Keeping the heat out without AC

victor2

Phl283 said:

i was wondering if someone could help me with some advice on affordable ways of keeping the heat out of my home. I love in a basement / ground floor flat. One of the rooms at the back of the house is an bit open room with sliding french doors at the back and windows in the roof so it's v light. It also has a concrete floor which heats up over time until after the sun has gone down!. The room gets quite hot as the sun comes round from lunchtime to sunset. Portable air conditioning units are expensive, loud and power hungry. I was thinking on days when it gets hot of trying to block the sunlight out somehow. I was considering reflective window film, reflective bubble wrap or even just hanging reflective screens you can get for plants

I've also heard that bubble wrap is a cheap way of doing this but surely it would still let the light in? Anyway. I wondered if anyone had any thoughts? i'm aware some of these options are quite ugly!

Assuming you don't have blinds in the roof windows...

We have two skylights without blinds and over the particularly hot period last summer, I covered them on the outside with flattened delivery boxes (from that company who had a reputation for packing small things in very large boxes) . Made the room a bit darker but kept the worst of the heat out, was only there for a few days and cost nothing!

markin

Simonon77 said:

subjecttocontract said:

1. If it's hotter outside than inside.....keep windows and doors closed. In the evening when temp drops open them.
2. Draw curtains, close blinds.
3. Have an exterior blind fitted over those doors and windows that are affected.
4. Use fans....They will make you feel more comfortable......cheap to buy and run..

Its amazing how many people open all their windows thinking it keeps the house cool when its boiling outside !

WArm breeze fools some, why it's best to have data from inside and outside thermometer to know exactly when to open windows and when not to.

twopenny

First I used the foil backed car things and used the suckers to stick or masking tape. Close the windows before the sun comes round.
Now i use foil survival blankets £2for 10, clipped on outside with large clothes pegs. Before the sun comes round.
I did make a foil curtain sticking the foil blanket to an old, light sheet using double sided tape and pinned on tape for loops which i hung across the window with an extending curtain rod. It was a bit heavy though.
You can get detachable curtain linings and use tape to stick foil blankets to them. Putting them on and off when too hot or too cold.
The easiest is the pegs and blankets. Cheap and Easy to store too.

Just thought, if you have patio doors is there a slab of stone outside that heats?
You could make a foil screen or screen with foil pegged on to stop that heating. I'm still working on that.

As I have the sun all round I have a shadier and windy side to the house as the day goes on.
Woken by the sun early I opened all windows and doors and will follow round opening and closing as the day goes on but im fortunate that it's a safe area to do that.
When there's no breeze can't do that.

And as the rising sun wakes me up early with temporary heat I've taken to cooking then so no extra heat in evening

PlatinumChaos

Phl283 said:

I know the answer is get blinds but there's not that many days of a year when they would be needed as the light in the room for 90% of the year is so nice and not an issue. So i guess what I mean is are there are any good temporary light / sun blockers?

I saw a suggestion on another thread which I thought was clever. Stick self-adhesive Velcro to the window frames and then attach blackout material to it. Easy to attach and remove, cheap as chips, and probably quite effective