Starry Starry Nights
(Page 3 of 3)
July/August 2002
By Carol Venolia
The advent of cheap electricity and electric fans around 1920 was the death knell of the sleeping porch. It took another energy revolution—this time for conservation—and another surge of interest in health to revive the practice of sleeping outdoors.
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A sleeping porch revival
Gwen Nichols’ early outdoor-sleeping memory may have been the seed for the screened porch on her family’s new strawbale house. “The house protects our north porch from most winds, so it makes a fine sleeping porch,” she says. “We mostly use it in summer, but also sometimes in winter when we have company, need a private spot, want a view of dawn color over the hill, or feel like reveling in fresh cool air to contrast with the snug warmth of a sleeping bag.”
Canadian green building designer David Rousseau created his first sleeping porch for clients in 1973. “It was on the north side of a modest cabin and was simply an enclosure under the sweeping curved eave, seven feet wide and twenty feet long. The porch walls were cedar louvers (with insect screen inside) up to a three-foot-high sill; from there screened panels in wood frames rose to the spruce planks of the roof—which was only about six-and-a-half feet high at the lowest, so it felt very protective. At our own house, we have three small shelters for summer guests that are really partial cabins with large screened openings—shelter from the storm, and pleasantly breezy.”
New Hampshire green building consultant Marc Rosenbaum is a convert, too. “The best room in my house is the second-floor sleeping porch. Entered through a door on the hallway to my bedroom, it’s just slightly larger than the bed. The pine sidewalls are about eighteen inches high, and above that are screens. There are one-foot roof overhangs—enough to sleep there in most rainstorms, which is a great experience. The roof is glass for complete sky viewing!”
Try this at home
If you need a breath of fresh air tonight, you can start inexpensively: Pitch a tent in the yard or pull your bed onto the deck in fair weather. If you enjoy the experience, you may want to build a permanent sleeping porch or pavilion. Or you can alter an existing room to open up when the weather is pleasant; a wall of windows or doors that move aside can bring the outdoors to you.
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