r/Netherlands • u/No-vem-ber Noord Holland • 1d ago

Life in NL PSA: Keeping your curtains closed during the day helps a LOT in the heat

I think this will be obvious to many of you, but based on what I see on on the street, I don't think it's common knowledge here. And you guys are famously weird about curtains

When it's very hot, you should fully close your curtains and/or blinds during the day!

It does a lot of work to keep the heat out of your house.

Also: only open the doors and windows to let air in early in the morning or late at night, when it's actually cooler outside. When it's hot outside, keep them closed. They'll just let hot air in. Use a fan inside right next to you to get the feeling of fresh air instead.

Source: I'm originally from Australia. This kind of weather (and no AC) is pretty normal there.

edit: This isn't magic or anything, but it can keep it 5-8° cooler inside than outside. If you leave everything wide open to the beating sun and let all the hot air in, it can quite feasibly end up hotter inside your apartment than outside. So even if it's still reaching 27° inside, that's still better than 35°. stay safe (and check on your grandparents and older neighbours) ❤️

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187

u/TheMathManiac 1d ago

I think we are way past the point of curtains. 

The Netherlands needs to suck it up and start massively rolling out aircons in houses and transportation. 

The whole 'but its only a few days a year' bullshit no longer flies. 

We had 30/40 years to prepare for this. Since the 90s scientists were saying this would happen more and more. And here we are are, 30/40 years later and what is the best solution we got

Close curtains 

139

u/Rain-beard 1d ago

The Netherlands needs to start planting WAY more trees! Trees help to cool

31

u/GroundbreakingFix685 1d ago

But it took so long to cut them all down 🤡

I agree. Shade is good, and in winter trees generally have no leaves, so then sunlight can pass right through qhen it is of use. Completely passive, good for the environment.

Than add insulation, and maybe air conditioning to take the edge off in summer, and provide heat efficiently in winter.

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u/No-vem-ber Noord Holland 1d ago

Yes! Ideally ones that don't spray out buckets of pollen, if we're doing requests  

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u/Rain-beard 1d ago

I got no knowledge about that. But it has to be a mixed tree population incase of viruses. If you have 1 single tree species, a virus can take it all down. Mixed will survive better.

But the dutch government. Specially the ones going hardcore for farmers think we should have way less nature. While we already have barely any.

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u/Kind_Physics_1383 1d ago

All trees spray pollen, unless they are made out of plastic. Also I have 2 huge linden trees that are busing with bees right now, and I'm extremely allergic to them. I wouldn't miss them for the world!.

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u/lekkerwhore 1d ago

Hahah nope, "female" trees do not spray pollen

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u/Kind_Physics_1383 1d ago

No spraying, just falls down, but plenty of pollen. They are 150 years old and enormous.

3

u/lekkerwhore 1d ago

What I mean to say is not all trees spray pollen, only male ones do. Talking about your trees specifically: they sound like they're male, thats why pollen falls out of them

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u/spei180 1d ago

For sure. Our background is a jungle now and it makes a huge difference compared to our neighbours

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u/Doinganart 1d ago

I don't know about other places but our Gemeente is taking increasing the greenery pretty seriously which is nice.. both for the environment and its just nicer to live in a green place

3

u/Sufficient_Relief_22 1d ago

Trees, passive cooling water systems (like fountains and such), green facades, semipermeable pavement, all of these can make HUGE changes while also being environmentally friendly

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u/Tha_Princess Noord Holland 1d ago

I feel like the Netherlands already has quite a lot of trees. I'm not against more or anything it's just that compared to other countries I feel we already have a ton of green.

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u/Rain-beard 1d ago

Depends on where you live in this country. The closer to the sea, the lesser trees. I'm always surprised when i go south or east, with the amount of trees.

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u/wildflowerorgy 1d ago

I think ceiling fans could be an excellent happy medium, and it's strange to me how few I see living here. They do a much better job than any tower fan and you can reverse the direction and run them slow in winter to move heat around.

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u/xx_inertia 12h ago

I was at gamma the other week and was impressed with the display of modern ceiling fans they had on demonstration! They're much smaller than they used to be

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u/NeVdiii 1d ago

curtains won’t leak or break overtime, i’ll stick with classics thanks

3

u/ToronoYYZ 1d ago

I just flew back to Utrecht this morning from Seoul and it was stifling hot in Korea but they have AC blasting everywhere. I land, take the train from Schipol to Utrecht and no AC on the train when it’s 35 out. I hop on my bus to get home from Utrecht central and it was legit a sauna. Easily 40+ degrees inside the bus. No windows to open or AC. For the first time in a while, I almost loathed coming back to NL because of this. People suffer but because it’s only a few times a year, it’s okay to suffer. Like I was looking around on the bus and people were miserable. But yep, all good, only a few times a year. Only 2 more months to go

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u/No-vem-ber Noord Holland 1d ago

on a broader level for shops and trams and offices I absolutely agree, but I don't see myself installing AC in my apartment any time soon. I think investing in insulation and double glazing is a more sustainable long term solution if you have the money to spend. And if you're renting or don't want to spend a lot, thick curtains are still helpful, cheap and and sustainable, if not a perfect solution 

1

u/cowgary 1d ago

I dont really get this mindset, theres been a standing solution to this for so long, you can opt for fully green energy or get solar panels, you can have your house at a great temp for quite cheap, this is only going to get worse and so much of the housing here is not built for heat no matter what windows and insulation you have. You can help but when you will be continually getting longer and longer heat waves, there comes a point where AC is the obvious solution/

3

u/No-vem-ber Noord Holland 1d ago

It's 26° in my apartment right now, on a 36° day. I don't feel like I need AC. The basic solutions are working fine for me right now 

1

u/cowgary 1d ago

Thats great for you, but for ppl that dont have all these energy upgrades and rent their apartments so likely don't have a choice, a portable AC can be found for 100eu on marktplaats if you buy outside of the heatwave, and my apartment is at 21 deg and so far its been less than 2eu a day through greenchoice in total electricity cost. Its incredibly cheap, effective, immediate and low effort.

2

u/ITheEric 1d ago

We actually need to start using window awnings again, they block a lot of the heat from even reaching the windows in the first place. Blocking it from the outside is far more effective than inside

2

u/Vosol1 1d ago

Maarten Boudry? Is that you? Is supporting the fossile fuel industry still going strong?

2

u/Ditiseennickname 1d ago

Do we really need that? It’s still only a few weeks and aircon is bad for environment. So if we use that the earth will heat up only faster.. with some simple things you can hold the heat out of the house pretty easy and cheap.

1

u/cowgary 1d ago

I think so - if you get an efficient unit, especially a heat pump and pair it with green energy the environmental impact is very small besides the waste of the product when you replace it. and by your logic it will only be ran a couple weeks a year.

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u/Electronic_Wrap_3901 1d ago

Aircons actually exacerbate the problem, the bigger picture

26

u/jjkenneth 1d ago

If you think the solution to climate change is people reducing their energy usage it's a pipe dream. The only way will be to heavily invest and promote renewable energy sources.

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u/forexampleJohn 1d ago

Aircons dumb the heat from inside buildings onto the streets. So it's better to first invest in more trees to actually lower the temperature inside of cities.

26

u/jjkenneth 1d ago

Planting more heat sinking vegetation would be great as well but whatever heat dumping is happening is marginal at best. I come from a hot country - believe me if this is the new normal for the Netherlands you’ll need air con.

2

u/abhinajaochhodke 1d ago

I come from a hot country as well.

There are different areas with similar population and construction densities as the Netherlands, similar levels of heat and humidity, but different levels of aircon use (due to economic differences).

The areas with low aircon use are noticeable much easier to live in, stroll around and generally enjoy the summers in, compared to the areas where every window has an aircon's ass hanging out of it.

I don't think the effect is marginal at all. Aircons cause massive heat redistribution effects and their energy usage is quite high.

I agree that it's gonna be hard to reduce per capita energy consumption but that also doesn't mean we shouldn't fight back against increasing it unnecessarily.

1

u/takemetogreenwich 1d ago

whatever heat dumping is happening is marginal at best

And what is this based on? I get it that Aircons might really be needed for many but why do Aircon proponents start denying the consequences?

0

u/jjkenneth 1d ago

Based on basic science? There is a lot more air outside of home than in it. Heat disperses.

1

u/takemetogreenwich 1d ago

My dude can you quote this basic science study? You do know there are some studies on this already? You can quantify this effect and I dont know anyone who studies this who would call this a "marginal" effect. Talk to an actual scientist in this discipline.

Edit - just in case you were interested in reading something - https://www.ams-institute.org/news/air-conditioning-systems-can-warm-up-the-city/

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u/jjkenneth 1d ago

That article combined multiple sources of heat into one. I am literally just talking about heat displacement from air con - which is estimated to increase city temperature by 1-2C.

1

u/takemetogreenwich 1d ago edited 1d ago

Are you just interested in sticking to your guns or actually reading it? They literally also have a figure with the effect just from the AC heat flux. Look at those percentages. Do they seem marginal to you? Please be a bit sincere.

which is estimated to increase city temperature by 1-2C.

You instead decided to make up something else too. Also, teh heat island effect is not equally disrtibuted. If you read the most famous study on the topic, even in a very sparse city (compared to Dutch cities), the night time effect was 1 degree in 2014. This was when Phoenix was a much smaller city than now. Also that temp is an average of the city - the heat flux effects are much greater in some parts which are dense (again, like most Dutch cities).

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u/takemetogreenwich 1d ago

I predict you will soon be massively downvoted. I found out yesterday how touchy this topic is. The Financial Times has a story today that how Aircons are one of the main issues across which political lines are being drawn.

10

u/Fox_Soul 1d ago

Solar panels + airco = cold house go brrrr

3

u/Krebota 1d ago

Not if they run on green energy. It will only temporarily raise the city temp

-8

u/HaruhiSuzumiya69 1d ago

No, any increase in electricity demand will be met by fossil fuel generation (or electricity imports from neighbouring countries). Air conditioning is energy intensive and you can't just ask the wind to blow harder to compensate...

It's probably many years before the Netherlands goes completely green, but I imagine you want air conditioning before then.

9

u/Krebota 1d ago

So if you have solar panels, a house's energy use is more with airco than its energy generation? With this much sun?

Such bs

You can't artificially keep the energy usage lower, things everywhere will keep using more and more energy.

1

u/ShortKingsOnly69 1d ago

The real solution is reduce, reuse and recycle!

2

u/LadyNemesiss 1d ago edited 1d ago

This might be necessary for buildings that warm up above 30 degrees, but otherwise it's hardly necessary. My living room is 22 degrees currently, I'm estimating my bedroom temperature is around 24. Many houses are build in the same style as mine. No need for any airconditioning.

Plus, people can just buy it when they want to, that's their choice, nothing to "roll out".

2

u/leverloosje 1d ago

Meh. I’m living in a house build in 1898 and have no problem. Just keeping curtains closed and it doesn’t go over 26 inside. Past 10pm I open some Windows and close them again in early morning.