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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

And that has way more details than this. The only why supplied here is "we forgot" and "AC"

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.

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.

>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.

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.

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

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.

On the contrary, external shutters that are also blinds or bamboo shutters are very common in tropical climates as they allow air circulation while stopping sunlight.

Of course they help in those climates too. It's better if it's 100F inside than 120F, which is what you'll get if you let the sun in with no shade-making device. You'll find ways to get shade in every hot climate, whether arid or humid and no matter what the night temperatures are.

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.

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.

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.

Curtains work poorly at keeping heat out, in large part because the temperature differential can be extreme if you let sunlight hit the curtain (that and air convection behind the curtain).

The alternative to awnings are shutters or, like you said, plants, but not curtains.

You can see curtains because photons are escaping out of the window. A white curtain reflects more sunlight outside than your room would. Similarly, a hot curtain really does emit more infrared radiation outside than your air conditioned room would. It’s not even just radiation, warming the window itself causes it to reject more heat via conduction and convection with outside air. Not all curtains are equally effective, but in full sun we can be talking a 30+ degree temperature difference between the room and a good curtain.

Shutters can effectively block sunlight, but they also emit IR radiation 24 hours a day based on their temperature. If it’s hot outside, thick reflective curtains really can save more energy across a given day than shutters though they also work better together at some point you might as wall just seal up the window.

I'm not sure I follow what you're saying. A blind outside is just like a curtain, except that to whatever extent it heated up it is heating up directly outside (via radiation or convection). A curtain that's hot in the insulated enveloppe is strictly worse, everything else being equal (color, etc.)

The radiation of the sun has to go somewhere. More of it will be reflected back by shutters, and whatever is absorbed can more readily be dissipated outside than inside.

> 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.

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).

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).

Those 'slat awnings' look like a really good idea! (Less maintenance, air flow, letting a little bit of sunlight through)

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.

Wasting money (as it would requite running the AC more) to show you have money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.com/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.

Two hose is better but not perfect. The problem is the compressor body is still inside and shedding some of it's heat inside the cooling area. If your need is temporary, the inefficiency is acceptable - otherwise go with a mini split.

Mini split is better if you can install it and don’t want to install a central AC for whatever reason. I don’t think you can usually install a mini split in a rental though.

Window AC units are preferable to two hose because the compressor side hangs outside the window (and can drip the condensed water) but sometimes you don’t have double hung windows or your landlord doesn’t allow window AC units.

Both should go outside. One should take in outside air to blow over the coils and the other to return that air back outside with the extra heat from inside. All movement of inside air should be over the other side of the condenser and not go outside or come from outside

Yes this is how it is installed. You can see a drawing on page 13 of the PDF.

A dual hose model is still less efficient than a window unit, but it’s an improvement over a single hose design.

I’m aware of this. But I lived in apartments without central AC for years, and for various reasons was unable to install a window unit. A portable AC is still significantly better than no AC at all.

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.

I suspect it's not really "forgot". I suspect it's "awnings require ongoing maintenance".

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.

They are seriously ending the roof right at the wall? That is monumentally stupid and will guarantee a multitude of problems down the line.

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.

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.

The French always had a soft spot for the Modernist style of Le Corbusier. The linked property doesnt seem too far from a Villa Savoye or the Roche Jeanneret residence.

Unfortunately, the truth of both those places, and in fact all the strict Modernist/Brutalist buildings of the postwar period, is that rain absolutely f*ks them over. No amount of tar paper, roofing tile, etc., can help against a flat roof, frequent precipitation, and a temperature climate.

So if there's a concrete skirt around the entire boundary of the house with a proper slant, wont the water run off properly?

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).

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.

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.

I'd be interested in a link about low E coatings that depend on the sun angle, a quick search doesn't yield anything.

Either way it's not a sufficient solution because AFAIK even the best solar protection glass will let 1/3 of the sun's heat in, which is an enormous amount when you have long summer days.

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.

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.

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...

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...

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.

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.

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.

you must have a lot of units

3, but also bad luck (“dirty sock syndrome” right from the get-go) and a very hot & humid environment

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.

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.

Rollup shades can help with that.

Thanks, it even mentions low-e glass which I was wondering about.

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

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.

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.

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.

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/Fire...

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.

My house has three carefully pruned lime trees (not the fruit). Works perfectly for privacy and the exact dynamic you note here.

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.

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

We have them in america too. But every moving part comes with inflated costs for both acquisition and ongoing maintenance.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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?

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.

You forgot the actuator.

It's a stick with a handle that you turn

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.

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.

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.

Touch grass my dude. You're trying to make the argument that hinges are bad and then calling other people angry over the internet.

You could call it the very definition of "un-hinged". :)

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.

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

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.

* "should" vs. "must", you might find this useful. And also: "guidelines", not "rules".

In the Netherlands? If its bolted on, it won't even last a year. The North Sea has a lot of storms ;)

And who would even want a fixed structure that keeps out the little bit of winter sun there is?

[flagged]

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).

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.

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.

> 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.

Agreed on that!

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

What? Who mentioned the government paying for them? Who said that the fabric needs replacing often?

The parent…? Who pays for public housing? And what relevance would the weather otherwise have..?

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.

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.

They save more in energy than they cost, though.

Would you be surprised to learn that in Spain almost all windows have built-in blinds?

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persiana

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 :)

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.

In Brazil these "persianas" are everywhere as well, and they look exactly like the one in the example you gave.

As I understand it they come from Muslim heritage, from the 700 years of Al-Andalus in the Iberian peninsula. The word clearly points to "Persian".

I know them from Spain, but I'm not surprised that they came to Brazil from Portugal, and I assume they are popular in many places around the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

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.

* "almost all" or just "most"

"almost all" is correct, they are nearly universal. At least for residential windows, maybe not in offices.

Yep. Thanks

"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.

> 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.

The Netherlands seems like the most sensible country on earth. How did they manage it?

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_Piet

> but I can say from personal experience that in some cases the praised Dutch directness turned to racism

It always was a thin line. What has changed is that victims are now speaking up, and a silent majority realizing that brutish-directness always was a subgenre that somehow kept being taken as representative of directness.

One can be direct and courteous (and not racist), but the Netherlands (as in Holland) isn't the best place to find that.

> The Netherlands seems like the most sensible country on earth.

> population is dissatisfied with immigration.

I don't see the contradiction.

Low population and high income from natural resources.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yes, on reflection I should have tried harder to think of a somewhat less inflammatory word.

The Netherlands lives on trade. From slaves and spices to the Rotterdam port as entry to the waters of europe and Schiphol Amsterdam airport.

Yep, parsing error on my part. Too tired today. Norway also being a country that seems to do most things right.

Education.

in the row house article's picture I see the house, with the tree, but where's the beestje?

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.

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.)

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.

Don't the vines damage the house?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.)

> 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.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Do you want to be comfortable for reasonable AC cost or watch cat videos in HD instead of SD. Decisions, decisions.

And heaven forbid you try to use WiFi-enabled doorbells or AC controllers.

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.

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.

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.

That’s not an apology if that’s what you intended. Bricks are also inordinately more expensive. But you generally see adobe in dry climates. Again, engineering tradeoffs.

Older technology is often neat in a lot of ways and has certain benefits, but there's a reason why we moved on.

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.

Could do both though, it’s not an either-or situation.

Thermal mass is also known as "dirt" or "rocks", and is not expensive.

Concrete is often used for thermal mass, too, and that is expensive.

Rocks and dirt have been used forever - adobe!

Another option is water. Water is cheap, and you can pile up gallon jugs of it. Or use your pond/swimming pool.

Geothermal HVAC makes use of the thermal mass of rocks and dirt, too.

> 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.

> 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?

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.

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.

Fiberglass insulation reduces convection but has no mass like rock wool

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.

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.

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

What happens when they break?

You replace them.

I was referring to the cleanup of toxic materials and the safety aspect.

Argon is a largely non-reactive noble gas. What toxins?

And Argon makes up a little less than 1% of the air you breathe.

Low-e coatings are metals (silver, tin, zinc), I believe. But not very much, and not very toxic.

Glass and a noble glass is like the least toxic combo you could have. They're both inert.

There’s Argon in those? Interesting. I wonder if anyone’s tried adding an electrode for plasma effects.

I wonder how long the argon actually lasts in practice. The industry claims 20 years under normal conditions.

Yeah, the gas leaks out after a while, then your double pane glass fogs up on the inside and costs $$$ to replace.

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

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.

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.

The seals on them degrade and leak.

I've had a lot of them fog up with no damage.

Those require very low pressure (partial vacuum) rather than argon.

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.

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.

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.

This article would suggest the opposite though - when AC made it feasible everyone removed the awnings that were blocking light thus maximizing natural light.

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.

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.

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.

Tell that to your cat

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.

[flagged]

Humans and vast over-generalizations.

Ace and Gary

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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...

I think it's a big jump to conclusions to assume this much out the behaviors of such a large group.

These behaviors don't describe how I live with my floor to ceiling windows at all.

My shades close in the morning to block the low sun, and they open during the day and night unless I have some other reason to close them.

It would be difficult or a distant view for someone from the street or a neighbor to see in, and even if people look in, my street-facing windows aren't in any bedrooms or private areas.

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.

[dead]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Shade trees covering the roof doesn't sound very compatible with those solar panels though

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. :-/

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.

> 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.

These kinds of comments are hilarious to me. Having a mulching mower makes leaf maintenance a breeze. Owning a house comes with responsibilities. If you're not going to keep up with things, then hire it out. If you're not even going to bother with that, then boy, I don't know. Some people just come across as the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

I thought you were at least going to come out with limbs falling on the house, but you just went with sheer lack of wanting to do yard work. I appreciate the laugh

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.

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.

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.

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.

Your previous paragraph of sheer, blind adoration of trees does not suggest that we are even reading from the same book, much less from the same page. (And to be clear: It's fine to adore trees. But it's not fine to say that this seemingly-blind sort of adoration represents an unbiased view.)

---

Meanwhile, some nonexhaustive notes on solar:

Solar panels are obviously often used to support existing electrical services, since grid-tied solar is easy(ish).

Similar to the shade from a tree, rooftop solar does help prevent sunlight from heating a dwelling. The panels themselves obviously cast a shadow, and they're mounted with an air gap between the panels and the roof (providing both airflow and thermal isolation). Furthermore, because nothing can ever operate over-unity, 100% of the electrical energy they produce is energy that is removed from the situation of the sun directly heating the roof. (Are they better at this than a shadetree? IDK, but they're better than zero for sure.)

With energy storage, solar can be used off-grid day after day when that is a necessary or useful thing to have -- allowing one to maintain many aspects of modern Western life even in the absence of a grid connection. After a bad summer storm, a person can use solar to help stay cool and to avoid tossing the contents of their fridge, and can do so without needing to maintain a generator or manage a fuel supply. (It's expensive to get there, but there's also lots of things relating to the qualities of modern life that are expensive.)

Solar panels can improve the longevity of the roof they're mounted on, by reducing exposure to heat, UV, wind, and precipitation.

Solar panels won't crash through my roof and into my living room, but good shade trees do that sometimes.

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I can go on, but must I?

Again, "sheer blind adoration of trees" isn't really my position. I recognize there are costs, downsides, and contraindications. By contrast, you seem to think PV is all upside and trees are all downside.

Again, even accounting for PV roof shading, the energy audit showed a 15x improvement in keeping trees vs. cutting down trees and adding PV. That roof shading was already 'baked in.' Accounting for PV roof shading is basic stuff in sustainable architecture.

If we're being fair, we should acknowledge that solar panels can also reduce the longevity of the roof they're on, due to poor installation, the addition of new roof penetrations, and wind funneling. It's easy to say "well don't get a poor installer then," but of course the problem is you don't always know that going in! The presence of PV also greatly increases the cost of replacing/repairing a roof, since the PV has to be essentially uninstalled and reinstalled to access the roof beneath.

Well-positioned trees will shade a structure in the hottest parts of the day (normally south and west), which is precisely the "evening peak" when the grid is most stressed. PV instead produces most of its energy in the "afternoon lull," when electricity demand dips. So trees are effectively producing 'negawatts,' (credit to Amory Lovins) reducing demand on the end-of-line distribution grid at exactly the right time of day.`

At the risk of stating the obvious, if trees are crashing through your living room they're not "good" shade trees! Any competent arborist will be able to give you advice on setbacks, trimming, and (yes) removal if necessary. Remember that the trees are most likely giving you a much greater "energy payback" than PV[1], so you should use an appropriately levelized playing field when comparing the expense of paying an arborist every ~decade vs. the expense of paying PV installers every ~2-3 decades.

If I seem one-sided in my presentation, it's only because I'm needing to counter-balance your initial extremely one-sided presentation. My point is precisely that you need to look at both the cumulative upsides and the cumulative downsides of both technologies, and not simply look for evidence supporting a preconceived bias, in either direction. I think we're in agreement on that!

Anyway the exchange has been fun, and hopefully enlightening to at least one other reader, so I'm voting up all. cheers

[1] To quantify this, I would encourage hiring a sustainable design professional to do an in-person energy modeling of the home or business in question.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Whoever designs and/or approves buildings like that should be forced to live in them.

I can volunteer in their place. I'll take one of the units on billionaire's row.

High rises have high rise-specific windows that block solar heat energy extremely well.

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.

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.

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.

It was probably intentional because they had no other means of cooling the house.

so... now they're an advertisement for zero energy homes >:D

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.

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.

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.

Because it looks great when you're shopping for a flat. You don't realize the problem until summer hits.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

In some cases screens may be installed to keep insects and animals out of areas.

Screens solve that problem.

Is that necessarily a bad thing?

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.

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.

Bats keep the mosquitos under control.

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.

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.

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)

Yes, absolutely.

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.

These squirrels just showed up in the last 50 years or so?

Squirrels were intentionally introduced into American cities ~150 years ago:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-12-20/the-forgo...

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/12/12/philly-first-city-...

Don't be daft. Animals certainly interfered with awnings when they were common, but there weren't alternatives then.

I think this Johnny cash ad is a great period piece to explain

https://youtu.be/2jkIVfpICeo

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.

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.

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

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.

>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.

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

Canvas has been canvas for an exceedingly long time right? Has anything about it really changed?

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.

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...

Not everything that lasts is PFAS/forever chemicals, please don't fearmonger.

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.

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

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.

Don't windows block UV light anyhow?

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.

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.

> 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.

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 43°N.

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.

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).

Given how quickly they came and went on these buildings, it makes you wonder if they even ever were maintained beyond the initial install by the builder.

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.

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...)

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.

Right...it's some teenagers fault, not building unsustainably in a desert.

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...

> 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/

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?

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.

Interesting. Thanks for the correction and the reading material.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I was always bummed that my old house had the awnings removed before I bought it. A few of the same design in my neighborhood still had them and they were cool looking. I grew up in a house with awnings and loved them. It's one of those things that people remove in an attempt to 'freshen things up' and make it more 'modern' and kill the charm in the long run, and financially it doesn't make sense to rebuy them once they've been removed.

I used to live in France. We had no A/C, enough climate consciousness not install it, though our east-facing windows were bringing important heat at sunrise. We had awnings installed, with an HomeKit connection, so we could automatically have them closed before sunrise, and opened once the sun would leave this face of the building. We saved a few degrees in this way.

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!

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

Sounds like the awnings are very effective for their owners then.

> So where did all the awnings go? Two simple words... air conditioning.

I can't help but think this is too bad.

and also shade trees.

I see housing developments where the trees are all cut down, the houses go up, and... they plant trees.

I think of that saying: "A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit."

and I would take it one step further...

Don't cut down the trees, build the houses around them! For shade, and beauty.

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.

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.

Site seems down, here's the latest Wayback Machine snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20240421045028/https://thecrafts...

For the lazy: because we have A/C, people didn't feel the need to maintain them, so they lost popularity.

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.

I suffer from the same affliction. Flat, above-window awnings can provide shade without compromising visibility.

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.

If you had an awning for your front door you wouldn’t feel the heat :)

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!

> 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.

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.

When kids are running around the house all the time, sooner or later they get tall enough to bang their heads on the awnings :\

Are they really gone? I think I see them frequently in many buildings while strolling in Europe including the UK.

Awnings are very standard in Switzerland, almost every balcony has one, in addition to exterior blinds on all windows.

I assume the energy savings are significant. Shouldn't this be actually be part of the building code?

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.

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.

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?

How about an awning that's actually a solar panel? I understand these are a thing for RVs.

Let's make solar panel awnings that you can raise up above the window in winter.

Well, not like it disappeared everywhere, plenty of window awnings here in Florida.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It mentioned "local architects" after all...

The statement is still wrong. Awnings and local architects are both extinct so clearly the architects didn't kill the awnings.

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?)

Local architects are certainly not extinct.

Definitely not, although most laces I’ve lived they have a superficial at most involvement with single family homes.

Because we have tinted glass and double-pained windows.

"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.

Still popular in Spain.

See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhbDfi7Ee7k

My solution was to not have any windows.

My solution is to not have any windows.

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