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Awnings: a simple cooling tech we apparently forgot about
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this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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Better idea. They're called trees.
As a guy who does concrete. Trees close to your house love to drive roots through your foundation. Trees are great but can really do some damage. Especially where I live. Ground water is about 80' or deeper. The tree roots here stay shallow and spread out everywhere.
one of our neighbors has a 60-ish foot tall spruce about 14' from his house. There's a betting pool on whether it'll squish his place or one of his neighbors in the next big wind storm.
Honestly, I kinda hate the big tree in our front yard. It has these tiny leaves and every fall we have to clean the roof and gutters repeatedly until it finally drops everything, because those stupid leaves stick to everything and clog not just the gutters but the downpipes. This tree has caused our basement to flood during fall because one storm can simultaneously blow off a ton of leaves, instantly clogging the gutter, and then pour rain down the front of the house. We spent hundreds of dollars last year on a new gutter solution for 6ft of gutter. You read that right. Six feet of gutter cost us about $450, and they STILL wouldn't guarantee it would fix the problem because of the stupid tree.
We keep the tree trimmed and healthy, but every time the trimmers come out I dream about telling him to cut the stupid thing down. Awnings would be easier -_-
Are you going to elaborate on why it's better or did you just want to be a contrarian?
https://www.epa.gov/heatislands/using-trees-and-vegetation-reduce-heat-islands
https://news.wisc.edu/study-suggests-trees-are-crucial-to-the-future-of-our-cities/
Trees create a cooling effect past shading the area. It's a combination of shade and evaporative cooling.
Those links discuss cooling outdoor spaces. They don't compete with awnings for keeping sunlight from warming up your house unless you plant them close enough to do so and come with a ton of downsides (roof damage, leaves clogging gutters, roots breaking pipes and foundation)...not to mention how long it takes a tree to grow tall enough to provide that sort of shade
Trees will shade far more surface area than just a window. I've got 9 around my house. They block direct sun through the windows all summer. While not blocking any light in the winter. They also keep the siding and sections of the roof cool.
while i don't disagree, we should probably stop building suburbia as that would solve our problem. Suburbs completely decimate everything in the way and require replanting of the entire foliage, often leading to really shitty growth.
Is it not enough that trees look better?
IDK why you have to choose one or the other, though.
Why would that be enough when we're talking keeping a house cool?
I am VERY pro-tree. A lack of trees is why I moved (and why I decided against buying a few homes).... But trees are not a "better idea" for this purpose so it was a useless statement to make
Shade?
Better idea, they're not mutually exclusive
trees near buildings are a nightmare, they can often grow weirdly due to lack of sun, and often make maintenance and clean up on the tree itself a nightmare, if it grows to close to your house you need to do something about it. They are also generally liabilities during storms, especially if they hang directly over your house.
Like a previous commenter said, they can be problematic for foundations and driveways and things like that. It seems fairly common that surface level root structures will expose themselves and start to pop through the top layer of dirt, primarily due to soil erosion and compaction i imagine, but that's another problem for grounds keeping as well.
Speaking of grounds keeping, trees make grass grow really inconsistently, and also generally provide "dead spots" where the grass will get almost no sun, and almost certainly die. Also mowing under them is hard. Trees don't really grow at human accessible heights all that often. And when they do, they're not as good for providing shade.
I live in Chicago. So does Alec. Stop the video at 5:44. All the trees are doing far more cooling and shading to the entire area than shitty old window awnings blocking single windows.
i live in the midwest also. Suburbs around here hate planting trees next to houses, and when they do, they're often too close to the house, or too close to other trees, or like i previously mentioned, cause other issues.