For one person it is almost 30 degrees inside, for another it is a cool 23 degrees: ‘It has everything to do with the heat pump’

Duct tape holds the fly swatter together. All morning Griet (71) sat with it in her kitchen, right in front of the fan. But yes, the electricity is not free either, so she has now turned it off and left the front door open for a while. “Hopefully it will blow through a bit.” Only, there is not a breath of wind. Moreover, the front door has so many gaps that it would have made little difference anyway. She looks at the thermostat: “29.5 degrees.”

“That one over there has air conditioning.” Griet, neatly made up, neatly stooped, points to the other side from the doorframe of her workers’ home in Amersfoort’s Soesterkwartier. “But such air conditioning also costs a lot of money.” That’s why she’s been closing the blinds in the living room for days now. Living in the dark. Well, dark, you should just see those slats.

In the living room, where she has lived for 53 years, Griet – surname known to the editors – pushes one of the slats aside and points to the ceiling. “You cannot buy those things on the slats separately and now that tip has come off and they no longer have a hold.” Griet has already moved one loose slat from the front window to the back window, but it was too short, so she has now placed a flower pot in front of it. She secured two others with wire.

And she’s really handy. Griet, single, does everything herself – “patching tires, painting” – so she looked for the right plug for the loose slats and then heated and bent a nail with a pair of pliers near the gas stove and pushed it into the rails on the ceiling with a piece of string. To no avail.

“Here, the receipt.” For a new duo roller blind (with two fabric strips) – for both the front and the back and custom-made – that she bought from Leenbakker, to be delivered in September. “1,142.61 euros. That’s almost all my holiday pay.”

Obesity and cardiovascular diseases

All people are warm, but some are warmer, the Scientific Council for Government Policy wrote last year in a report on the impact of climate change on various groups. In short, there is such a thing as heat or cool inequality, whereby the weaker the socio-economic position, the greater the consequences of climate threats – such as the current heat wave.

Households with a lower income are more vulnerable because, like Griet, they live in old working-class neighborhoods with single-stone walls. In a rental home where you are dependent on the housing association for every adjustment – ​​insulation, sunshade.

And the residents of petrified 1970s neighborhoods with flats also appear to be more vulnerable, due to a lack of greenery. These neighborhoods also have on average more people with lower incomes, who have less chance to escape the heat, literally. And there is a greater risk of death from heat stress, because obesity and cardiovascular disease are more common among lower income groups. And so everything fits together.

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Old Dutch style

In the north of Amersfoort, about seven kilometers away, a couple is getting ready at the driveway of their new-build house to cool off by car in a forest pool further away. Not that it is necessary, because it is cool inside, “extremely” cool. Almost “too cool,” says Anne de Beer (63). “It was 35 degrees outside yesterday, 23 degrees inside. Yes, really. That difference is almost too big. Come and feel it.”

“It has everything to do with the heat pump,” says Alphons de Beer (64), dressed in swimming trunks. A pipe under their house — up to 120 meters deep — extracts heat from the ground in winter and cold in summer. “So no air conditioning needed.” The costs are zero, because the roof full of solar panels provides the electricity. Triple glazing retains the coolness. And they closed all the windows and curtains. And in the garden at the rear the awning is lowered. And they recently bought a double awning. The parasol is also turned off. “And soon we will also hang a triangular cloth on it.”

The house that Anne and Alphons de Beer bought in 2016 is located in the new De Bron district in Amersfoort-Vathorst. A neighborhood with single-family homes in old Dutch style around water and green courtyards. Everywhere in the neighborhood you will find SUP boards leaning against sheds and for a swimming spot you can choose from the ditch, two forest pools and a lake.

Life is good here, even during a heat wave, and these days the couple fully realizes what a privilege that is. Anne de Beer: “Yesterday I was having lunch with six friends from other neighborhoods. How everyone was sweating! I heard them say: ‘Really buy an air conditioner.’ “No, no, my husband doesn’t want that.” Well, I almost felt like an outsider.”

Their own son is also staying with them this week. He lives in the Soesterkwartier, Griet’s neighborhood. “It won’t last there.”

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The Soesterkwartier district in Amersfoort.

Photos Simon Lenskens

Life is ‘very expensive’

Griet has noticed that you just have to know how to get something done at the housing association. Pointing to the front door: “Some neighbors have a new one, with three clamps. And you could also get a nice pivot window for the attic, but I got a plastic thing. And do you know how much I pay for gas and electricity here? Three and a half hundred.”

Griet had children at a young age, worked in cleaning, but had to make do with only the state pension. And life is “very expensive.” She lives frugally, but sometimes, like when her daughter comes over for dinner, “a nice meal” is just part of it. Her daughter likes three balls of minced meat. “That’s just how it goes.”

“Mom, are you still okay?” – she called yesterday. Because Griet has high blood pressure and cholesterol and two artificial knees and the thyroid gland and when it was so “bloody hot” yesterday, she lay “with such a red face” upstairs in the bedroom and at night she sat downstairs on the couch and even outside on the sidewalk. And now she’s going for a bike ride, “because then I catch a bit of wind, right.” To Hema, because she won two Hema soaps in the Postcode Lottery. And she had actually wanted to cancel the Postcode Lottery for a long time, because it was too expensive, but hey, “you never know when that golden suitcase will end up here.”

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