If you’re like me and have found the past few nights climate change fuelled heat unbearable you might be wondering – how in Hades do I stay cool in an eco friendly way? Well, have no fear my sweaty friends. Here are my top top five eco ways to keep cool!
This post contains affiliate links to products that I have used or recommend. I have made these as unobtrusive as possible. You can learn more about what these do here.
See what the Lullaby Trust recommends on keeping babies cool
Stop heat getting in
Sounds daft right? But all that insulation we put in our walls will also keep heat out, if you haven’t got insulated walls (where appropriate) it will be massively worth getting that done.
You already have insulted walls you say? So how does the heat get in? That lovely sun beaming into your windows might be nice but it’s also heating up your house! This is called solar gain, not just the air inside your home but also the structure. The walls in your house will act as massive storage heaters. The sun will warm them and they will give off that heat long after the sun goes down.
This is a big one, hence making it to number 1 of my “Top five eco ways to keep cool”. So what can you do about it?
- Close curtains/blinds/shutters
- Upgrade to thermal curtains or thermal liners
- Upgrade to thermal blinds or honeycomb blinds
- External shading
Shutters are more effective at blocking heat because they’re thicker material so their insulation properties (U value) are higher. Shutters on the outside keep the heat from even getting to the window – that’s why hotter countries tend to have shutters, but internal shutters are as good, and readily available.
You can improve your curtains by adding thermal liners which increase there U value (these tend to be black out lining too). You can get simple eyelet ones which you put up in addition to your existing curtains so you done need to do any sowing too!
Honeycomb blinds are simply a blind which create air pockets in between the fabric layers which create insulation. These also have the advantage of being able to be translucent so you don’t have to live in darkness!
Shutters aren’t the only external features you can use to help cool your home. Long eaves, awnings and canopies can shade your windows from the harshest sun while letting the lower winter sun heat your home. you could even get clever and use a trellis, read on!
Vent the heat
Tips two and three are sort of linked, you’ll see how. Some of that heat is going to get in, same way a tea in a thermos flask will eventually cool. That heat will rise. You’ll probably notice going up the stair the change in temperature. You need to vent that heat out! This year I’ve experimented a bit and have found having an upstairs window open with a low noise fan pointing out of the window really helped to create an exhaust vent effect keeping a more even temperature through the house that is a few degrees cooler than outside. Bathroom fans can also be used to do this if they vent out.
This has also made me think about our loft insulation. Like most folk, we have insulation along the floor of the loft. Which means the loft space becomes super hot during the summer and traps that warmth that rises upstairs. What might be better is to insulate our roof so that that heat isn’t gathering under our roof!
Let it flow
Air flow will help you feel cooler. For example a low vent on one side of the room, and a high exhaust window on the other side will vent the warm air out and air in the other side creating a cross breeze (see how venting the heat is linked?). So think about where windows are and how you’re opening them, it might be that closing some on the sunny side of the house stops pulling that warm air in rather than opening every window you can.
Use evaporation
Water evaporates when it warms and turns to steam. That steam takes the heat that made it evaporate with it. You can use this to help keep cool! This is a principle that has been used to cool rooms for thousands of years. You could experiment too! Try bowls of cool water behind fans or sleeping under a damp sheet, or even porous pots on window sills. As the water evaporates it will cool you/the air.
Natural air conditioning
There is a way to help cool your house both through shade and evaporation. Carefully positioned plants can help shade windows and the shaded areas will cool the air to be brought into your home. The evaporation from leaves (evapotranspiration) will also help remove some of the heat. In all, tree cover can cool the air by up to 12°C – that’s a massive reduction. Using deciduous plants too mean you can still benefit from the winter sun.
Remember when I said you could get clever with trellis and shading windows? You could create a trellis shade over the window and grow your favourite wildlife friendly climber over your windows. Let it grow over the years to shade your from that sun and cool the air and then trim it back as the weather cools.
Some useful tools
You might find it useful to understand the orientation of your home and where the sun will be through the year. I use a sun path tracker app called (imaginatively) “Sun Path” which shows how the sun moves round our house and also, by pointing the camera at the sky how high it will be for different dates and at the height of Summer/Winter. There are loads of similar apps (free and paid) for both Android and IOS so take a look and what suits you.
Got anything to add to my top five eco ways to keep cool?
Let me know in the comments below!
1 thought on “Top five eco ways to keep cool”