11 Comments
Apr 8, 2022Liked by Brian Potter

Great article! I love learning about the history of building systems. Incredible to see how much fuel switching happened in the 30 years after 1940.

One small note: I'm curious where these numbers came from: "Today over 90% of homes have some type of forced air system (either a furnace or a heat pump), with only 3% having some type of steam or hot water heat." I'm seeing 70% forced air (furnace or heat pump) and 8% hydronic in RECS 2015 and 77% forced air and 9% hydronic in AHS 2019.

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Oh, I goofed that stat it looks like - that's recently constructed homes (early 2000s), not homes overall. Will fix.

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Ah that makes sense, thanks.

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Apr 8, 2022Liked by Brian Potter

Above you write: "Between 1916 Carrier sold more than $1 million worth of air conditioning systems to..." between 1916 and what year?

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1925 (fixed)

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Apr 8, 2022·edited Apr 8, 2022Liked by Brian Potter

Excellent article!

However, you missed in your discussion evaporative air conditioners which, in dry climates, produce excellent results at lower purchase and operating costs...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler

I paid for much of my college education in the 70s installing these units which are very easy to retrofit on mobile homes.

https://www.homeserve.com/en-us/blog/home-improvement/evaporative-cooling/

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Yep, there's lots of sub-trends that this omits (radiant heating, hydronic heating, district heating/cooling, etc.)

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This sounds like a series from the title. I'm assuming the next part is a continuation of the history into the modern day and where climate control tech is heading? I'd love to see a post about what, if any, effort has been made for larger scale climate control projects. I want giant transparent domes that can allow sunlight to pass through but offer a pleasant environment that is practically outdoors. Grass, trees, etc. Good for space colonization and making extreme environments on earth more pleasant.

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I’ve been thinking about this history a lot over the past two years when trying to understand what would need to happen to actually improve indoor ventilation for virus control reasons. Older buildings are often a lot better for this than newer ones for the reasons mentioned here!

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Would love to see more on the economic performance of these systems over time - how much more efficient (W/W) is a mechanical cooling system today versus 2000, 1990, 1960?

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founding

Would love for you to continue this series into the future and propose the design of a "maximum comfort house" and what technologies might need to arise/become more affordable to see it happen. I find current residential HVAC technology focuses too much on air temperature only and ignores the effect of radiance, humidity, CO2 and other factors on comfort.

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