What Did People Do Before Air Conditioning? | The Heat Pump People

If you're blessed to have an effective heat pump, the temperature of your home will likely be seamlessly adapted all year around. But what was it like before even the first air conditioners were invented?

Imagine stumbling home under blisteringly hot sun, only to have no air conditioner waiting at home for you - what would you do? The Heat Pump Peopleinvestigate how air was conditioned in the old days.

We're not talking about the little ice blocks you put in your drink to make a refreshing beverage, we're talking huge ice blocks. You might have seen people with huge ice blocks in their homes in some old movies.

Prior to summer, people used to harvest and store ice blocks during the winter. Prior to the availability even of refrigeration, people in areas cold enough would harvest ice from lakes that were frozen over during the winter. Naturally cool buildings, called ice-houses, would store the ice for months before being distributed again in summer.

In addition to its other practical difficulties, mild winters would obviously reduce the availability of ice, so it was not always the most reliable solution.

Public water fountains are still in use in modern times, but they're quite different.

Modern drinking water fountains have just an individual outlet so that only one person can use it at a time, and doesn't necessitate a person's mouth coming into contact with the fountain.

However, there used to be fountains that resembled large troughs that multiple people could not only drink the water, but dunk their whole heads in to stay cool.

Needless to say, this was not a particularly sanitary solution. Illness could easily spread from person to person, as well as from animal to person, if a dog or a horse passing by happened to fancy a drink.

You'll notice that a lot of older architecture has high ceilings. Hot air rises, so rooms were designed to have high ceilings combined with windows or air vents near the ceiling to allow the hot air to escape. This provided an effective natural cooling mechanism.

Try standing in some old rooms such as these in the summer, and you'll be surprised what effective insulation and high ceilings can do for a place.

The strategic placement of trees around a house was (and remains) an extremely effective way of providing shelter from the summer heat. Trees that protect from the angle of the sun at its highest temperature, as well as trees that shade outdoor areas - porches and so forth - provide a welcome respite from the summer heat.

The Heat Pump People are certainly glad that air conditioning has progressed a bit since the good old days! If you'd like to discover what a heat pump can do for your home, contact our friendly team today!