Be Sun Smart

To keep your house cool in summer you need to keep the heat out. The first thing you need to do is make sure doors and windows are closed during the hot part of the day.

If you can put a lot of thought into building design before you build your house this is great however there is still much retrofitting that can be done to keep the heat out.

If you have made your house sun smart and with the aid of a roof mounted airconditioner overnight it is possible to achieve the below listed temperatures recorded inside a residential house in Perth on the 13^th of January 2018 where the outside temperature reached 37.3. Better performance would be achieved with a ground mounted evaporative airconditioner.

Windows and doors facing east, north and west need to be shielded from the sun. Using plants is a really nice way to do this because plants are a natural airconditioner since they transpire water. Buildings such as patios can also keep the sun out. There are a range of other add on building products however many of these are expensive, shade your house too much, have maintenance and longevity issues. One product seems to really stand out from the crowd and that is polycarbonate sheeting. It is cheap, long lasting, easy to install, keeps a minimal amount of light out and has no maintenance issues. It is available from major hardware stores and to install it all you do is bolt colorbond fence railings to your walls, cut the sheeting to size with a good pair of scissors and slide the sheets in. You make them firm by wedging in PVC sprinkler pipe. You can remove the sheeting during winter however in most cases the reduction in light is minor and does not warrant it.

A great website for more information is: http://www.palram.com.au/suntuf. The brochure that gives a good listing of the colours and light and heat transference specifications is the Suntuf one page brochure.

Metal roller shutters and garage doors are a huge source of heat inflow to the average house. Polystyrene foam is a great insulator and there are some specialist foam suppliers that will cut foam to size. You need to be aware that polystyrene is flammable.

Having double or tripple glazed windows is great however you can still keep most houses in Perth quite cool by keeping the sun off the doors and windows. If you have walls that are darker than light coloured you also need to keep the sun off these.