We saw the other day that in theory the roof on brother Jack's house retains a critical amount of heat resulting in a room temperature that is two or three degrees higher than the outside temperature -- enough to make the difference between a good and miserable sleep.
How does this check out in practice?
Here you can see my notes from a recent stay at the house. I measured the temp of the interior wall surface with a radiant thermometer until about 3 am, at which time the outside air temp was about 29 and the interior temp hanging up at 31 -- too warm for comfort (the orange colored zone). This was a pretty typical June night (June 8, 2007) ending with a dawn temperature of 27 to 29, (dawn temp also happens in almost all cases to be the daily minimum.). This matches the experience that Jack has been reporting, too hot in room in the middle of the night many nights in June. (It doesn't help that Dah insists on closing the windows at night for fear of intruders).
The interesting thing here is that the the discomfort comes from only a small amount of temp elevation. If we can drag the temp down just a couple of degrees, we will be as happy as the farmer sleeping under a cool nighttime tin roof. The challenge is this-- how can we get this modest amount of cooling without resorting to the overkill of air conditioning?
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