Wondering how to keep your home cool without relying on air conditioning?

Discover how to capture the cooling breezes naturally available on your site, while protecting your home from harsher wind and storms.

Learn what to ask your designer about cross-ventilation, window types, and floor plan layout to make natural airflow actually work in your home.

Listen to the episode now.

Hello! This is Episode 402, and Way #2 in the ‘44 Ways to Create Your Sustainable Home’ series here on the podcast.

In Episode 401 we covered orientation, and understanding how the sun moves across your site, and how positioning your home to work with that movement can transform its comfort, help it feel amazing to live in day-to-day, and reduce its energy use and requirements for artificial heating and cooling.

In this Episode, we are covering another natural asset that is freely available on your site, and that’s breezes.

Natural ventilation can be one of the most effective, lowest-cost strategies for keeping a home comfortable. And like orientation, it works best when it is designed in from the beginning, because the floor plan layout, window types, and building form all determine how well a home is able to ventilate naturally.

There are two distinct aspects to designing for wind and breeze at your site, and it is worth separating them clearly from the start.

The first aspect is capturing the prevailing breezes for natural ventilation and cooling that can be helpful, especially in the warmer months. These types of breezes are the consistent, directional air movements that occur regularly on your site. It might be coastal sea breezes or valley breezes, or the cooling change that arrives after a hot day.

The second aspect is managing the prevailing winds and storm events. For most sites and locations, these typically come from a different compass direction to the pleasant breezes, and they can be weather forces to be aware of and manage.

Both need to be understood, ideally before design begins, because the responses to each are different, and sometimes they can pull the design in different directions.

Every site has its own wind and breeze characteristics, shaped by local geography, topography, proximity to water, and local climate. There are two practical ways to build an understanding of what this might mean for your site: observation, and formal wind data such as the wind roses published by your country’s meteorology service.

Once you know your site’s patterns, the design conversation shifts to how the floor plan, window types, and building form work together to capture the cooling breezes you want, and protect against the wind and storm events you don’t.

Cross-ventilation is one of the most effective forms of natural ventilation available on most sites, even in densely developed areas.

But it only works if openings are provided on at least two sides of the home or room, and the floor plan allows the air to flow through.

In this Episode, we cover:

• The two distinct aspects of designing for wind and breeze, and why they pull the design in different directions
• How to understand your site’s specific wind and breeze patterns, including how to use wind roses and observation
• How cross-ventilation and stack ventilation work, and what the floor plan, window type and building form have to do with it
• Why controlled ventilation matters, and where uncontrolled air movement can quietly undo your home’s temperature and air quality management
• What designing for breezes looks like in a renovation project, where the building envelope is largely fixed
• How to design your home to protect it from harsh wind and storm events, including the role of building form, eaves, planting, and window and door selection
• The questions worth asking your designer or architect when natural ventilation and wind are being considered

Plus a whole lot more.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE NOW.

RESOURCES

Bureau of Meteorology wind roses (Australia) >>> https://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/wind/selection_map.shtml 

Your Home (Australian Government resource) >>> https://www.yourhome.gov.au/ 

ASHRAE Weather Data Centre (National information) >>> https://www.ashrae.org/technical-resources/bookstore/weather-data-center 

’44 Ways to Create a Sustainable Home’ e-guide >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/ways 

Access the support and guidance you need to be confident and empowered when renovating and building your family home inside my signature online program, HOME METHOD >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/the-home-method/

Learn more about how to interview and select the right builder with the Choose Your  Builder mini-course >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/choose-your-builder