Applying natural cooling to slab floors

This source applies natural cooling to slab floors as a building strategy. The point is to use the floor as a thermal mass that can participate in daily heat exchange, instead of treating cooling as only an air-conditioning problem.

Main idea

Element	Role
Slab floor	Stores and releases heat.
Natural cooling	Provides the cool side of the cycle.
Daily cycle	Drives when the slab should absorb or shed heat.

Mechanism

warm room / solar gain -> slab floor -> night cooling

The value of the slab is that it gives the building more inertia. Instead of letting interior temperature swing sharply, the floor buffers the load and can be cooled when the outside conditions are favorable. That fits the archive’s larger pattern: thermal comfort improves when the building itself becomes part of the storage system.

This page is less about a specific device than about a design move. It takes the night-cooling idea and inserts it into the floor plane, where it can work with the rest of the envelope.

See also

• Building thermal storage
• Night-sky radiative cooling
• Index
• Night sky radiant cooling potentials in New Mexico