Can This Home Be Greened? Keeping the Haven Safe
(Page 3 of 4)
July/August 2009
By Carol Venolia
Solutions: The couple can create indoor/outdoor spaces that let them experience sunshine and breezes while shading the house—a win-win. The house already has little-used narrow roofed porches on the south and north sides. Some alterations could make these spaces more attractive and comfortable.
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The south porch could be a nice warm spot in winter, but it’s too open to the street. I encouraged Chrystal and Richard to extend the porch outward, enclosing it with a chest-high adobe wall that provides seated privacy while remaining open to the sky and breezes. A small fountain upwind from the space would supply evaporative cooling while masking street noise. An open structural framework could support movable shading in summer.
On the north porch, I suggested a solid roof and screening to capture breezes, create space for a dining table and chairs, and keep out mosquitoes.
Cost: $8,000 to $10,000 for each porch
5. Bring in daylight
The house’s layout leaves the interior hallway and dining room gloomy, even as the sun shines brightly outdoors. While shade is a great natural cooling strategy, using electric lighting in the middle of the day is wasteful.
Solutions: The trick is to bring in light without adding solar heat. Tubular skylights require only a small roof opening, which minimizes heat passage, but their highly reflective surface maximizes light transmission, turning cavelike rooms into light-filled spaces. The kitchen currently has a large, square, single-pane skylight that lets in too much heat. I suggest replacing it with an energy-efficient model, incorporating double-pane, light-diffusing glazing and a moveable exterior shade for summer. Adding or modifying skylights while installing a new roof will help increase efficiency and reduce costs. Light-colored interior walls would help bounce daylight around.
Cost: Replace kitchen skylight with Velux skylight: $650, installed; Two tubular skylights: $850, installed at the same time as the new roof
Rx at your house
1. Check your water waste. Even if you don’t live in the desert, water issues are coming to a head all over the planet. Nobody benefits from squandering water, so start by trimming waste.
2. Improve your home’s natural cooling and heating before you invest in mechanical solutions. For cooling, this means providing shade (via deciduous plantings, awnings, trellises, blinds or other shade structures) and taking advantage of breezes, indoors and out. For heating, it means letting the sun into your living spaces in winter and storing its heat in thermally massive materials such as tile, earth or stone.