As we're coming into Spring, I've been having some flashbacks to the insane heatwaves that we had last year and the temperatures in my living room reaching an unbearable 30c, then holding onto it for most of the night. Now that I work from home more often, I want to look into some passive methods to block the majority of the sun getting to our windows, whilst still retaining some daylight.
Currently we close the curtains and windows. That usually does a decent job at holding off the majority of the heat until much later in the day, but the issue is that even though the curtains are closed, the windows are still getting a beat-down from the sun all afternoon, soaking up all that heat and passing it into the house. I figure the best way to prevent the house heating up too much is to block the sun from hitting the windows in the first place.
The back of our house is west facing, and we have two bedroom windows and a large French door leading to a deck. As it faces west, the back of the house is where we get the majority of the heat come in through solar radiation. There are no trees for cover and from about 1pm onwards that side of my house is battered by the hot sun for 6+ hours. My plan is to potentially cover our deck with a pergola, which could have a retractable white material along its roof. This would allow us to retain daylight whilst the white material would block the sun’s rays from getting to the French doors. On the cooler days we could retract this covering and remove it all together in the winter.
For the two bedroom windows upstairs I was considering having some form of an external removable roller blind. Again, probably made from a reflective white material. These would sit just away from the window outside, so that light could still bleed in from the edges, but the powerful sun’s rays would get reflected away from the windows, stopping them from absorbing the heat.
So, OcUK, do you see any flaws in this plan? Do you think it would work? What are you doing to try and block the sun during the heatwaves, if anything? I have a portable A/C unit, which I bought last year out of desperation. Whilst it works, it's really noisy & inefficient.
Thanks!
Currently we close the curtains and windows. That usually does a decent job at holding off the majority of the heat until much later in the day, but the issue is that even though the curtains are closed, the windows are still getting a beat-down from the sun all afternoon, soaking up all that heat and passing it into the house. I figure the best way to prevent the house heating up too much is to block the sun from hitting the windows in the first place.
The back of our house is west facing, and we have two bedroom windows and a large French door leading to a deck. As it faces west, the back of the house is where we get the majority of the heat come in through solar radiation. There are no trees for cover and from about 1pm onwards that side of my house is battered by the hot sun for 6+ hours. My plan is to potentially cover our deck with a pergola, which could have a retractable white material along its roof. This would allow us to retain daylight whilst the white material would block the sun’s rays from getting to the French doors. On the cooler days we could retract this covering and remove it all together in the winter.
For the two bedroom windows upstairs I was considering having some form of an external removable roller blind. Again, probably made from a reflective white material. These would sit just away from the window outside, so that light could still bleed in from the edges, but the powerful sun’s rays would get reflected away from the windows, stopping them from absorbing the heat.
So, OcUK, do you see any flaws in this plan? Do you think it would work? What are you doing to try and block the sun during the heatwaves, if anything? I have a portable A/C unit, which I bought last year out of desperation. Whilst it works, it's really noisy & inefficient.
Thanks!
