The Green Home Coach

BY MARLA ESSER CLOOS

MARLA ESSER CLOOS, NAHB Master Certified Green Professional, Wellness Within Your Walls Certified Professional and LEED AP, is the principal of Green Home Coach where she uses her "superpowers" to help home professionals and inhabitants to discover and create better homes for healthier, more comfortable lives. Making simple swaps to green and sustainable choices helps create better homes – a bit at a time in existing homes or all at once for new and remodeled homes. Find more at GreenHomeCoach.com and @greenhomecoach on FB and IG

Giving Shade to the Sunny Sides of Your Home

our home may have

Ya shady side; not the shady character kind of shady, but the less glare and heat kind of shady that’s preferred in summer. Understanding a few basics about your home will help you determine how making your home’s sunny sides shadier may improve your comfort and reduce your utility bills. Win-win! We work so hard to build a home – foundation, walls, and a roof - to protect us from the elements – wind, rain, heat and cold – only to punch holes in it to let in light. Yet, that natural light is so important to our health and well-being. While having good quality, well installed windows is important, where your windows are usually affects your comfort (or discomfort) more. For a new construction or deeply remodeled home, choosing where the windows are placed directionally and in height will help control the heat and light entering the home. This approach – passive solar - optimizes the use of the sunlight to help heat and light the home in the winter and cool and shade it in the summer. For most of us already in a home, we need to understand our windows and how to make the best of them. First, determine which side your windows are on – north, south, east and west. Then note the amount of light, glare and heat that comes in these windows. If you’d like to learn more about the heat/cool cycle of a home in the summer and the effects of the sun, I found this great article online: https://bestlife52.com/ home/cut-energy-bill-shading-landscaping/. The windows on the east and the west side, especially if they are due east and west, bring in a lot of direct sunlight and often a harsh glare, especially as the sun rises and sets. These may be good windows to put exterior solar screens on or some type of window treatment to cut down the direct sunlight and glare. I’ve used the tilt-able vane blinds. I tilt the blinds up so that the light coming in the windows reflects off the ceiling for a softer light. Another option is cellular shades. They let in light, cut the glare, and insulate! Windows are one of the places that a lot of your cooling is lost during hot weather. The south side of your home will get the most sun at any time of the year, so in the summer, you will need to shade as much of it as you can. Roof overhangs will be a solution if you are building or remodeling. Or you could use exterior solar screens, awnings, trees, or trellises with plants growing on them to make some shade for an existing home.

By installing light-colored window shades or blinds you can reduce solar heat gain by as much as 50 percent.

Any method of stopping the heat and light from reaching the window will offer the most shade and heat protection. Often, a simple answer is the easiest. At the very least, close south and west-facing curtains and blinds for windows that have direct sunlight. Well-chosen and well-placed window coverings can make a huge difference for the sunny sides of your home. Awnings, especially on south-facing windows, provide shade from the outside. Retractable awnings reduce the heat and glare when they are open, and can be retracted when more light or heat is desired. Tightly woven screens or shades can stop more than 75 percent of the sun’s heat from reaching your windows, and most still let the view in. Exterior solar shades are a great option as well and there are many varieties available. We installed a solar shade on a picture window in a 3-story stairwell and in summer it cooled the space by about 5 degrees, making the space much more comfortable.

SHADE YOUR WORLD in St Louis installs automated exterior solar shades and retractable awnings, both of which - especially solar shades - can reduce interior temperatures and energy expenditures in summer. “Shade is Effective: Shade is four times as effective as the best windows, tinting, or blinds. If you can stop the harmful sun rays from passing through your windows with outdoor solar screens or with awnings, you will eliminate the inhome greenhouse effect. You will stop the Heat, stop the Glare, and stop the Fading.” From the Shade Your World website www. shadestl.com.

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