Shade Strategy...
 

Weatherman says it's gonna be a scorcher today... 88F is predicted.

At 8:45am I noticed that the sun was shining on my front door, so I measured the temp from inside the living room... 109.4F. I had a solar panel heater radiating into my room!

I had a spare bamboo shade I had not yet hung up, so I put it in place.


Then I waited a half-hour and re-measured the door temp.

New temp = 88.0

A 21F temperature drop is much better!

-AC_Hacker

Nice and simple, I love it. :)

88F is a scorcher??? That's just funny.
Very smart move making shade on the door. Will make a difference in cooling the house.

I bet if this kind of thing were a little more robust it could also serve well in the winter with blocking some of the wind. At night of course. There is big debate about innie vs. outtie windows. The innie people say that having the window recessed protects it from the weather increasing the window temperature. I bet this would have a very similar effect. People back in the day knew what they were doing when it came to shutters and chimneys in the center of the house. They only knew about insulation in ice houses though.

Agreed. We haven't seen a daily high that cool since May.

He's in Portland, though, so it's hot in that context.

The shade concept is excellent!

I took down my new solar screens during the hurricane.
Today, we noticed that we could really feel the heat of the sun light coming into the den..
Took us about 2 minutes to re-install those screens!!
Hold your hand in the sun coming it now, hard to feel any warmth at all..


http://ecorenovator.org/forum/renova...n-project.html

Best investment I've made this year!

That is a great idea! I have a similar front stoop, and the tree that shaded my front door at one point is not there anymore (died of old age) and it will take years for another one to grow.

My grandparents used to do something similar by hanging a curtain about 1.5m from their front door. It would really help keep the house temperatures down but it wasn't the most attractive arrangement. Your shade looks quite neat in comparison.

I'm wondering if a person could mount sheets of tin on a south facing roof to absorb and disperse the sun in the summer time, thereby reducing cooling costs? We have an attic 1/2 story that gets pretty hot in the +30c weather. If done properly they likely wouldn't look all that bad?

If it was shiny tin, it could reflect a lot of the heat away. If it absorbs heat real well,
you will need to space it out away from the roof, since radiant heat will heat up the roof.

When I walk around behind my solar panels (PV), I can feel the radian heat on my face
from 2 feet away. Get up too close and it's very uncomfortable.