Why Old Buildings Need Cooler Minds Than New Ones.
Old Buildings Are Cooler Because The Stone Walls Are Slow Battery Packs Of Thermal Mass – Slow To Charge Up In The Day And Then Slowly To Release Heat At Night.
Gloucester has a vast amount of old buildings that have been used for years and years. From the medieval timber framed buildings on Westgate Street, to the beautiful Georgian Terraces on Spa Road, to the old Victorian Brick Warehouses down by the Docks. Each of these buildings were designed with summer heat in mind. The old medieval buildings have things like north facing larders to keep food cold, and opposing casement windows on the ground and first floors that can be opened to create cross flow ventilation. And the old Georgian houses have heavy internal shutters on the windows that can be closed at certain times of the day to block out the sun, but still allow air to circulate around the inside of the room. None of these solutions require any moving parts.
However, once a building is changed to be used for a completely different purpose, all that is required to turn a wonderful solution to a building’s cooling problems into the root of all discomfort, is to fill the space with an array of modern computers, a load of modern lights and then fill the space with 12 hot, sweaty people. The problem that the walls of a building posed to the building’s designers, has, in the intervening years, been transferred to the building’s designers’ successors.
Air conditioning listed or old buildings is very different to air conditioning a new building on a business park. Pipe runs, humidity effects on lime plaster (usually old buildings are lime plastered) and the restrictions imposed by listed building status all have to be carefully thought out. There is a useful background explanation of guidance on heating and cooling in historic buildings.
A useful reference for Air conditioning Gloucester is https://acecc.co.uk/.
The stone walls are the same. It’s what has been put in them that has changed.
