Originally Posted By: clinebarger
Evaporative coolers can only do so much, Guessing here as you used "Cooler" which isn't very descriptive.
If your poorly insulated house is baking in the sun all day....It will act as a big heat-sink holding the heat in 'til it naturally cools down to ambient.
My house is old (1929) but well insulated, I have a big Live Oak on the east side & a big Fruitless Mulberry on the west side of my house. One large 220 window unit keeps my 700 square foot house comfortable for the most part. Today was 105 with 19% RH & it kept-up.
The insulation surely helps, But I think the biggest factor in my house staying cool is the greatly reduced "solar load" from the tree's.
I think this is right.
We have a walk up attic which has knee walls that are insulated. Open a knee wall and the temperature in the attic readily rises at least 5 degrees any time in the cooling season.
Shade helps, trees help, control of attic temps help. But the third only helps but so much if the best it can get is 105F. If you're controlling solar effects on an attic, you're really trying to minimize how much hotter than ambient things get. And it won't be perfect. So the attic will be between 105-160(ish) F. All the building materials, even the insulation, will hold that heat. If it's cooler later, it's a matter of if it's still venting and how long it takes to cool back. Could be a very long time.
Add the roof materials themselves, often black dense asphalt, and you have another great source of trapped heat.
Shade trees, other risks aside (dropping leaves and junk causing gutters to clog, falling on house or car, etc) are wonderful for providing shade. We don't have a lot of shade on the hot, pm sun side of our house. It's incredible for as far north as we are, how hot everything gets when baked for a hot afternoon...