar in July.
02:34And he took me round and showed me, patient, the way he showed me everything.
02:39He showed me the thick stone walls that drank the heat slow.
02:44He showed me the deep eaves that threw shade on the windows through the high sun,
02:49and the big trees set on the west and south.
02:52He showed me the little louvered vents up under the eaves,
02:56and the cupola on the barn where the hot air poured out the top.
03:01He had not read it in any book.
03:04It was simply how his people had always built,
03:07handed down, the knowing of how to make a house live easy with the sun,
03:13instead of fighting it.
03:14Not one bit of it used any power.
03:18And I have never forgotten walking into that cool, dim house out of the blazing yard
03:24and understanding that a building itself can be made to keep you cool.
03:30That is the knowing I want to hand you now.
03:34But first understand plainly why a house gets hot at all,
03:39for once you see it, the three fixes make perfect sense.
03:43The heat comes at your house from the sun,
03:47beating down on the roof and the walls all the long day.
03:51That surface, the roof especially,
03:54soaks up that heat until it is fair scorching,
03:57and then that heat works its way down and inward
04:01through the roof and the walls and radiates into the rooms below,
04:06and the hot air, being light,
04:09rises and gathers up under your ceiling and in your upstairs.
04:13So there are three places to fight it.
04:17You can stop the heat from getting through the roof and walls in the first place,
04:21which is insulation.
04:24You can give the hot air that does build up a way to escape up and out,
04:30which is ventilation.
04:31Insulation.
04:31And you can keep the sun from ever striking the walls and windows so hard to begin with,
04:38which is shading.
04:41Insulation.
04:42Ventilation.
04:43Shading.
04:44Now let us take them one at a time.
04:47The first is insulation, and it means putting a barrier between the hot surface and the room,
04:53so the heat cannot pass straight through.
04:57Think of a pot holder.
04:59When you take a hot pan off the stove, you do not grab it with your bare hand.
05:03You use a thick cloth pad that stops the heat from passing into your skin.
05:10Insulation is a pot holder for your house.
05:12The roof is where it matters most, for the roof takes the worst of the sun all day,
05:18and a metal roof especially gets blazing hot.
05:22So under that roof you want a layer of insulation to stop that heat from radiating down into the
05:28house.
05:29But here is the part most folks get wrong, and it is the whole secret of doing it right.
05:35The insulation must not be pressed flat and tight against the hot roof.
05:41There must be an air gap between the roof and the insulation.
05:45Why an air gap?
05:47Because if you leave a space there, the heat that comes off the underside of the hot roof
05:53warms the air in that gap, and that hot air, being light, rises and moves along the gap and
06:01escapes out the vents at the eaves and the ridge, carrying the heat away with it before
06:07it ever reaches the insulation.
06:09The air gap lets the heat run out sideways and up and away instead of driving down into
06:16your rooms.
06:17So the rule is, insulate the roof, but leave that gap so the roof can breathe and the heat
06:24can escape.
06:26Insulation pressed tight against a hot roof does far less good than insulation with a
06:32breathing gap behind it.
06:33That is the old builder's trick, and it makes all the difference.
06:38And there is one more plain thing on the roof worth knowing, the color of it.
06:44A dark roof drinks the sun's heat, and a light one turns much of it away, which is why you
06:50will see the hot countries paint their roofs and walls white or light, and why a light-colored
06:57or shiny roof runs far cooler than a dark one baking in the sun.
07:03If ever you roof or paint, the lighter color is the cooler choice by a good measure.
07:09And a bright, shiny foil laid in that roof insulation helps too, for it turns back the heat that would
07:16radiate down, bouncing it away rather than soaking it up.
07:20So a light roof, a bright, reflective layer, and the breathing air gap behind the insulation,
07:28all working together, keep that fierce roof heat from ever reaching your rooms.
07:34And your walls the same, for the walls take the sun too, especially the ones the afternoon
07:41sun beats on.
07:43If your walls are of masonry, of block or stone or brick, there is something worth understanding
07:49about how they hold heat, for it works both for you and against you.
07:55A heavy masonry wall soaks up the sun's heat slowly all through the day, and because it
08:01soaks it up slow, the inside of the house stays cool through the day while the wall is still
08:08drinking the heat in.
08:10That is the good part, and it is why an old stone house feels cool and cellar-like on a
08:16hot afternoon.
08:17But here is the other side of it.
08:20All that heat the wall soaked up through the day has to go somewhere.
08:25And come evening and night, when the air cools, that wall lets all its stored heat back out
08:32into the house, so that your house grows warm at night just when you want it cool.
08:38You will have felt this if you live in a masonry house, a wall that is warm to the hand
08:44late
08:44in the evening, giving back the day's sun.
08:48So if you want to fight that, you build a second inner wall or a lining with an air space
08:54between
08:54it and the masonry, a gap again, so that when the wall gives back its heat at night, that
09:01inner barrier and the air gap keep it from pouring straight into your rooms.
09:06The air gap is the friend of the cool house at every turn, in the roof and in the walls
09:14both.
09:15The second principle is ventilation, the moving of air, and this one is about getting the
09:21trapped hot air out of the house.
09:24For no matter how well you insulate, some heat builds up inside, and hot air rises and
09:31gathers up high, under the ceiling, up in the attic, up in the top of the rooms, where
09:37it sits trapped and makes the whole house stuffy and close.
09:42The answer is to give that hot air a way to escape up and out at the top, and let
09:47cooler
09:48air draw in low to replace it.
09:51Now the old people were masters of this, and you need only look at an old barn to see
09:56it.
09:56A barn is a great tall building full of hay and animals that would bake in the summer.
10:02And how did the old builders keep it from cooking?
10:05They put a cupola on top, that little raised structure with louvered sides you see on the
10:11peak of every old barn.
10:13And it is not just for looks, it is a vent.
10:16The hot air rises up through the barn and pours out those louvers at the very top, and cooler
10:22air draws in below, and the barn breathes and stays bearable.
10:28That is the whole principle, an opening at the top for the hot air to escape.
10:33You can do the same on a house.
10:35There is a kind of roof vent, a turbine that spins in the wind, that you can set on your
10:41roof, and when the breeze blows, it turns, and the turning draws the hot air up out of
10:47your attic and throws it out, with no power at all, just the wind doing the work.
10:53You see them on the roofs of barns and workshops and factories everywhere, spinning away, pulling
10:59the heat out.
11:00Or a simple ridge vent along the peak of the roof does the same, quieter, letting the hot
11:06air seep out the very top.
11:08And down lower, high up on your walls near the ceiling, you can put vents or louvers that
11:15let the hot trapped air near the ceiling escape, the way the old houses had those little louvered
11:21openings up high for just this reason.
11:24The old builders put openings up high to let the hot air out, and openings down low to let
11:30the cool air in, so the house drew a constant gentle current through itself, the cool coming
11:37in low, and the hot going out high.
11:40Get the air moving through and up and out, and you carry the heat out with it.
11:45And there is a natural power that drives this for you, free, if you set your openings right,
11:52for hot air rising is itself a kind of engine.
11:56When you have an opening down low on the cool shaded side, and an opening up high on the far
12:02side, the hot air rising and escaping up high actually pulls fresh cooler air in through
12:09the low opening behind it, a steady draft flowing through the house all on its own, with no fan
12:16and no power, just the natural rising of the hot air doing the work.
12:21The old builders called this the draw, and they set their windows and vents high and low, and
12:28on opposite sides to make the house breathe itself.
12:32So think not just of openings, but of low openings and high openings on different sides, so the
12:39air has a path to flow in low and out high.
12:43A single window does little, but a low one and a high one across from each other make a river
12:50of air through the house.
12:52And open the house on the shaded cool side to draw from, not the hot sunny side, so the
12:58air you pull in is the coolest you have.
13:01And the moving air helps you in another way, through the fan, which I have spoken of before
13:07so I will keep it short.
13:09A fan does not cool the air, but it moves it, and moving air over your skin dries the sweat
13:16and carries your body heat away, so you feel cooler even when the air is not.
13:21And the moving air stirs up the still, stuffy, humid air of a closed room, and helps it feel
13:28fresher and less close.
13:30So a fan, run off my solar, set to move the air through the house and over the body, works
13:37hand in hand with the venting to keep you comfortable.
13:41The venting carries the heat out of the house, and the fan keeps the air stirring over your
13:46skin.
13:48The third principle is shading, and it is the simplest of all, keeping the sun from ever
13:53striking your walls and windows so hard in the first place.
13:57For the sun pouring through a window or beating on a wall is the greatest single load of heat
14:03your house takes.
14:04So if you can stop that sun before it lands, you have stopped the heat before it starts.
14:10Think of it as holding a parasol over your house.
14:14When you stand in the blazing sun and open a parasol over yourself, the sun no longer strikes
14:20you, it strikes the parasol, and you stand in cool shade.
14:25Shading a house is the same.
14:27You contrive something that casts a shadow over the hot walls and windows so the sun lands
14:33on the shade and not the house.
14:35Now which shade you want depends on where the sun comes from, and this is worth understanding.
14:41When the sun is high overhead in the middle of the day, a shade that sticks out over the
14:47top of a window, an awning or an overhang or a canopy, will throw a shadow straight down
14:53over the window and block that high sun nicery.
14:56The old houses had deep eaves and porch roofs for just this, to shade the walls and windows
15:04from the high sun.
15:06But in the late afternoon, the sun drops low in the west and comes at your house near sideways,
15:12low and level, right in under any overhang.
15:16And that low afternoon sun on the west wall is the fiercest heat of the whole day.
15:21An overhead awning cannot stop a low sideways sun.
15:27For that, you need shading that stands up and down, vertical shades, fins or slats set
15:33out from the wall on the west side, or a trellis, or shutters, or a tree or tall shrubs, something
15:41that stands vertical to block that low sideways sun.
15:44So, overhead shades for the high midday sun, and vertical shades for the low western afternoon
15:52sun.
15:53Shade the west wall above all, for that is where the worst heat comes.
15:58And the light still comes in, mind, just softened and broken and shorn of its scorching heat,
16:05so you are not shutting yourself in the dark, only cutting the fierce of it.
16:10One thing worth knowing on the shading, that it does far more good outside the glass than
16:16inside it.
16:17A blind or a curtain on the inside of a window helps some, but by then the sun has already
16:23come through the glass and its heat is already in the room.
16:27Far better to stop the sun outside the window, with an awning, a shutter, a shade, a vine,
16:34a tree, so it never passes through the glass at all.
16:38The old shutters that close over the outside of a window, the deep porch, the awning, the
16:45shade tree, all stop the sun before it enters.
16:49Shade from the outside, and you turn the heat away at the wall.
16:54Shade only from the inside, and you have already let it in.
16:58So reach for the outside shade first, wherever you can.
17:03Now let me be honest about one thing that shapes all of this.
17:06The difference between a dry heat and a wet, humid heat, for it changes what helps you most.
17:13In a dry country, the air is thirsty, and moving air and evaporation cool you wonderfully.
17:20The fan and the breeze do great work.
17:23But in a humid country, where the air hangs heavy and wet, that heavy, damp air is itself
17:30much of the misery, for the sweat cannot dry off your skin when the air is already full
17:35of water, and so you feel hotter than the temperature alone would say.
17:39In that humid case, the moving of air matters even more, not because it cools the air, but
17:47because stirring the air and drawing it through helps the damp move off your skin and keeps
17:53the stale wet air from sitting close around you.
17:56So in the humid places, lean hard on the ventilation, the drawing of air through and up and out, and
18:04the fans, to keep that heavy air moving rather than sitting stagnant.
18:09The venting and the moving air are your best friends where the heat is wet.
18:15Now the small, honest word on why so few houses are built this way any more, and it is not
18:21a wicked plot, only the plain shape of things.
18:25It is quicker and cheaper to throw up a house fast, thin-walled and poorly vented and unshaded,
18:32and then hang an air-conditioning machine on it and let the buyer pay to run that machine
18:37forever, than it is to build a house that stays cool on its own by good sense.
18:42The builder saves his money on the quick house, and the power company makes its money on the
18:48machine running all summer, year on year.
18:52And the old knowing of insulation and venting and shading, which costs nothing to use but
18:58must be built in with care and thought, gets left out, because no one down the line profits
19:04by it.
19:05The cool house built by wisdom pays nobody a monthly bill, so the old ways of building cool
19:12cool, got quietly set aside in favor of the fast house and the machine bolted on, not
19:18because anyone decided to bury them, but because the money all ran the other way.
19:24So there are the three old ways to cool a hot house.
19:28Insulate it, above all the roof, with an air gap behind the insulation so the heat can escape
19:34rather than drive down into your rooms.
19:38Ventilate it, giving the hot air a way to rise up and out at the top, through a roof turbine
19:44or a ridge vent or a barn-style cupola, with lower openings to draw the cool air in, and
19:50a fan to keep the air stirring.
19:53And shade it, holding a parasol over the hot walls and windows, overhead shades for the high
19:59sun, and vertical shades for the low western afternoon sun, shading that west wall above
20:06all.
20:07Do these three, and your house will stay cool on its own through the worst of the summer,
20:13small house or large, for little or nothing, the way the old houses and barns did long before
20:20there was a machine to buy.
20:22I would like to hear what your house is like in the heat.
20:26Tell me down below whether your house bakes or stays cool, and what it is built of, the
20:32wood or the block or the stone, and whether your roof is the metal that gets so hot.
20:38And tell me what part of the country you are in, and whether your heat is the dry kind or
20:44the wet, for it makes all the difference in what will help you most.
20:50Next time, I want to show you more of the old ways to cut your power bill down through
20:55the summer, past the cooling alone, all the quiet places a house bleeds money and power
21:02through the hot months, and how the old people kept their costs down near to nothing.
21:07For once you stop leaning on the machine, there is a great deal more a body can save besides.
21:13The old builders raised houses and barns that stayed cool on their own through the fiercest
21:19summers, by understanding the plain principles of heat and building with care to insulate
21:25and vent and shade.
21:27And those buildings kept their people and their animals comfortable for generations, with never
21:32a machine nor a power bill.
21:35There is a deep wisdom in a house built to work with the sun and the wind rather than
21:40to fight them with a machine.
21:42The people who built this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting
21:47to remember it.
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