I gotta wear shades. Oh, that was a good song. Ok. Not really. But it was a really fun song.
Long ago, we put an exterior, roll-down shade on the big front window. That’s it, in the picture above. So this summer, we installed one on each of the other two enormous plate-glass windows. These close-up pictures make them look really obvious, but when you are farther away, or when they are rolled up, you barely notice them.
Do they work? Yup. It was about 85d degrees out today, with bright sunshine, and the house only got up to 73, even though I made no effort to run around and close windows to keep the heat out, like I usually do when I know it’s going to be warm. I just had the shades down.
How much did they cost? Well, the cost of procrastination is really, really high. The first one cost us a little over $1000, about three years ago. These two, which are smaller, cost over $3000. D’oh. But in the end, it’s going to save us money, both on our electric bills, and on the grid-tied solar system we are eventually going to install.
Why does it matter? In my next post, I’ll include the latest graphs of electricity usage. While installing the central air conditioning ran up the electricity usage in the summer, our annual usage is still down from last year. But the summer usage of the air conditioning definitely stands out. These shades should help keep that usage at a minimum, even on the hottest days.
0 comments:
Post a Comment