@skyfaller Cool!! I think we're going to have to reclaim some of those techniques as we move back into a world of increasing heat and decreasing power availability....
@ai6yr To me I can see how things changed when air conditioning became more affordable...Houses in So Cal used to come with fabric or aluminum hood awnings. Then they fell out of fashion and I'm willing to bet it's because AC became more affordable.
Just like SoCal landscaping choices changed with the rise of big irrigation projects bringing water in from elsewhere.
@glightly Oh, certainly. One of our ham radio amateurs has a house from the 1960's, he tells me it was designed when they assumed that "nuclear power will be cheap, almost FREE!"
@ai6yr This is why it's good that "pioneer users" are usually rich people. They can take the hit when a technology doesn't catch on and gets discontinued.
@glightly This reminds me of the learning process I went through figuring out how to keep my son's truck cool (no AC) before I installed AC in it (mostly myself until I got stalled out and had to pay an AC guy a lot of $$$ to fix, LOL). Apparently no one drove through the California/Arizona/Nevada desert except at night and with tons of water and wet towels in the window.
@ai6yr@glightly We drove it home from Death Valley one afternoon. Up around 100F on the 395. I think we kept pulling over to take breaks because the heat was putting us to sleep. I don't think the photo was from that trip, but I took it there a few times.
@ai6yr@cmgrowell@glightly my first road trip with a drivers license was to Saline Valley, which is the same landscape as that photo but with a much, much worse road, in a 2WD Corolla. We definitely didn't use AC. We definitely did drive a lot at night. Slowly.
@stevenbodzin@ai6yr@glightly Oh wow, we did Saline Valley a few years ago, but that was in a newer Toyota truck over Thanksgiving weekend and there was snow on the ground in the higher elevations. Can't imagine doing it without high clearance or at least good tires. It was bumpy.
@cmgrowell@stevenbodzin@glightly There's a lot of places in Death Valley I'd like to head off to, but it seems like life/work always gets in the way... And no one else here really enjoys the outdoors like I do.
@glightly@ai6yr Every house in LA used to have its own rooftop solar water heater. And my aunt who lived in Phoenix said she could always tell who had moved there before A/C just by looking at them. After == smooth, “normal” skin. Before == skin like tanned leather.
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