Increase Energy Efficiency with the Right Window Treatments


With energy costs soaring, improving your home’s energy efficiency is more important than ever. A big part of that is passive cooling of your house during the hot summer months. That generally comes down to providing shade and airflow to keep more heat from entering as well as making it easier for it to exit. Some options are better than this than others, with interior options like vertical patio blinds being a poor choice since they don’t really keep heat from entering the house.

Windows are one of the main culprits of allowing heat into the house. Glass allows radiation from the sun to enter in, but doesn’t allow the airflow to pass through. This means heat gets trapped inside the house. To prevent this you can help your windows to block some of the radiation from the sun from entering, as well as making sure that excess heat is accumulated somewhere where the wind can help disperse it better.

To accomplish this, various forms of window awnings, glazing, and screens can be used. Solar screens are added outside the windows and intercept a lot of the radiation that would otherwise enter into the house. Because the screens are outside, there isn’t any problem with dispersing the heat, as air can flow freely through the screens. As a benefit, this helps to reduce glare on sunny days, and so can help ease the strain on your eyes while it helps to cool your home.

Window glazing works in somewhat the same way, only instead of filtering the light out in a grid like screens do, glazing reduces the light in a much more even manner. This is even a better way to reduce glare, but isn’t as efficient at keeping the house cool. This is because the glazing is in direct contact with the glass of the windows, and so is transferring some of the heat to the glass which will radiate it inside the house.

Window awnings are an even more complete option in this regard, as they can block most of the direct sunlight before it even has a chance to get near the windows. Much like other types of awnings for decks use, airflow under the awning removes the heat before it can warm up anything below. So if you really want to cool your home as much as possible, an awning is probably the way to go.


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