Thursday, June 30, 2011

Stay cool, put the shades down

Yesterday, when my friend Laurie mentioned that she was in a rush to get some things done in the garden before the heat wave came, I realized that I haven’t been paying attention to weather forecasts. So, it’s going to be hot. I don’t want to know the number. I’ll just keep the shades down. I also have some left over reflective insulation I used behind the radiators last winter (it reflects heat back into the room instead of letting it be absorbed into the walls). I’ve already covered one window in the attic with it. Maybe it could be used elsewhere in the house?

To see how much of a difference shades can make, I measured surface temperatures with my handy little Black & Decker thermal leak detector, a birthday gift that might rival the View Master I got when I was a kid. This morning the shades on the south window were already down. However, one window on the east side was not shaded, letting a little bit of sun in to hit a chair. At about 9:10 a.m., the shaded part of the chair was 80.6 ⁰ F and the sunny part of the chair was 95.5 ⁰ F.

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