[HN Gopher] Why don't we use awnings anymore (2022)
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Why don't we use awnings anymore (2022)
Author : samclemens
Score : 360 points
Date : 2024-10-15 22:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (thecraftsmanblog.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thecraftsmanblog.com)
| bell-cot wrote:
| Awnings, deep overhanging eaves, attic exhaust fans, floor plans
| designed for cross-ventilation, strategic shade trees - a century
| ago, there were _lots_ of strategies for keeping cooler without A
| /C.
|
| And a 1950's house built with none of those advertised "I'm
| cutting-edge trendy, and rich enough to just run my new A/C all
| the time" to everyone who saw it.
| pluto_modadic wrote:
| so... now they're an advertisement for zero energy homes >:D
| teractiveodular wrote:
| This is even worse in the tropics. We used to have high
| ceilings, ceiling fans, cross-ventilation, shady trees,
| awnings. Now you get a stuffy high-rise concrete box with
| floor-to-ceiling glass facing the scorching afternoon sun, and
| AC working overtime.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Whoever designs and/or approves buildings like that should be
| forced to live in them.
| dangus wrote:
| I can volunteer in their place. I'll take one of the units
| on billionaire's row.
| dangus wrote:
| High rises have high rise-specific windows that block solar
| heat energy extremely well.
| mmooss wrote:
| This weekend I was in a small early-20th century home with
| marvelous cross ventilation - they hardly need anything else. I
| assumed it was a happy accident of the design, but now I wonder
| if it was intentional.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Pretty sure it was, my whole 1920s neighborhood was built
| that way. The downstairs is glorious and with the shade trees
| barely needs AC for a few days in August.
|
| Upstairs is hot. But... the house was built with a finished
| downstairs and diy upstairs. The diy job wasn't as good from
| a ventilation perspective.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It was probably intentional because they had no other means
| of cooling the house.
| bell-cot wrote:
| It was no accident. If you look at (say) catalogs of house
| plans which were printed in that era, "room has cross
| ventilation" is a touted as a feature.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| The American Southwest, especially the Sonoran Desert, was once a
| refuge for those who suffered respiratory ailments. Doctors would
| "prescribe" a change of scenery for allergies, asthma,
| tuberculosis, COPD, etc. People moved here because there was so
| little pollen in cleaner air, due to sparse population, as well
| as the lack of grass and other conventional foliage.
|
| However we also have a little feature we lovingly call "Valley
| Fever" which is a fungus, spread mostly by dust storms. As more
| Midwestern folks immigrated here, and the Snowbirds set up shop,
| they all wanted traditional lawns, trees, and golf courses, just
| like "back home". So by the 1980s-1990s, Phoenix was barely
| differentiated from Chicago or Kansas in terms of front yards.
|
| Now, those gardens definitely kept things cool in a local area.
| They needed things like flood-irrigation, so deep water often
| covers lawns. Deciduous or even evergreen trees can afford a
| _lot_ of shade where you really, really need it. Unfortunately,
| monsoon microbursts often topple those kinds of trees, which have
| shallow roots in impoverished, sandy soils.
|
| Ironically, due to lack of water, and Greta Thunberg, we're
| reverting to desert landscapes (called xeriscape) and so the new
| urban domestic hotness here is to install little "drip
| irrigation" tubes, palo verde, cactus, succulents, yucca, etc.
| Needless to say, they don't provide enough shade, and the
| humidity stays quite low.
|
| Phoenicians today are clamoring for more artificial shelter and
| shade. Bus stops here are works of art with elaborate means of
| warding off the daytime heat. The city centers are still "heat
| islands" with murderous temperature increases during summertime
| ("summertime" in Phoenix lasts from March through October...)
| hakfoo wrote:
| The "new hotness?" Xeriscape has been promoted at least back to
| the 1990s.
|
| Palo Verdes can get pretty damn big with significant shade
| factor, but they tend to blow a coat of a billion tiny yellow
| flowers in season and make a huge mess that the HOA kvetches
| about.
| maxbond wrote:
| The problem isn't activists, it's the climate. The Colorado
| River system has been in a drought for 20 years, and for all we
| know it'll be in a drought for 100 more. (It's not clear to me
| this is anthropogenic, my impression is that it's a natural
| cycle of drought exacerbated by global climate change, but it's
| beside the point.)
|
| Read up on the Colorado River Compact. _Where the Water Goes_
| by David Owens is a very accessible primer. The tl;dr is that
| the water was portioned out to the Western states (including
| Arizona) during an unusually wet period, and we 're now in a
| period of drought. They simply didn't understand this in 1922.
| With the advent of dendrochronology, we now understand that
| this river system is prone to droughts that can last hundreds
| of years.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_North_American_me...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > They simply didn't understand this in 1922
|
| The scientists (various disciplines did). They were
| explicitly ignored by the compact negotiators. John Fleck has
| written about this quite a bit at
| https://www.inkstain.net/fleck/
| maxbond wrote:
| Apologies, I oversimplified while trying to summarize, what
| I meant was that they didn't understand that it was an
| unusually wet period and that the Colorado was subject to
| megadroughts. It's my understanding that they also
| oversubscribed the river even given those inflated numbers,
| redoubling the problem.
|
| I haven't read _Science be Damned_ , I'll add it to my TBR,
| but I'm guessing that's what it's about?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| They absolutely _did_ understand that it had been an
| unusually wet period. They may not have understand the
| picture we now have of historical megadroughts. The
| scientists apparently urged the compact negotiators to
| not use the numbers they did, and were ignored.
|
| I haven't read any of Fleck's books, but I read his blog
| regularly. He's commented quite often on the way the
| science gets ignored in favor of political/social and
| sometimes business goals.
| maxbond wrote:
| Interesting. Thanks for the correction and the reading
| material.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Right...it's some teenagers fault, not building unsustainably
| in a desert.
| guyzero wrote:
| We have a retractable on our south-facing patio door/window near
| San Jose and it's made a huge difference in terms of heat
| rejection after we installed it. On hot summer days it makes a
| noticeable difference. And since it's retractable it doesn't make
| the back room permanently dark. It's one of the major items that
| lets us survive a south bay summer without air conditioning.
| We'll probably upgrade our gas furnace to a heat pump eventually
| and get AC "free" but in the meantime this was a much cheaper
| stopgap.
| jmathai wrote:
| I came to say the same thing. Ours is above our back sliding
| glass door which is about 8' wide. Does a great job keeping the
| room cool in the summer.
| AlexErrant wrote:
| The "Technology Connections" youtube channel recently discussed
| awnings too. (And it had more or less the same message as this
| blog.)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhbDfi7Ee7k
| malfist wrote:
| And that has way more details than this. The only why supplied
| here is "we forgot" and "AC"
| zahlman wrote:
| The TC video has a lot of details about why awnings are a
| great idea, and about how other places are still using them
| and getting good results; but the reasoning offered for why
| we don't use them any more... still boils down to "we forgot"
| and "AC".
|
| Because those are the actual reasons.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Well, I think he made a bit of a stronger accusation too
| then just "AC".
|
| In that, if your property had awnings the implication was
| it didn't have AC (I guess people can't read/trust a
| listing) so you needed to remove the awnings to advertise
| that you had AC.
| graemep wrote:
| Wasting money (as it would requite running the AC more)
| to show you have money.
| sitkack wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen
| michaelt wrote:
| AC was indeed important. But also:
|
| We still sometimes use things like awnings, just in the
| form of 'porches' or modern-looking 'slat awnings'
|
| Changes in architectural fashion has made some forms of
| awning look dated.
|
| Fabric awnings need upkeep to keep them looking smart. When
| the awnings are above ground level, it's semi-expensive
| upkeep. Building owners are tempted to keep those tired,
| sun-bleached awnings in place rather than renewing them -
| contributing to the dated reputation of awnings.
|
| Awnings also face competition from interior curtains and
| blinds, which are much simpler to maintain.
|
| And there's shifting building use. A few decades ago an
| office worker would prize a desk by a big window with lots
| of natural light to read paperwork by, but in the age of
| PCs nobody wants direct sunlight on their screen. Internal
| blinds let workers control the light levels to match their
| needs.
| upofadown wrote:
| >Awnings also face competition from interior curtains and
| blinds, which are much simpler to maintain.
|
| But not significant competition. If the blinds are very
| reflective a small amount of sunlight might end up going
| out again but in general, once the solar radiation
| converts to heat you can't get it back out through the
| window. That is particularly true for modern multi-pane
| windows.
| ygra wrote:
| That's why shutters (roller or hinged) exist that are on
| the outside of the windows. Here in Southern Germany
| pretty much every window has them and since they block
| the sun outside the window, it can help a lot not getting
| the interior too warm.
| Retric wrote:
| External shudders don't help when it's 100+f at night and
| they are just as hot as the surroundings. This is why
| they're common in Europe but not tropical countries.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| I have roller shutters, I like them, they're common where
| I live. However, they are not great for keeping heat out
| during the day; yeah if you close them you get protected
| from the heat of the sun, but also from its light. An
| awning will let the ambient daylight through and not turn
| your room into a cave
| Retric wrote:
| Awnings fail to deal with heat gain from the surrounding.
| So, in hot environments they can be less effective than
| insulating curtains inside the window which also help at
| night when it's still 100+f outside.
|
| This is especially true if you have an overhang, trees,
| etc providing even modest shade.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| They would compliment each other because the purpose of
| the awning is to prevent the heat of the sun from
| entering the house. Once it's in, even if there are
| insulating curtains, the heat is still in the house.
| Retric wrote:
| It's worth speaking in terms of energy not just heat.
| Sunlight bouncing off a reflective curtain and going
| outside is one of their benefits.
|
| An awning is a net benefit over a curtain alone, but
| there's overlap in functionality so having a curtain
| reduces the net saving from adding an awning.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| > Once it's in, even if there are insulating curtains,
| the heat is still in the house.
|
| While I understand this "once the heat is inside" thing I
| still can't help but feel closing the curtains (and
| blackout curtains) makes a non-trivial impact on the
| overall daytime temperature of a sun facing room.
|
| I get the goal is to reflect the energy back out and of
| your curtains are pure black that absorbs all the energy
| it would, in theory, heat the room as much as just
| leaving the curtain open but it still intuitively feels
| like you should close that curtain anyway.
|
| I mean insulation is inside the wall of the house and it
| keeps the heat out. How is that any different than a set
| of blackout curtains besides the R value? (Hint: it's
| probably the lack of insulating properties in a
| curtain... though there would be dead air between the
| curtain and window and dead air is a moderately good
| insulator itself.
|
| TC should do a video on that. I'd love to see some
| numbers on the effect curtains have on indoor
| temperature.
| DavidVoid wrote:
| Where I live (Stockholm), blinds are usually between the
| outermost glass pane and the inner two panes (triple
| glazed windows). It keeps the heat out pretty well (and
| prevents cats from messing with the blinds).
| gnramires wrote:
| Those 'slat awnings' look like a really good idea! (Less
| maintenance, air flow, letting a little bit of sunlight
| through)
| fencepost wrote:
| _A few decades ago an office worker would prize a desk by
| a big window with lots of natural light to read paperwork
| by, but in the age of PCs nobody wants direct sunlight on
| their screen._
|
| A couple decades ago I managed to wrangle a nice east-
| facing window. Bright sunlight in the AM was a pretty
| effective way to really get moving, but I couldn't wear
| white shirts because the reflection made my monitor
| unusable and there was a period each morning where I just
| needed to do stuff not at my PC (cubicle farm, my options
| were to face the window or face the corner with the
| window to one side).
| nkrisc wrote:
| You're right, there's one other reason: they went out of
| style because not having them meant you had... AC. Ok I guess
| it's just those two.
| bsder wrote:
| I suspect it's not really "forgot". I suspect it's "awnings
| require ongoing maintenance".
| rob74 wrote:
| Also, I imagine it was a hassle making sure they were
| closed and secured when a storm came up - and expensive to
| repair (not to mention dangerous) if you forgot it...
| parodysbird wrote:
| I had an awning and a pool enclosure in South Florida. So
| did most houses in the neighborhood. Then the 2004
| hurricane season happened, and there was neither of each
| around anywhere ever again.
| dghughes wrote:
| Also windows now have low-emissivity (low E) coatings. The
| coating varies light transmission depending on the sun
| angle. When the sun is high in summer some visible light
| but more UV and IR is reflected. When the sun is low in the
| winter more light can pass through. Pretty much what an
| awning does.
| amonon wrote:
| This is very cool. How recent is this? We purchased an
| older house with an HOA that discourages awnings. I had
| been considering petitioning for one but a low-emissivity
| coating would be easier.
| HackeNewsFan234 wrote:
| Low-e windows coatings have been around since the 70's.
| They have gotten better over the decades, but I can't say
| how much they've changed. When buying new windows, this
| is a very common and cheap option.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| I got a new house recently. The default windows were
| pretty good already. My wife still did not like the
| amount of light coming in. I still wanted some. So we
| compromised. We bought reflective window tinting. About
| 500 bucks to do the front of the house. Will do the back
| next. Easily reduced the temp in house by quite a bit.
|
| The other thing the builder did foam insulation of the
| garage doors and walls. Easily 20F difference from my
| previous house in the same area. Reflective ridged
| insulation in the attic too. My old house 110 easily, in
| the summer. It is basically the same temp as the outside
| now. Cost for the AC is basically half what my pervious
| house was. I would go for awnings at this point as it is
| basically one of the few things left I could
| realistically do. But HOA...
| jerf wrote:
| It'd be interesting to see a study on low E coatings, the
| argon and other exotic fillings, and of course, ye olde
| "close the curtain" (which I acknowledge heats up
| _inside_ the dwelling but still can reflect some) versus
| awnings. I wouldn 't be terribly surprised that the
| answer comes out either that modern approaches are
| competitive or even superior overall (especially with the
| "close the curtain" backup)... but of course, a building
| has to actually _have_ them before they can help, and
| that would still leave a decades-large temporal hole
| between "awnings became unpopular" and "awnings are no
| longer terribly useful" that can still be explored.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| From the piece:
|
| > The metal frame could last for decades without needing
| changing, and the fabric covering would need to be replaced
| every 8-10 years depending on exposure and climate.
| kmoser wrote:
| A/C systems, especially central ones, also require
| maintenance, albeit of a much different kind. Purely from a
| cost perspective, awnings are probably cheaper in the long
| run but the demand for comfort is more compelling than the
| cost of maintaining an A/C system.
| jraines wrote:
| No doubt true but I laughed reading this because I have an
| A/C technician working at my house right now, for like the
| tenth time this year.
| izacus wrote:
| Or maybe much more simple and obvious - "they cost to be
| installed and the developer/builder saved some money on a
| thing and related labor".
|
| Not sure how its in US, but houses here in some parts of
| Europe have literally become completely plain white cubes
| to minimize building costs as much as possible. No more
| roof overhangs (which brings problems), no more awnings, no
| decorations, practically no balconies or varied designs.
| Just sets of suburban white cubes.
| eitally wrote:
| That's not common in the US (yet). Things here are still
| predominantly stick built with 2x6 framing, either on a
| concrete slab or concrete foundation with a dug out
| crawlspace. Basements are decreasingly common, even in
| regions where they had been the norm (due to cost,
| mostly).
| AngryData wrote:
| They are seriously ending the roof right at the wall?
| That is monumentally stupid and will guarantee a
| multitude of problems down the line.
| izacus wrote:
| Yep, e.g. france:
| https://www.properstar.ch/france/hesingue/buy/house
|
| There's a crop of these hideous things I've seen around
| Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland and rest of central
| Europe.
| bityard wrote:
| Good lord. I don't know how exactly it's constructed but
| I'm guessing a house made like that is either going to
| require extensive annual maintenance, or start
| rotting/crumbling in 15-20 years.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| So if there's a concrete skirt around the entire boundary
| of the house with a proper slant, wont the water run off
| properly?
| hedora wrote:
| We have a fixed overhang on the side of our house instead of
| an awning. It's a lot less maintenance, but it is a foot or
| two too short.
|
| The problem is that we keep getting 20F-above-normal days in
| the fall when it lets the sun into the house.
|
| I wonder if global warming will create a business opportunity
| for retrofitting houses like ours.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Rollup shades can help with that.
| lacrosse_tannin wrote:
| I bet renting has something to do with it too. I can't just
| start attaching awnings to the outside of this place I don't
| own. The landlord doesn't care if I'm hot in the summer and
| cold in the winter. He doesn't pay the AC bill.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| He might be paying the AC bill. In large buildings the heat
| and AC is central, and typically is included in the rent.
| The downside of this is that the decision to run AC or heat
| is made by the building engineer, and during the change of
| seasons there might be a warm (or cold) day and the AC (or
| heat) isn't running.
| philwelch wrote:
| You can buy portable heaters and air conditioners, plug
| them in inside your own apartment, and pay the power
| bill. The AC needs a way to exchange air with the outside
| but that can be accommodated with a window.
| malfist wrote:
| Portable AC units are highly inefficient (also a TC
| video) because they exhaust the air conditioned air to
| the outside as part of the exchange.
| shagie wrote:
| There are different models.
|
| The classic one is the single hose. There are dual hose
| models.
|
| https://www.menards.com/main/heating-cooling/air-
| conditioner...
|
| With the installation instructions https://cdn.menardc.co
| m/main/items/media/LUMAC001/Install_In... on page 11 you
| can see two sets of air inlets - one for the air exchange
| with outside, and one for the air exchange inside.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Thanks, it even mentions low-e glass which I was wondering
| about.
| joeross wrote:
| See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhbDfi7Ee7k
| meatmanek wrote:
| Site seems down, here's the latest Wayback Machine snapshot:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240421045028/https://thecrafts...
| NathanKP wrote:
| I think the builders of the past would be amazed by modern
| technology like argon filled double paned windows with advanced
| window films to reflect the heat instead of letting it in.
|
| But yes, let's bring back the awnings too. Sometimes the low tech
| ways are easiest and best. I will say that I don't think awnings
| alone can save a stick built modern house from the heat. Part of
| the key to old houses staying cool was high thermal mass: lots of
| brick and stone that could stay cool during the day. As great as
| modern insulation is at keeping hot and cool separate, a modern
| insulated wall doesn't cool it's surroundings like a high thermal
| mass wall would.
|
| Moving to a world where we combine passive cooling and high
| thermal mass construction with the benefits of modern tech will
| be key in my opinion.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| There's Argon in those? Interesting. I wonder if anyone's tried
| adding an electrode for plasma effects.
| mordechai9000 wrote:
| I wonder how long the argon actually lasts in practice. The
| industry claims 20 years under normal conditions.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Yeah, the gas leaks out after a while, then your double
| pane glass fogs up on the inside and costs $$$ to replace.
| nnevod wrote:
| To fog up, it has to pass water molecules, which are way
| larger than gas molecules. I've seen only a few IGUs fog
| up, all of them had clearly visible damage, and they are
| ubiquitous here, with many 20+ years old. And the IGUs
| themselves aren't very expensive either (unless they're
| over 1sqm individually), frames indeed are.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| My parents redid their home with a dud batch from a
| company that offered 30 years guarantees. Company was out
| of business within 10 years and 20 years later ~60% of
| them are fogged. Still very energy efficient.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The seals on them degrade and leak.
|
| I've had a lot of them fog up with no damage.
| avidiax wrote:
| I've seen a video about fixing that yourself. Seems like
| a missing market opportunity, since replacing windows
| costs many thousands, so you could probably charge
| hundreds to provide this as a service.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXyQWqK9lg0
| scotty79 wrote:
| Those require very low pressure (partial vacuum) rather than
| argon.
| mmooss wrote:
| > As great as modern insulation is at keeping hot and cool
| separate, a modern insulated wall doesn't cool it's
| surroundings like a high thermal mass wall would.
|
| Why does modern insulation hold less thermal mass? Is it just
| that trapped air has less mass than stone?
| dotancohen wrote:
| That's exactly the reason. Technically it's actually the
| amount of energy needed to heat a volume of material, not the
| physical mass, that is important. But for many materials the
| two go hand in hand.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Fiberglass insulation reduces convection but has no mass like
| rock wool
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Rock wool works by reducing convection. It's mass is not a
| major factor in its functionality.
|
| Adobe and stone are things with thermal mass, not
| insulating fiber thickness.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Touch a cold blanket and cold stone countertop and tell me
| which feels cooler, then do the same thing for a hot blanket
| and a hot countertop.
|
| Sure, the stone is more conducive meaning you feel the
| temperature sooner. But it also has a lot of thermal mass,
| meaning it can give off or absorb more heat.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > argon filled double paned windows with advanced window films
| to reflect the heat instead of letting it in
|
| We replaced the old double-paned windows with new triple-paned
| with 60% IR filter. There's hardly any tint, but boy did it
| make a difference. Especially in the living room which has a
| very large window which catches the sun from noon to midnight
| in the summer.
|
| Before the wood floor in the living room would be baking hot
| where the sun hit, uncomfortably so at times. Now I can't tell
| the difference.
|
| We added it just cause it didn't cost much extra, figured why
| not. Very glad we did.
| ipaddr wrote:
| What happens when they break?
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| You replace them.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I was referring to the cleanup of toxic materials and the
| safety aspect.
| tatersolid wrote:
| Argon is a largely non-reactive noble gas. What toxins?
| njarboe wrote:
| And Argon makes up a little less than 1% of the air you
| breathe.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Low-e coatings are metals (silver, tin, zinc), I believe.
| But not very much, and not very toxic.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Glass and a noble glass is like the least toxic combo you
| could have. They're both inert.
| jonstewart wrote:
| I've geeked out on thermal mass as much as the next guy, but I
| don't think it's a good solution at scale. Adding thermal mass
| is expensive, both due to the materials cost and that it's a
| niche building technique. Insulation, heat pumps, and solar all
| benefit from mass production and technology improvements.
| Combine them with light-colored roofs and solar panels, and
| that can probably beat thermal mass construction.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The material costs for adobe are almost certainly close to
| zero if you live in an area that can benefit from using it.
|
| The labor costs for adobe have become very high, mostly it
| seems because the descendants of the families that started
| the amazing adobe brick "factories" no longer want to be dirt
| farmers.
|
| > can probably beat thermal mass construction.
|
| You have to define what "beat" means. My hundred year old
| adobe did not rise above 81F as an interior temperature this
| summer, despite outside highs around 100F. That would be
| possible (or even lower!) with the technologies you
| mentioned, but my adobe house did that with no energy
| utilization at all.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Could do both though, it's not an either-or situation.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Thermal mass is also known as "dirt" or "rocks", and is not
| expensive.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Older technology is often neat in a lot of ways and has
| certain benefits, but there's a reason why we moved on.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder how many people who espouse old building
| technology have actually spent a lot of time living in an
| old house. Everything has advantages and disadvantages, and
| living in an old house growing up ... well, lets just say I
| prefer my modern house of today.
| bumby wrote:
| The old-tech can also be less compatible with new tech. If
| you live in an adobe house the high thermal mass can also
| block WiFi.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Do you want to be comfortable for reasonable AC cost or
| watch cat videos in HD instead of SD. Decisions, decisions.
| bumby wrote:
| And heaven forbid you try to use WiFi-enabled doorbells
| or AC controllers.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Heaven forbid I know how to extend WiFi ranges or
| otherwise accommodate outliers. If only such technology
| existed. But sure, getting off my ass to change the temp
| or see who is at the door is basically an unthinkable
| inconvenience in these modern times.
| bumby wrote:
| I thought this exchange was in good nature but the tone
| seems to point to something else. Have you ever lived in
| an adobe home? They can create a unique set of issues
| more modern methods don't need to deal with.
|
| Yes, most problems have engineering solutions. It all
| comes down to whether the juice is worth the squeeze.
| FWIW I'm generally in favor of the increased reliability
| of low tech, but also acknowledge I'm in the minority.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Sorry if you took that personally.
|
| Living in a mud hut where it rains 120 days a year
| doesn't sound like the solution. Bricks work better.
| amluto wrote:
| Awnings have a nice property that fancy windows don't: they can
| reduce heat gain in the summer while still allowing more heat
| gain in the winter. A nice south-facing window that lets the
| low winter sun in can provide a _lot_ of desirable heat in the
| winter in a cold climate.
|
| (Also, removing a given amount of summer heat via air
| conditioning is considerably cheaper than adding that same
| amount of winter heat via gas or heat pump in many climates,
| because the indoor-outdoor temperature difference is much
| higher in the winter.)
| defrost wrote:
| Even better, depending on climate, grape vines.
|
| Our house (Australia) has trained vines on the sunny side
| that are thick with leaves and grapes in summer, bare and
| leafless in winter.
|
| Ideal for seasonally sensible shade and warmth.
| cperciva wrote:
| Don't the vines damage the house?
| yarnover wrote:
| English ivy (hedera helix) can damage mortar, but grape
| vines don't have holdfast structures like hedera that can
| sink into mortar. Plus, hedera helix is so dense that
| rotting vegetation and sheltered animals can also cause
| problems. Grapevines have tendrils that grab onto and
| twine around something like wires or a trellis.
| defrost wrote:
| They're on a free standing trellis that doesn't touch the
| house.
|
| Two actually, a vertical mesh straight up from the garden
| bed adjacent to the brick paved verandah, and another
| that's almost horizontal with a slight slope away from
| the house.
|
| Most of the summer growth is dense on the horizontal
| (like an awning) with grape bunches developing and
| hanging down for easy picking when rips.
| devjab wrote:
| Most vines, including Ivy don't damage bricks walls that
| are build well. I don't know about grapes but most ivy
| uses "suction cups" to trap on directly to the bricks. I
| think the misconception that they damage mortar might
| come from the moisture the plants can trap which can then
| damage the masonry. Or maybe it's because the plants hide
| damage until it gets serious Mortar doesn't last forever
| after all. Anyway, if you build your house or wall
| properly you can grow stuff on it with basically no
| downsides outside of having more bugs (and the things
| that eat them) on your wall that you might want.
|
| It might not work so well on the Lego brick walls that
| are glued onto the front of concrete these days, but that
| would just be a guess.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Vitis vinifera has a deep vertical root that can fit in
| even narrow places and don't causes a lot of trouble.
| Climbing roses can vary, some are huge and they trow a
| lot of garbage, but short climbers normally are
| manageable. If they grow too much, you can just prune it
| to a desired size
|
| Ivy or Wisteria are a different question. The first will
| damage walls and the second can crush anything like a
| vegetable python
| class3shock wrote:
| For those interested in digging into this passive solar
| design concerns itself with solar gain optimization. Passive
| house is a standard that makes use of these concepts as well
| but goes alot further.
| hedora wrote:
| If you go this route, design for the climate twenty years
| from now, not for twenty years ago.
|
| (Speaking from experience--our house is an oven in the
| spring and fall because those seasons are 20F hotter than
| we assumed when designing the house.)
| happyopossum wrote:
| > are 20F hotter than we assumed when designing the house
|
| Then you designed a house for a climate that never
| existed. There is nowhere on earth that is 20F warmer
| than it was 200 years ago, let alone 20.
| hedora wrote:
| Peak temperatures have gone up that much for the
| microclimate our house is in.
|
| Put another way, air conditioning used to be unnecessary
| in Silicon Valley. Now we have > 100F days pretty much
| every year.
| amluto wrote:
| I'm dubious. If you pick the right threshold, you will
| surely find that the frequency of days above that
| threshold is massively increased. But that doesn't imply
| that the temperature is up 20F.
|
| I certainly remember plenty of days in the mid-to-high-
| nineties in Silicon Valley 20 years ago.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Sometimes the low tech ways are easiest and best.
|
| They're not even easiest and best, but they're additive and in
| the grand scheme of things awnings (and shutters) are not that
| expensive, so it's a small investment for a permanent benefit.
| Animats wrote:
| > Part of the key to old houses staying cool was high thermal
| mass: lots of brick and stone that could stay cool during the
| day.
|
| That only works if you don't have long hot spells. I live in a
| house with high thermal mass - reinforced concrete filled
| cinderblock. It was built by a commercial builder as his own
| house in 1950. There's enough thermal mass to keep the interior
| temp stable for three days. No need for air conditioning.
|
| This worked fine until Northern California started having week-
| long stretches of 100F+ temperatures. That didn't happen until
| about ten years ago. Once all that thermal mass heats up to
| ambient, it won't come down for days.
| ghaff wrote:
| I live in about a 200 year old New England farmhouse that's a
| mixture of post and beam and stick. I definitely observe that
| for one or two hot days, especially with passably temperate
| nights, inside will definitely be cooler than out. But once
| the house heats up, it takes days to get it cool even if
| temperatures have gone down outside.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| While modern building materials are very good at keeping the
| heat out, they aren't perfect. My house was built without
| awnings or AC and with modern window tech, but we opted to have
| awnings and screens installed nevertheless and they made a huge
| difference in how much heat from sun is coming into the house
| (not to mention the bright light itself).
|
| For my case, I think it's irresponsible to be installing AC
| without first making sure the house is optimized for keeping
| the heat out.
| bafe wrote:
| There's even "passive cooling" (called thermal mass activation)
| where you circulate groundwater through the floors/ceiling or
| concrete walls to cool them down. Ideally combined with a
| geothermal source heat pump to recover the waste heat dumped to
| the ground in the cold season
| zdw wrote:
| In hot areas, even the shade of rooftop solar panels can make a
| substantial difference inside a building. And there's the ultra
| low tech method of just planting more shade trees.
|
| Unfortunately with most US build tract housing, there's not
| enough room between most houses to provide dedicated shade by
| most any method. I wonder if shade between the roof gaps between
| houses would be useful.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Shade trees covering the roof doesn't sound very compatible
| with those solar panels though
| schiffern wrote:
| I once heard a story from a sustainable design architect. The
| customer wanted to cut down all their shade trees to install
| solar panels. The architect explained that, after doing a
| bunch of energy modeling, the shade trees were actually
| saving _fifteen times_ more energy than the PV panels would
| produce.
|
| So what happened? Naturally, _the customer fired the
| architect._ They only wanted to look green, but they didn 't
| care if it was actually green. :-/
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Did the architect look at the whole picture, or just
| compare energy?
|
| Trees cost a non-zero amount of time and money by just
| existing and doing their normal tree stuff when they're
| near a dwelling.
| schiffern wrote:
| If you want "the whole picture," trees also have many
| non-zero benefits apart from just energy -- habitat,
| outdoor cooling/comfort, habitat, cleaner air, habitat,
| lower stress hormone levels, and oh did I mention
| habitat? :-D
|
| Since the only upside of PV is energy, it seems like you
| should at least show it's energy positive (vs wasting
| 1,400% as much energy on net). That huge energy waste is
| a _big_ hole to dig out of using only secondary
| incidental benefits.
|
| If a tree is unhealthy or too close or too big, then of
| course you do something about that. But to do it _because
| of solar_ (thinking it 'll be more "green") is often
| misguided.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| The whole picture includes everything that is good as
| well as everything that is bad about all of the choices
| under consideration.
|
| It is impossible to make an informed (instead of faith-
| based) decision without looking at all of the things in
| an unbiased way.
|
| Trees near dwellings are seldom hands-off, and solar can
| have benefits beyond supplemental energy production. It
| isn't a straight-forward comparison.
| schiffern wrote:
| Thanks, that's exactly my point. You need to look at the
| _whole_ picture, not just "trees cost a non-zero amount
| of time and money." Glad we're on the same page!
|
| > solar can have benefits beyond supplemental energy
| production.
|
| I'd be curious what you mean by that.
| bityard wrote:
| My dad lived in a house that was well-shaded by trees. They
| kept the house cool but there ARE downsides...
|
| The biggest one is dealing with all the leaves in the fall.
| If your yard is big enough, you can easily lose a whole
| weekend to cleaning up the dropped leaves so that they
| don't kill your grass over the winter and spring. You also
| have to clean them out of the gutters multiple times a
| year, around the foundation, etc.
|
| That house also had an absurd amount of spiders in it,
| which I attribute to both being close to the woods and
| shaded by trees. Not to mention vermin such as mice,
| chipmunks, squirrels can extremely destructive to the
| house, vehicles, and machinery when their own homes and
| food sources are right nearby.
| scheme271 wrote:
| Problem with shade trees is that trees have the unfortunately
| tendency to loose branches or fall during severe weather and
| having them next to your house isn't ideal when that happens.
| Also, depending on where you are located, those trees may end
| up being a great way of letting a wildfire spread to your home.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| The bigger problem with trees is the damage its roots can do
| to foundations.
|
| Which is a great pity because I'd welcome planting more trees
| around suburbs.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Even if the trees aren't shading the house directly, they
| will have a cumulative cooling effect; they capture the sun
| before it hits and warms up the ground, they have constant
| evaporative cooling, etc.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Shade trees can be pretty nice to have, especially when
| they are deciduous and automatically provide dense shade in
| the warm months and less shade in the cool months.
|
| They can also destroy pavement, and foundations, and
| underground utilities.
|
| They can be messy. Leaves fall and generally need dealt
| with somehow, and many kinds fruiting trees produce fruit
| that is big enough for a person to twist an ankle on just
| by walking through their own yard.
|
| They can be expensive to maintain properly, and even when
| maintained properly they can drop heavy things that damage
| expensive things.
|
| It isn't necessarily a straight forward comparison.
|
| While I'm sure that well-placed trees can be a great
| benefit to the overall cost of owning and living in a
| dwelling, I'm also sure that they can be a great detriment.
|
| If I had a choice, I think I'd rather have big solar panel
| arrays than big shade trees.
| 486sx33 wrote:
| I think this Johnny cash ad is a great period piece to explain
|
| https://youtu.be/2jkIVfpICeo
| exabrial wrote:
| We don't use awnings because of roof overhangs. Local architects
| compute the sun angle for the given location. During the winter
| you can allow more light in and during the summer when the sun is
| higher, you can let less light in.
| lolinder wrote:
| This is not true for any house I've lived in. No awnings, but
| there was also _definitely_ no effort to compute roof angles to
| maximize shade in the summer.
|
| Depending on the home's orientation you may not be able to pull
| that off at all even if you tried.
| jerlam wrote:
| And tract houses use the same designs but rotated and flipped
| for an entire development. No one is calculating any kind of
| roof angles there.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| In my area, very little thought seems to be given to house
| details like solar exposure and orientation of the house. They
| put them up as fast as possible, built to code minimums.
| jandrese wrote:
| The majority of the time the house angle is determined by the
| street it is on. The house is usually aligned directly with the
| street, with zero regard given to sun angles and shading.
| the_gorilla wrote:
| This was written in a very confident way, but I can say with at
| least as much confidence that my house was mass produced in a
| factory and assembled locally in the middle of nowhere without
| any regard for local architecture.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| It mentioned " _local_ architects " after all...
| the_gorilla wrote:
| The statement is still wrong. Awnings and local architects
| are both extinct so clearly the architects didn't kill the
| awnings.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| My house has strategic overhangs (and trees with summer
| foliage to the south) leading to drastically different
| winter/summer insolation. (in addition, the dark
| stonework on the ground floor functions to passively
| clear light snow in spring and early winter)
|
| It was built in the XX, but according to local
| vernacular, which likely (we have a few examples
| surviving from the XIII) predates both the modern
| profession of "architect" _and_ metal-framed awnings.
|
| (my friend the architect has plenty of local work, but
| maybe that's because we live in different countries?)
| rascul wrote:
| Local architects are certainly not extinct.
| ska wrote:
| Definitely not, although most laces I've lived they have
| a superficial at most involvement with single family
| homes.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean yeah, if you have a big house with large porches /
| overhangs that'll work. But those are luxury houses which only
| few people have access to.
| sien wrote:
| Awnings are still pretty common in Australia.
|
| We have them on our house. In Australia it's very much worth
| getting awnings and ceiling fans as well as having a heat pump.
|
| In summer afternoons they can make a really remarkable
| difference.
| dbetteridge wrote:
| Yeah was going to comment that this is a heavily American
| perspective and possibly even a heavily American city dwelling
| perspective.
|
| Lots of countries even where electricity is cheap use awnings
| as it's just better to not need to cool something down if it
| can be avoided.
|
| My childhood home in WA (Western Australia) had awnings, along
| with shade trees and a patio and it made a huge difference.
| noticed especially where the west facing Window got setting sun
| in summer and had no awnings
| rv3392 wrote:
| I'm from Brisbane and it seems like a lot of new build free-
| standing houses don't have awnings around here. I think most
| still have pretty deep eaves, which do an ok job.
|
| However, based on what I can see from my train window right
| now, it looks like most new apartments/townhouses and even
| office buildings have some sort of awning or window covering.
| ip26 wrote:
| I've even calculated optimal dimensions for pergola-type awnings
| on my house, but I detest the condescension directed towards
| insulation. The author has apparently never sat next to an
| uninsulated southwest Denver wall baking in the sun in early
| August.
| ellisv wrote:
| > never sat next to an uninsulated southwest Denver wall baking
| in the sun in early August
|
| I must admit, although I've of course sat next to an
| uninsulated west Denver wall baking in the sun in early August
| and an insulated southwest Denver wall baking in the sun in
| early July, I've never actually sat next to an uninsulated
| southwest Denver wall baking in the sun in early August.
|
| I'm sure this comes as quite a shock, given our people's
| pastime. Hopefully you can forgive my great transgression.
| stevage wrote:
| >and the fabric covering would need to be replaced every 8-10
| years depending on exposure and climate.
|
| Absolutely not.
|
| I recently drove past my childhood home. The canvas awnings that
| were there 30 years ago are still there, and look fine. Almost
| everything else about the house has changed.
| dylan604 wrote:
| How do you know it was never replaced? If it was the same, I'd
| be concerned about how much PFAS or other forever chemicals
| were used
| Aeolun wrote:
| Canvas has been canvas for an exceedingly long time right?
| Has anything about it really changed?
| rascul wrote:
| Treating canvas for fire and water resistance has been done
| for a long time for some applications. I don't know what is
| used for that, though.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Scotchgard was a PFOS based formula changed to a PFBS
| formula brought to us by our lovely friends at 3M.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotchgard
|
| more info in this PDF
|
| https://pfas-1.itrcweb.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/10/histor...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Not everything that lasts is PFAS/forever chemicals, please
| don't fearmonger.
| pantulis wrote:
| Still the question is valid, the canvas colors and patterns
| are standardized so they are easy to replace. But anyway
| the discussion is not very relevant as I don't think the
| cost of replacing the canvas is that much.
| dylan604 wrote:
| One of the very popular water proofing chemicals was 3M
| ScotchGard which most definitely was forever chemicals. To
| just write it off as fearmongering is just head in the sand
| level of "this is fine" mentality. "Lead paint is fine as
| long as you don't eat it" type of not caring or thinking
| the process through very far
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah they will have a longer lifetime than that, at worst they
| will start to fade with the year. But, that's UV that's hitting
| a consumable, instead of your house or things inside of it.
| asdff wrote:
| Don't windows block UV light anyhow?
| pfdietz wrote:
| How about an awning that's actually a solar panel? I understand
| these are a thing for RVs.
| spjt wrote:
| My solution is to not have any windows.
| spjt wrote:
| My solution was to not have any windows.
| philwelch wrote:
| I might just be unusually sensitive to this, but there is a
| downside to awnings that hardly ever gets mentioned. Yes, an
| awning keeps your house cooler by blocking sunlight, but it also
| _blocks sunlight_ , reducing the natural light inside your house.
| This means you either sit in the dark or use more artificial
| light, which is fine except natural sunlight is (for me at least)
| very beneficial for mood and for maintaining the circadian
| rhythm.
|
| I know lots of people who don't mind living in darkness or seem
| to have a personal vendetta against the sun, and maybe those
| people would be genuinely better off with awnings, but I don't
| think they're for me.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'm surprised I had to scroll down this far to find this -- yes
| exactly! They block the light, they block the sky, they block
| the view.
|
| Back in the day, windows were small and there were awnings and
| interiors were _dark_. Often made even darker with dark wood,
| dark colors, etc. It could be downright gloomy.
|
| Then a kind of aesthetic revolution happened where windows got
| bigger, walls got white, awnings went away -- and it's all so
| much brighter and joyous.
|
| And if your windows let in too much heat in the summer so you
| have to run your AC more, it can be counterbalanced in the
| winter when you can run the heat a lot less during sunny days.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think the reason this doesn't get mentioned so much, is
| because the sun is _absurdly_ bright during the day. I imagine
| a well designed awning doesn't affect the light levels of your
| home to any perceptible degree.
|
| In my experience that's true anyway.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| There is plenty of light being reflected off of nearby
| surfaces to still brighten up a house with an awning. They're
| mostly for reducing direct, intense sunlight.
|
| Plus, if it bothers you that much, there are awnings that
| retract or fold away.
| philwelch wrote:
| > the sun is absurdly bright during the day.
|
| Yes, this is what makes it so hard to replace with artificial
| lighting! I enjoy that absurdly bright sunlight. My house has
| extra windows over most of my windows and these specifically
| allow that sunlight in to add ambient lighting. During
| daytime most of my house is fully illuminated even with the
| lights off and blinds drawn because of these upper windows.
| You might describe what I have as the exact opposite of an
| awning and it's one of my favorite features.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This is the main reason I went for screens, which are a fine
| mesh fabric that cover the whole window, but you can still see
| outside - over shutters, which are double layer aluminium
| whatsits that really keep anything and anyone out. I mean it
| still gets pretty dark in the house with them closed, but in
| the hottest days of the summer, dark means cool and cool is
| good.
| asdff wrote:
| That might be a factor for some people but it seems like
| american society doesn't value natural light. I remember in
| college visiting a ton of peoples dorms and apartments and most
| people would either have purpose built blackout curtains or
| just nail an old towel over the window. Pretty common to see
| windows blocked up like this around town when you start looking
| for it. No clue who these troglodytes are but there are many of
| them.
| dangus wrote:
| > That might be a factor for some people but it seems like
| american society doesn't value natural light.
|
| This seems puzzling to me.
|
| Large windows are a staple of every luxury new build. Floor
| to ceiling windows are a status symbol.
| asdff wrote:
| Because its advertisement. It looks good in renderings and
| is a differentiator for why you should move into this
| expensive luxury apartment vs a normal one. When you look
| at the apartments with these people are covering the
| windows with blinds. Look at this streetview image of this
| relatively new apartment with floor to cieling windows (I
| picked the side with the most floor to cieling windows; 1).
| Hardly any furniture on the balconies, one person is using
| it for bike storage alone. Everyone has their blinds up.
| Clearly no one values natural light or even their balcony
| space very much.
|
| And it makes sense when you consider the pattern of
| American life: go to work in the morning at the crack of
| dawn, come back home when the sun is setting. Now its
| nighttime and you are inside with the lights on, you need
| blinds over that window unless you want to give your
| neighbors a show.
|
| 1. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0610614,-118.2858175,3a,
| 87.2...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I added an awning to my roof top deck door because the door
| wasn't weather proofed enough to constantly being hammered by
| Seattle autumn rain. No matter high tech you go, a low tech
| solution of just something to make sure your door isn't hammered
| directly by the rain is good enough to solve that weird leak you
| have in your 4 year old home.
| projectileboy wrote:
| I can't say enough good things about The Craftsman Blog. Was my
| primary source for learning how to rebuild my 100-year-old
| double-hung windows. Lots of good stuff to explore.
| yongjik wrote:
| Anecdotally, it feels like Americans generally don't care about
| natural lighting. About twenty years ago, my wife was looking for
| apartments and asked the leasing office if there was any unit
| available facing south or east. Apparently it was unusual enough
| a question that the apartment manager asked back if it was for
| religious reasons.
| advisedwang wrote:
| This article would suggest the opposite though - when AC made
| it feasible everyone removed the awnings that were blocking
| light thus maximizing natural light.
| yongjik wrote:
| But that's the thing - You probably don't want to sit outside
| under direct sunlight in a summer afternoon, do you? Unless
| you live very far up north, having summer sunlight hit your
| floor is not very pleasant, either. A well-positioned awning
| can block summer sunlight while allowing in most of winter
| sunlight.
| ghaff wrote:
| My deck gets direct sunlight with no easy way to block it
| when the sun is high in the sky. As a result I don't
| actually use the deck much until later in the day.
| asdff wrote:
| Tell that to your cat
| asdff wrote:
| The article is making suppositions that aren't rooted in
| data. Here's another data point: where I live there are many
| homes and apartments that had awnings in the 1920s and don't
| today, and lack AC as well. Clearly they removed them for
| other reasons than AC. In my mind a new awning is vastly more
| expensive than a plastic set of blinds (or even better
| offering no blinds and having your tenant supply their own
| curtains) so perhaps that's what happened for these AC-less
| units.
| dangus wrote:
| I would be more tempted to explain this by saying that
| apartment managers don't care or think about this sort of
| thing.
|
| Ask the same question to a realtor and they'll know exactly why
| you're asking.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I went to Granada a few years back and the vast majority of the
| apartment buildings I saw out there had awnings.
|
| Meanwhile, my new build, West facing single aspect flat in London
| regularly heats to 30+ degrees celsius because no one thought
| about heat management.
| staticlink wrote:
| I don't understand why newbuild flats are obsessed with using
| so much glass. Almost everyone I see is being covered up,
| sometimes even with just cardboard.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Took the train to Amsterdam the other day, on the way there
| is an apartment building where the shared hallways are on the
| train-tracks side of the building, it's floor to ceiling
| glass. Some sections of it had cardboard or even aluminium
| foil to try and keep the sun / heat out, that one looked like
| a greenhouse.
|
| Likewise, I work for an energy company, in summer the aging
| AC (which they keep low because an energy company's policy
| and marketing is actually the opposite of what they provide)
| cannot keep up because there's nothing keeping the sunlight
| out but flimsy shades on the inside.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Because it looks great when you're shopping for a flat. You
| don't realize the problem until summer hits.
| consteval wrote:
| Right, I think it's a continuation of the trend I'm seeing
| where everything is optimized for advertising and
| marketing. Essentially, everyday functionalities and
| practicalities are displaced in favor of fresh paint and
| shiny things.
| dangus wrote:
| My place has full floor to ceiling windows.
|
| I invested in automatic roller shades. It was expensive but
| worth it.
|
| It's amazing and way better than traditional windows.
| Winter isn't anywhere near as depressing anymore. I can
| control the amount of light that comes in far more than
| someone with normal size windows.
|
| Since the windows are new glass with multiple panes I
| notice very little difference in insulation performance.
| kjs3 wrote:
| I have a friend who bought a very expensive condo on the
| 20-something floor in one of those fadish^H^H^Htrendy floor-
| to-ceiling glass buildings. When I visited all I could say
| was "Gorgeous view. You're going to hate living here." And
| omfg does he in the summer.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Houses also made use of the "stack effect". A cupola was put on
| the roof apex. The cupola was vented on the sides and was open to
| the attic. Wind blowing across the roof would accelerate because
| of the slope, then flow through the cupola, sucking the hot air
| out of the house and creating a cool draft through it.
|
| I don't have a cupola on my house, but did design in the stack
| effect. You can definitely feel the breeze coming up through the
| house. It makes the house several degrees cooler without A/C.
|
| The house also has unusually large eaves, which serve the same
| purpose as awnings.
|
| The house costs half as much to keep comfortable as my previous
| home.
| pistoleer wrote:
| What scares me about eaves and cupolas is that they seem
| attractive spots for bats and insects to nest. I have a covered
| sort of outdoor hallway leading to my home, and it's swarmed
| with all sorts of flies during the summer because it's not as
| hot as out in the sun. What's your experience?
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| Is that necessarily a bad thing?
| pistoleer wrote:
| Flies: they get inside and nestle in my fruit, annoy me and
| distract me, get in my face.
|
| Bees and wasps: they settle and build nests in nooks and
| crannies of roofs. I don't have a problem with bees per se,
| although they can probably keep disturbing eating in the
| garden. Otoh they may pollinate flowers in the garden.
| Wasps on the other hand are truly a pest. I've lived in a
| house with wasps in the roof, constant wasps in the attic,
| leading to an unusable attic for about a year.
|
| Bats: no idea, never had them so far. But I've lived in a
| neighborhood where they were nestled inside the outer
| layers of roofs. Just like other animals I imagine they
| "shit and piss all over the place" so to speak. But they're
| also protected where I live, so once they are there, you
| can't even get rid of them.
| kjs3 wrote:
| We have bats. IME, they're no big deal _outside_ of the
| house (cute-ugly, but _don 't_ play with them), but if
| they annoy you putting up some bat houses away from where
| you don't want them seems to work. Inside your attic,
| otoh, they're a nightmare. If you suspect they're getting
| in, fix that ASAP. Most places (that I know of, ymmv)
| there are licensed pest management folks who can
| physically remove the bats.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Bats keep the mosquitos under control.
| kjs3 wrote:
| I didn't feel the need to enumerate every advantage bats
| have. And where I leave, there are not _nearly_ enough
| bats to keep the mosquitos anything like under control.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I had a huge problem with wasps. Wasps, everywhere, for
| years. Eventually, my cedar shake roof needed replacing.
| The roof contractor said is was full of wasps, as wasps
| like to nest in cedar shakes.
|
| Replacing the roof with asphalt shingles solved that
| problem.
| kelnos wrote:
| Yes, absolutely.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| In Ireland at least most people who have bats in their
| attics don't even know they're there - there's only 1
| species (out of 9) who make any kind of noticable smell
| (unless you already have problems with ventilation and/or
| damp)
| rascul wrote:
| In some cases screens may be installed to keep insects and
| animals out of areas.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Screens solve that problem.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| Still popular in Spain.
| metronomer wrote:
| Curiously enough, here in Spain they're still pretty common
| nowadays, as lots of houses purposely incorporated green awnings,
| both to protect an exponentially-growing number of these houses
| from harsh sunlight during summer season, and to presumably
| 'soften' the arrival to the city of an increasing quantity of
| newcomers from rural Spain, as they already were very
| familiarized with them and, the designers thought, would find
| spots of green on the building more appealing comming from a
| greener countryside.
| juanpicardo wrote:
| awnings also make a difference when getting a home's energy
| efficiency certificate. having them in your south facing
| windows helps a lot getting a higher score.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I practically begged the idiot planners in Ireland for awnings so
| we could have shade in summer and fewer chances for water ingress
| and they didn't care at all. Helps explain why Irish houses are
| so mouldy.
| pistoleer wrote:
| It surprises me to read about "fixed metal frame" awnings. You
| don't _have_ to make that trade off.
|
| In the Netherlands a lot of houses have electrically retractable
| awnings (or even just mechanically windable by hand), especially
| above the giant windows facing the back yard.
|
| During winter and bad weather, we retract the awning. When it's
| too sunny, we deploy it.
|
| typical row house layout with big windows on both sides:
| https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doorzonwoning
|
| retractable awning: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zonnescherm
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| We have them in america too. But every moving part comes with
| inflated costs for both acquisition and ongoing maintenance.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| While this is true, awnings aren't _that_ expensive, and
| while I don 't have the knowledge to do the maths, they will
| earn themselves back over time with how much heat they keep
| out and how much you'll need to run the AC.
| pistoleer wrote:
| In the Netherlands it costs around a grand, as for
| maintenance... Haven't needed to do any in more than 15
| years. The actual screen retracts into a weather proof metal
| casing, so there's not that much that goes wrong, whereas
| fixed awnings are exposed to the full weather gamut 24/7.
|
| Let me put it this way: it's cheap enough that a lot of
| social housing and other cheap forms of housing inhabited by
| the "lower class" feature them.
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| A government paying for a thing does not in any way imply
| that the thing is a good use of money. How many decades of
| fabric replacements could you get from the savings of
| bolting on a simple metal frame as compared to an elaborate
| electromechanically actuated arm mechanism?
| pxndxx wrote:
| What? Who mentioned the government paying for them? Who
| said that the fabric needs replacing often?
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| The parent...? Who pays for public housing? And what
| relevance would the weather otherwise have..?
| kuschku wrote:
| You might be misunderstanding something.
|
| Even a working family, if they're earning very little,
| may be living in subsidized public housing.
|
| Renters have lots of rights over here, allowing them to
| customize a lot about the apartment. Awnings are usually
| owned and installed by the renters themselves.
|
| So a family that has so little income that they need to
| live in subsidized public housing may still have enough
| income to buy a retractable awning.
| malermeister wrote:
| In the Netherlands? If its bolted on, it won't even last
| a year. The North Sea has a lot of storms ;)
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| I'm sorry you have such little faith in your engineers,
| but I can assure you structures can be made that can
| handle your storms.
| kuschku wrote:
| Northwestern Europe usually gets a storm at hurricane
| level 2 every one or two years and several at level 1 per
| season. There's a reason the name for these storms -
| Orkan - is derived from hurricane.
|
| For comparison, that's similar or slightly higher in
| strength than hurricane Sandy when it hit the northeast
| of the US.
|
| That's why if you have fixed awnings in this region of
| europe, they're usually removed as soon as fall hits
| (which compromises on the fixed part) or made of metal
| (which compromises on the "awning" part IMO).
| philwelch wrote:
| What scale are you using for "hurricane level"? In the
| US, I'm familiar with the Saffir-Simpson scale, where a
| "major" hurricane is defined as Category 3 and above (the
| scale goes up to 5). Hurricane Sandy was a mere Category
| 1 on that scale by the time it hit the US.
|
| To be fair, I don't think fixed metal awnings are
| fashionable in Florida for similar reasons.
| kuschku wrote:
| I was indeed using the Saffir-Simpson scale.
|
| Regarding "major", that's a bit more complicated. While
| US hurricanes usually are very strong when they form, by
| the time they hit landfall they've usually lost a lot of
| energy. Katrina was a category 3 when it hit the US. As
| was the most recent storm, Milton.
|
| While European windstorms are less strong, they usually
| hit around their peak. A typical Orkan has around
| 160-190km/h sustained wind speeds at landfall, which
| would be comparable to a Category 2 or 3 hurricane.
|
| I'm not trying to put them on the same level as e.g.
| Helene, but they're certainly strong enough that fixed
| awnings aren't exactly a good idea.
| malermeister wrote:
| I'm sure they can. But at that point you're looking at
| expenses higher than just making the damn thing
| retractable, and with worse functionality.
| fhars wrote:
| And who would even want a fixed structure that keeps out
| the little bit of winter sun there is?
| pistoleer wrote:
| > A government paying for a thing does not in any way
| imply that the thing is a good use of money.
|
| Agreed, nor is the inverse implied of course. But what is
| your point?
|
| > How many decades of fabric replacements could you get
| from the savings of bolting on a simple metal frame as
| compared to an elaborate electromechanically actuated arm
| mechanism?
|
| That's what I'm saying, fabric doesn't really need to get
| replaced in 15 years and going from personal experience.
| The mechanism is simple enough to be reliable as well.
|
| Ultimately, it's impossible to analyze the cost benefits
| of this. It's a matter of personal taste and what the
| harshness of the local climate allows. I don't doubt that
| fixed awnings are cheaper - but actuating awnings fix
| their drawbacks, and the maintenance they introduce is
| minimal in my experience. And frankly, for the price of
| giving up a single vacation in 15+ years, it's not that
| expensive. Again, cheap enough that those in social
| housing can make the choice to get them installed.
|
| ETA: my point of mentioning social housing is to say that
| people with lower income can still get them. The
| government doesn't pay for it. I just wanted to paint a
| picture of the relative cost.
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| What is your point in stating that public housing uses
| them? (aka the government buys them).
|
| No clue why this turned into a huge debate. I don't have
| a dog in this fight, all I'm saying is that america has
| retractable awnings, they have some downsides, and a
| government (or a "low class" individual) buying something
| doesn't convince me it's a good investment.
| kuschku wrote:
| > What is your point in stating that public housing uses
| them? (aka the government buys them).
|
| Who said anything about the government buying them? The
| renters in public housing usually buy and install them by
| themselves. That's why usually every balcony has a
| different type of awning, in a different state of
| disrepair.
|
| While I'm nowadays in IT, when I was a child our family
| lived in this type of public housing, and we had a
| retractable awning of exactly that kind that my parents
| had installed themselves.
| Etheryte wrote:
| This is such a silly argument. A movable awning isn't
| some complex apparatus, it's literally a hinge and two
| sticks. You're trying to frame this as some kind of an
| expensive problem when it really isn't.
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| You forgot the actuator.
| skrebbel wrote:
| It's a stick with a handle that you turn
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| Connected to a gear that needs oil, a chain that needs
| oil and can rust, or a rope that withers. Being overly
| dismissive of failure modes isn't a good look. I don't
| claim that fixed awnings are God's gift to humanity, just
| that they don't have some of the drawbacks associated
| with moving parts. The amount of emotional reaction I've
| received to that completely factual statement is frankly
| ridiculous.
| Etheryte wrote:
| You're overlooking the fact that these are incredibly
| common in the Netherlands, yet the massive problems you
| describe are nowhere to be found. Most people get away
| with giving them some love maybe every few years when
| they get creaky, if even that. Your argument is about as
| reasonable as saying we shouldn't have door hinges or
| door locks because moving parts have drawbacks. It's
| silly, these systems are so simple that they require next
| to no upkeep for years at a time.
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| Indeed we shouldn't have hinges or locks because moving
| parts have drawbacks, in contexts where that matters. For
| instance portals that don't need a door at all, or walls
| that don't need to open. Would you argue that every open
| passageway should have a door blocking it, and every wall
| should have hinges installed? No, that's ridiculous. It's
| equally ridiculous to get this angry about the simple
| fact that fixed awnings have upsides, and depending on
| the context they might be a better choice than
| retractable ones.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Touch grass my dude. You're trying to make the argument
| that hinges are bad and then calling other people angry
| over the internet.
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| All I said is moving parts have drawbacks. That's true.
| Then a million people kept on the thread to try to claim
| otherwise, yourself included. Now you're resorting to
| 4chan style comebacks, so that's fun.
| martijnvds wrote:
| You could call it the very definition of "un-hinged". :)
| jve wrote:
| Reading your comments, including down the thread I'd want
| to remind some guidelines:
|
| > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive,
| not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
|
| Your comments currently stand close to trolling and it is
| annoying.
|
| You may find other useful ones, too:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| gacklecackle wrote:
| * "should" vs. "must", you might find this useful. And
| also: "guidelines", not "rules".
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Interestingly, trolling does not appear to be against the
| guidelines, but posts like yours suggesting someone might
| be (close to) a troll are. After all, the guidelines tell
| us to assume good faith, but do they say anywhere that
| you must post in good faith? It seems like our only
| recourse under the guidelines is to flag a post and hope
| for the best.
| strken wrote:
| In Australia you can get a 3x2m awning from Bunnings for
| $300[0] and install it yourself in a couple of hours. I'd
| be surprised if Lowe's in the US didn't have something for
| the same price, although they've apparently decided to
| geoblock Australians from accessing most of their website.
|
| [0] https://www.bunnings.com.au/windoware-3-x-2m-charcoal-
| easy-f...
| nick3443 wrote:
| The "name brand" sunsetter awning starts at $2500.
|
| The china brands with no reviews do go down to $4-500
| though. The labor to have someone install one of those
| (if you're not diy) and find out it's crap would cost
| more.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Lowe's advertises awnings, but they're more expensive
| than that. I see a listing for "144 inch wide x 120 inch
| projection x 10 inch height metal solid motorized
| retractable patio awning" for $426. (I tried switching
| stores from San Francisco, CA to Albuquerque, NM in case
| of location-sensitive pricing, but prices didn't change.)
| One meter is about 39 inches, so this appears to be a bit
| under double the area (including 50% more projection) for
| a bit over double the price. But the vast majority of
| their listings are much smaller without being cheaper.
| Even the cheaper one is one square meter for US$100.
| apexalpha wrote:
| They save more in energy than they cost, though.
| greener_grass wrote:
| The Netherlands seems like the most sensible country on earth.
| How did they manage it?
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Low population and high income from natural resources.
| Etheryte wrote:
| The Netherlands has a higher population density than the US
| (520 people per square km vs 37) and lower GDP per capita
| ($62k vs $82k), so I'm not sure if that framing is exactly
| useful. In absolute numbers, yes, there's fewer people, but
| they're packed into a very small area so you have to be
| smart about how you do that.
| masklinn wrote:
| Also natural resources in the Netherlands? At least 20%
| of the country is reclaimed land, and more than half is
| under high tide water levels.
|
| I think GP confuses the Netherlands and Norway.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| When it comes to resources Norway and the Netherlands are
| radically different. But it's in how the resources were
| used not in whether they existed. The Dutch had a lot of
| North Sea gas but they, like the UK, squandered the
| income from it. Norway was lucky to avoid what has become
| known as the Dutch disease partly because Norway was
| later to the party.
| apexalpha wrote:
| Squandered is a bit much be built the Delta works, among
| others things.
|
| There's more than one way to invest money. Though I agree
| they could've put at least some of it in the stock market
| like Norway.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| Yes, on reflection I should have tried harder to think of
| a somewhat less inflammatory word.
| rahkiin wrote:
| The Netherlands lives on trade. From slaves and spices to
| the Rotterdam port as entry to the waters of europe and
| Schiphol Amsterdam airport.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Yep, parsing error on my part. Too tired today. Norway
| also being a country that seems to do most things right.
| niemandhier wrote:
| That changed in the last decade, among other things the
| population is dissatisfied with immigration.
|
| I cannot tell you if that is justified, but I can say from
| personal experience that in some cases the praised Dutch
| directness turned to racism. Things like, people not
| believing that you have a phd, or refusing to take your
| credit card because the color of skin does not match the
| ethnicity of the name.
| jjmarr wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_Piet
| blitzar wrote:
| Education.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| "Many"? It seems to me like there are many without. Homeowners
| Associations everywhere keep blocking them as well because they
| ruin the street image, so they say. Oh and they block AC _too_
| because it 's too noisy and the outside unit is too ugly. And
| so many homes are stuck with scorching summers.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > Oh and they block AC too because it's too noisy and the
| outside unit is too ugly.
|
| I've never seen an HOA _that_ bad; that 's horrific. I've
| seen ones that ban _window_ AC units, but never any that had
| anything to say about central HVAC.
|
| That's the kind of thing that ought to get legislatively
| challenged, perhaps as an accessibility issue.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| In Norway we have them with sensors for wind speed and sun so
| that they are deployed automatically to shade the window and
| retracted if the wind rises too high.
| bafe wrote:
| In Switzerland most offices and the majority of houses have
| exterior metal slat blinds or rolling shutters. Almost all
| are operated electrically and quite a few are controlled by
| inputs from wind and sunlight sensors. Since you can adjust
| the angle of the slats you can significantly cut down solar
| gains and glare while still providing ventilation and natural
| light
| otikik wrote:
| Would you be surprised to learn that in Spain almost all
| windows have built-in blinds?
|
| https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persiana
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Well, they have sun and don't need the insulation provided by
| double-pane glass.
|
| Dutch (northern european?) windows also open to the inside,
| making blinds impractical unless they're built into the
| window frame.
|
| On top of that, historically blinds are uncommon for cultural
| reasons, they impair looks and the amount of light coming
| through, even when fully open. It's already dark enough in
| here most of the time :)
| oersted wrote:
| I don't think you have the right mental image of Spanish
| blinds (persianas). They are indeed built into the window
| frame and are fully retractable. The windows also open to
| the inside.
|
| They have a similar function as awnings, because you can
| have them part of the way down, so they block the sun at
| whatever altitude it is, while allowing you to keep the
| window open for airflow or light. They are also less
| obstructive on the facade than awnings.
|
| Random example: https://as.com/actualidad/sociedad/por-que-
| hay-tantas-persia...
|
| I've lived both in Spain and the Netherlands.
|
| In Spain you have the wooden blinds that are vertically
| retractable, they can fully black-out and insulate the
| room, but you also always have very light translucent
| curtains next to them, that let light in but can block
| visibility for privacy.
|
| In the Netherlands you usually only have very thick
| curtains that are not translucent, they fulfil both
| purposes in one, light/temperature insulation and privacy,
| but they are an inferior solution for both.
|
| My parents and grandparents from Spain are surprised and
| often note how many windows in the Netherlands are wide
| open, particularly on ground floors, you can see everything
| in the house from the street. In Spain we would simply use
| the translucent curtains that block very little light but
| provide privacy. And in the north of Spain it's just as
| grey as in the Netherlands, the light level is similar most
| of the year.
|
| We also have fewer ground-floor households, they are
| generally unpopular, there's often shops there at street-
| level, and apartments are far more common than detached
| houses.
| gacklecackle wrote:
| * "almost all" or just "most"
| otikik wrote:
| Yep. Thanks
| oersted wrote:
| "almost all" is correct, they are nearly universal. At
| least for residential windows, maybe not in offices.
| ragazzina wrote:
| completely different from an awning from a heat point of
| view. The persiana traps the hot air between itself and the
| window pane, which usually becomes really hot.
| zukzuk wrote:
| A house I lived in during the pandemic had a pergola covered in
| wisteria vines over the south facing windows. In the summer the
| vines would leaf out and block most of the hot sun, and in the
| winter the leaves fell away and let in a ton of light.
|
| Worked great, looked great, and smelled great for the two weeks
| of bloom in may.
| reneherse wrote:
| This is a great technique that I believe has been used for
| ages and was re-popularized in recent decades by advocates of
| ecological and sustainable architecture.
|
| I've heard of grape vines being used in place of wisteria,
| which might be better in places where the latter is
| considered an invasive species. There may be other "friendly
| creepers" with similar deciduous qualities as well.
| hedora wrote:
| We'd put something like that near the house if not for the
| fire risk. I feel like there should be a solution to that
| problem though.
| schiffern wrote:
| You can select vine species that are fire-resistant
| (including grape and wisteria).
|
| Paradoxically, this can make a building _more_ fire-
| resistant than just having a bare wall. Plants contain
| water, after all.
|
| https://www.blm.gov/sites/default/files/documents/files/F
| ire...
| ahoef wrote:
| My house has three carefully pruned lime trees (not the
| fruit). Works perfectly for privacy and the exact dynamic you
| note here.
| intrepidhero wrote:
| At my first house I built garden beads in the back yard about
| 4 feet from the house, each with an 8 foot tall trellis for
| peas and beans. Seeing that lovely green wall outside the
| window in the summer was the absolute nicest window treatment
| I've ever had.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| in the row house article's picture I see the house, with the
| tree, but where's the _beestje_?
| Animats wrote:
| Because we have tinted glass and double-pained windows.
| tessierashpool9 wrote:
| who cares?
| corentin88 wrote:
| This website is full of ads...
| huhkerrf wrote:
| From the HN guidelines:
|
| > Please don't complain about tangential annoyances--e.g.
| article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button
| breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
| animal531 wrote:
| I live in a complex and my neighbour on one side has a metal
| awning over their back door. A neighbour on the other side
| enclosed their patio in glass and it has windows that can open so
| that they are at the same angle as an awning.
|
| As a result during summer mornings both of them are blasting me
| with tight beams of sunlight which increases the temperature in
| my place while forcing me to keep my curtains closed until later
| in the morning when they stop blinding me.
| ikr678 wrote:
| Sounds like the awnings are very effective for their owners
| then.
| thorin wrote:
| What percentage of US buildings would you say have air
| conditioning? The amount of UK homes that have AC is basically 0.
| Although I guess most commercial buildings would have it. I
| wonder if this is because UK homes are mainly brick, would that
| make a difference? Absolute max temp here in summer is 40 degrees
| C for 1 or 2 days and 30 degrees is pretty rare on most days in
| summer. When I saw the title I'd assumed this was about rainfall
| and guttering, which is something we do know about in the UK!
| ndheebebe wrote:
| Natural gas prices. If gas was priced per kw like electricity
| then heat pumps would be popular to heat your home as they are
| more efficient (they cool air outside to get some energy). And
| then you get the air conditioning mode for the summer. But the
| winter use would justify the installation.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > What percentage of US buildings would you say have air
| conditioning?
|
| Depends on the region of the US. In more northern, colder
| regions, many don't. In hotter regions, I think most either
| have it or have temporary/window/etc units.
| TheCleric wrote:
| Depends on latitude. In Florida which is subtropical everyone
| has air conditioning. The UK only spans 10 degrees of latitude.
| The continental US spans almost 25. So the variability of
| climate here is HUGE.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Let's make solar panel awnings that you can raise up above the
| window in winter.
| blenderob wrote:
| Are they really gone? I think I see them frequently in many
| buildings while strolling in Europe including the UK.
| bafe wrote:
| Awnings are very standard in Switzerland, almost every balcony
| has one, in addition to exterior blinds on all windows.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I assume the energy savings are significant. Shouldn't this be
| actually be part of the building code?
| stdbrouw wrote:
| In Europe it is to some extent, with the Energy Performance of
| Buildings Directive. Shades or awnings aren't required, but for
| every new building or renovation the overheating potential must
| be calculated and gets added to the building's "energy score",
| and buildings with an energy score that is too high either
| don't get a permit or the owners get fined.
| delichon wrote:
| We get high winds here that would rip any normal awning right off
| of the house, sometimes from unpredictable dirt devils out of
| nowhere. I put up a heavy duty wind sock that got ripped to
| shreds in two years, awning fabric wouldn't last much longer.
|
| Inside window blinds help a lot. I recently discovered the kind
| of blinds that are built between the double panes of window
| glass. I got a sliding glass door with them. They're so nice and
| protected from daily household trauma that I expect them to last
| far longer than my regular blinds. It'd be great to retrofit the
| whole house with them. I'd love to have motorized versions that
| could react to the sun throughout the day.
| nick3443 wrote:
| Does the interior blind affect the argon fill?
|
| It's truly shocking how much motorized insulating shades (i.e.
| pull-down double cellular shades) cost. To the point of making
| me consider attempting to form a low cost competitor in the
| market. Also, cellular shades with side tracks are no longer
| even available to order, which reduces the insulating
| effectiveness.
| qwerty_clicks wrote:
| It's greed for money and lack of care about designing decent
| society. It is cheaper for a developer to build with less
| anything. More sqr ft by building a bigger boxier flat to the
| property line with no eves. Since American's don't see eves or
| awnings anymore, they couldn't expect them.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Definitely on my mind in the UK. We have maybe 10 days a year
| when cooling is important, but having sun shades would be really
| nice for perhaps 50 days a year - so makes more sense than an AC
| solution here I think.
|
| Also they look nice!
| _spduchamp wrote:
| Squirrels. That's why I don't use awnings.
|
| I've had awnings on my old house destroyed twice by squirrels
| ripping them apart for nesting.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| These squirrels just showed up in the last 50 years or so?
| thedman9052 wrote:
| Don't be daft. Animals certainly interfered with awnings when
| they were common, but there weren't alternatives then.
| hasbot wrote:
| I'm tall. If I had awnings on my windows all I'd ever see would
| be grass and awning. I have "black out" curtains on my windows
| and they actually do a fair job reducing the heat of the sun. I
| can feel the heat radiate from my metal front door.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| If you had an awning for your front door you wouldn't feel the
| heat :)
| barryrandall wrote:
| I suffer from the same affliction. Flat, above-window awnings
| can provide shade without compromising visibility.
| hasbot wrote:
| An awning entirely above the window would have to be very
| large to prevent sunlight from entering the window (see a
| passive solar eave calculator for details). A flat awning
| would have to be very sturdy to handle a snow load.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| Well, not like it disappeared everywhere, plenty of window
| awnings here in Florida.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > To me it's really despicable the lack of respect we give these
| incredibly talented contractors who were able to design and
| construct these solid structures that have withstood the test of
| time without the use of computers, power tools, or energy codes.
|
| Chronological snobbery is a whiggish habit.
|
| If anything, architecture today is lazy and mediocre, especially
| given our technological advantages. People even used to factor in
| the path of the sun and the direction of the wind to position a
| house. Some architects and contractors might still do that, but I
| don't think this is common, because, hey, we have HVAC, and hey,
| we just want to slap together and flip a shitty development as
| quickly as possible.
|
| The lack of care, the lack of concern for urban planning, the
| misuse of material in a given environment, the use of inferior
| materials and building methods, the lack of concern for posterity
| who will inherit our mess, the waste, the ugliness -- it's all
| shameful. If anything comes out of this "green revolution", I
| hope it is at least a course correction in this space.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's still common in a custom home on a large lot, but a tract
| home will just be built sqare to the lot it's on, with the
| front of the house parallel to the street, probably required by
| zoning in fact.
| jedberg wrote:
| I installed retractable awnings on my huge western facing sliding
| glass door. They stay deployed all summer and then get retracted
| in the winter or when we need to use the door, like for a party.
|
| They make a huge difference in how hot the room gets. I can
| always tell when it's time to deploy them for the season when the
| room starts to bake.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I still see awnings. Heck, one of my neighbors down the street
| has awnings over a couple windows. On a house built less than 10
| years ago.
|
| Though locally (PNW) they aren't really an ideal choice because
| it does not routinely get hot enough in the summer to really
| benefit but it gets cool and wet all winter long so they mildew.
| I just planted medium-tall deciduous trees in our west yard
| instead.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| "We jumped into the insulation craze . . ." Wut?
|
| The whole point of insulation is to make it easier to manage
| temperatures without wasting energy, AC or awnings.
| code_runner wrote:
| we just bought a house that came w/ some pretty old awnings. We
| wanted to rip them down at first but slowly evolved from "they're
| ugly" to "charming".
|
| Our A/C bill over the summer was pretty competitive with our
| previous home which was half the size.
| krunck wrote:
| I've got a row of pine trees on the south side of my house that
| do the same thing as awnings. High summer sun is blocked by the
| canopy. Low winter sun passes below the branches and reaches the
| windows. I'm 43degN.
| asdff wrote:
| I think the idea that it was AC or natural light and what not is
| a bit simplistic. E.g. here in socal its pretty common to see
| people cover a window entirely in the heat with like newspaper or
| tin foil and lack AC. Likewise there are a lot of old homes and
| apartments built in the 1920s that used to have awnings (visible
| in historical photos often) and no longer do, and they don't have
| central air either (maybe a couple window units which also block
| light).
|
| I think the reason is simply that awnings take maintenance and
| are more costly. They eventually rot out from the sun and fall
| apart, needing replacement. Replacing an awning is not necessary
| to rent an apartment or sell a home, so it isn't done. If you had
| a ratty old one you'd probably just remove it vs replace. And
| even if you did want to replace that awning today, where do you
| even get one? They don't sell them at the hardware store like
| they might have 100 years ago. You'd probably have to order
| custom sized pieces from some company. Probably a couple grand in
| the materials and installation right there to do up all the
| windows. Plastic blinds on the other hand are like $50 at the
| hardware store and you can install them with a drill in 2 mins.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| All true, but most of that was true 100 years ago as well. Once
| A/C makes a lot of people decide it's not worth the bother,
| then it becomes less of a standard thing, and then it's not as
| easily available and etc. etc. But they always required
| maintenance, and yet were done, and then they weren't any more
| (mostly).
| aidenn0 wrote:
| My first condo was built in the 50s and had metal (not metal
| framed, but painted metal) awnings. The previous owner had
| removed one awning (presumably due to disrepair) and the room
| with no awning was at least 5 degrees warmer than the other rooms
| in the summer.
| kulahan wrote:
| For the lazy: because we have A/C, people didn't feel the need to
| maintain them, so they lost popularity.
| TheCleric wrote:
| One thing I don't see covered here is that awnings have never
| seemed helpful to me in a humid climate. In Florida you can stand
| in the shade or the sun and barely feel a temperature variation
| (if at all). In the summer it may only get a few degrees cooler
| at night, because the air traps all the heat anyway. So even if
| you have an awning the air is still hot.
| acyou wrote:
| I don't think these fabric awnings have great performance in:
| Maintenance Fire Wind and weather resistance of fabric Appearance
| Weather protection for building siding
|
| Conversely, buildings nowadays are covered in fixed awnings that
| are fully integrated with the building envelope, they work great
| and are engineered to last the life of the buildings.
|
| Am I missing anything?
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