Ventilation: when it cools and when it makes things worse
Natural ventilation is powerful and widely misunderstood. In a humid climate, ventilating at the wrong hour adds moisture without cooling things down.
Ventilating helps when the outside air is cooler or less humid than inside, or when there's a breeze that helps evaporation. Ventilating makes things worse when it's as hot and humid outside as it is inside, or in a room with A/C.
The three strategies
Cross-ventilation
Openings on opposite faces let the breeze pass through the house.
Stack effect
High openings let hot air escape; low openings let cooler air in.
Ventilating the cavity
Letting the overheated air under the roof escape before it comes down.
It loses effectiveness where nights stay hot and humid, an effect made worse because nighttime minimums are rising the most See. Fans, which move air at minimal power cost, tend to be more reliable.
Now you understand why your house gets so hot.
What's left is the specifics: which intervention makes sense for your home. Gallardía diagnoses and installs residential thermal solutions in Panama.
◆ Sources for this page
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