Hot Climate Home Innovations To Keep You Delightfully Cool

The weather in and around Sydney gets hot in the summer. Most people put up with it, but there are many things that you can do to fight back against the heat. Getting your home’s design right can make all the difference, letting you stay cool, no matter what heat waves bring.

In 2020, temperatures in many parts of Australia rose about 40° C, a dangerous threshold. Once temperatures get that high, it becomes difficult for the human body to remain a comparatively cool 35° C. Sweating is constant, and the body has to make new types of proteins to regulate its interior, something older people can struggle to do.

So what exactly can you do to improve your home during hot weather?

Add The Right Window Treatments

Adding blinds inside your home isn’t particularly effective at keeping the heat at bay. That’s because the sun’s energy has already travelled through glass into the house by the time it interacts with them.

The trick here is to apply some protection to the outside of the windows. Awnings and shutters work well in some areas. However, if you want to be high-tech, you might consider adding reflective films to your windows, preventing the majority of sunlight from entering and heating your rooms. Light gets reflected back out into the city or the surrounding space.

Paint Your Walls White

Painting your walls and (if the option is available to you) roof white is another excellent way to deal with the excessive summer heat. White paint is reflective, so incoming solar energy gets bounced back out to space, keeping your home cooler.

People have used white paint to keep homes cool for thousands of years. The practice is still going strong in Mediterranean regions where people have to deal with hot weather from early spring until late autumn. Plus, it’s cheap. If you’re on a budget, painting your house white is one of the least expensive ways to keep things cool in the summer.

Make Sure That You Have Horizontal And Vertical Airflow

During hot weather, you want your home to feel like it has some breeze. Moving air is essential in hot, humid weather conditions because it allows sweat to evaporate from your skin, keeping you cool.

Unfortunately, making that happen is easier said than done. You want to utilise what experts call the “stack effect.” This is where you have more than one interacting air current to keep you cool. The best way to do this is via your air conditioning system. Careful placement of air intake and outlet pipes can cause more favourable airflow that leaves you cooler for longer. However, if that option isn’t available to you, just use a fan.

Get A Plunge Pool

When temperatures get above 45° C, regular HVAC systems start to struggle. Most manufacturers never designed them to cope with temperatures that extreme. Therefore, even interior temperatures can warm up.

However, water takes much longer to get hot. Even when the air temperature rises to ridiculous levels, lakes and rivers remain balmy and cool.

Of course, most people don’t have access to natural bodies of water on their properties. However, they can install fibreglass plunge pools. These are great for cooling down after a sauna and, of course, during hot weather. Spend the worst of the day in the pool and hardly notice rising temperatures.

Get A Ceiling Fan

Ceiling fans might look quite “wild west,” but they are considerably less expensive to run than conventional air conditioners. Ceiling fans don’t cool the air but rather shift it around. They rely on sweat evaporating from your skin’s surface to impart their cooling effect.

Try Hydronic Cooling

As mentioned above, air conditioners can struggle when temperatures go above 40 to 45°C. That’s why some homeowners are experimenting with an innovative concept called hydronic cooling. With hydronics, water runs through pipes in the walls, cooling the home down with the power of water.

Hydronics are very good at keeping concrete-based homes cool. Water pipes run throughout the floor, cooling down the materials that make up the building, and acting as a type of reverse radiator. Even better, many of these systems are passive, meaning that they take advantage of the lower ambient temperature of water to keep things cool.

If your building has high thermal mass, the results can be spectacular. Large cool pieces of concrete can keep your home feeling pleasant for weeks of hot, muggy weather without dramatically raising your energy bills or harming the environment.

Get Pavers Instead Of Deck

While a deck is practical, it’s not the best way to keep your home cool if you live in a hot weather-prone area. Deck tends to heat up quite a bit because it is raised off the ground.

Pavers, on the other hand, are in contact with the ground. If you embed them in the cool Earth, they will take longer to warm up.

Insulate Your Property

Insulating your property is something that most people associate with keeping it warm. But it also helps to keep it cool if you have an air conditioning unit.

Insulation prevents heat transfer in both directions, both out of and into your property. In the winter, it prevents hot air inside the home from escaping into the cooler surrounding environment. In the summer, it prevents cool air from leaking out and being replaced by hot air outside.

Insulating your property is surprisingly inexpensive and considerably cheaper than installing an ineffective HVAC and trying to run it all day. It keeps your home cooler for longer in the morning, even if you rely on passive temperature control.

Use Outdoor Rooms

Failing everything else, you might consider adding an outdoor room. These get you out of the house completely where temperatures can rise uncomfortably and into a cooler, more pleasant environment. Perhaps you could set up an outdoor kitchen to prepare meals for guests.