I remember being very young and going to Grandma’s house. It was quiet except for the clock in the entry. Tick tock, tick tock. And chiming on the hour. It was the heartbeat of an otherwise still house.
I bring this up because I was snug in bed listening to the rain on the corrugated iron roof, another childhood memory, falling asleep to its beat. Often the wind would whistle outside which made being in bed even warmer. My bedroom is now under a flat roof, so I need to borrow the sound from the older part of the house. You would awake to bird song in the mornings.
what are the sounds in the modern house? Unfortunately, it’s mainly machines, not nature – or at least the outside noises. The washing machine telling you it is finished, the refrigerator telling you, you left the door open, the sloshing of the dishwasher, the TV, the radio.
The Building Code now demands thicker insulation and double glazing. This has made the house warmer but lessened your awareness of outside noises. Hopefully the houses won’t be as silent and lifeless as a hotel room.
But the higher insulation has had another effect on the house. I was talking to an air conditioning installer the other day who said he used to install units to heat the house and that is changing to now installing units to cool the house.
Especially with western facing houses, where the strong, low summer sun heats the house up and the insulation keeps the heat in.
Purging the house of heat in summer with cross ventilation and/or opening skylights is now an important consideration.
When housesitting one summer in Melbourne, we were advised to keep all windows and doors shut when there was a hot spell. The theory was the brick of the house would absorb the heat and if the hot spell was only a day or two, the heat wouldn’t get into the house.
I of course opened a door to see how hot it was outside and felt the super-hot air flood into the house – lesson learned! Let’s hope this doesn’t become the norm in Auckland.
paul@leuschkekahn.co.nz | 021 894 895 | leuschkekahn.co.nz
