Reducing the Solar Radiation During the Summer
You may love a sun-drenched climate, where you can enjoy sun and fun throughout the year. With the sun comes an often-times unwanted side effect: being thoroughly hot and uncomfortable inside your home due to window air leakage. Before the inside of your home makes you over-heat, consider making some simple, swift, and inexpensive changes to improve your overall comfort.
Introducing Shade to Your Home
It may seem counterintuitive to block out the radiating rays of the sun. In the case of overheating in your home, though, it is one of the least expensive manners to realize greater comfort. The best way to do this is to install blinds, curtains, or even an awning. If you opt for internal coverings, you allow yourself more control over the opening and closing of such covers.
You may find retractable awnings, but they can run from hundreds to thousands of dollars. This depends upon the quality of materials, the features, and the brand. When you use blinds, shades, shutters, or curtains, you can close off the entry of the solar radiation during particularly hot points during the day. If you feel particularly uncomfortable from 2 pm to 4 pm, then you can start shuttering off your windows during those hours.
Advantages to Window Coverings
When you decide to use window coverings, you will not only block heat, you will keep the temperatures more comfortable in your home. It is helpful particularly if you just apply the window treatments to cover windows that experience the greatest entrance of solar radiation. This will allow you to enjoy the sun in many instances. In addition, you will also be reducing your energy bills as well, because you will not have to counter such an onslaught of heat overtaking your home every day.
Along the same lines, many homeowners in warm to hot climates have tried window films. These sound like a great idea, except that they tend to block sunlight, while still allowing heat into your home. This will continue to keep you overheating in your home, while forcing you to turn on lights to see during broad daylight.
Look instead to a good product ratio. There are, first of all, two factors that strongly impact your comfort level in particularly sunny places. These two factors are Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC) or the amount of the heat that the window product allows into your home; and the Visible Transmittance (VT), which indicates how much light is allowed inside your home. All you need to know for window film is that the VT needs to be higher than the SHGC to maintain your comfort while allowing the proper amount of light inside your home.
Purchasing New Windows
If you are instead able to purchase new windows, you will want to employ the newest options that are available. You may read about low-emissivity coatings. For cold climates, the coatings bounce heat back into the home. In hot climates, buy low-e that bounces heat outside.
When you purchase low-e coatings, you will need to buy either double- or triple-glazed glass. This is a little more expensive, but is considered far more energy efficient pretty much throughout the country. The reason for this is because air is trapped between the panes, which insulate your home from the outside temperatures.
Reducing the solar radiation during the summer involves many facets. In many cases, there are a few ways a homeowner can reduce the heat that can cause temperatures to rise indoors as the sun heats up outdoors. In particular, try window films and window treatments to improve your experience with your existing windows.
