Daily Home Renovation Tips

However, in the spring, summer and even the fall, this situation can lead as we know to signficant overheating inside the house, which causes the air conditioner to run sooner than it needs to and / or much longer than it needs to run. This of course costs you a lot of money in higher electricity bills from your utility, unless of course you have installed solar panels sufficient to meet the electricity needs of your home.

We do not have solar PV panels. We are also not independantly wealthy. We try to do all we can do to maximize the energy savings in our home.

In Part 1 we outlined the situation that having large south facing windows in our family room and kitchen eating areas was causing:

• Overheating the house in the summer and even in the winter
• Even the new ENERGY STAR windows were not significantly helping the temperature issue
• Increased air conditioning costs in the summer from the overheating
• Risk of colour fading the dark hardwood flooring
• Current interior blinds were not preventing the sun from entering the house
• Desire to still see out the backyard through the large windows

Here is a picture of our family room showing the large windows on the south wall so you can see what we are dealing with.

As we have explained previously, EZ Snap is the brand name for a window screen like product which is applied on the outside, not the inside, of the window to prevent most of the Sun’s UV rays from entering the home through the window causing all of the above issues.

We like the preventative approach, i.e. prevent most of the sun’s UV rays from even hitting the window vs interior solar blinds which act on the sun’s UV rays after they have already entered  the house through the window.

Here is a picture of a temperature gauge I placed on the inside of the window on a sunny day in the winter. I left  the gage for 10 minutes and returned. Look at the temperature reading! This was not the temperature in the room, rather it was the temperature of the gauge itself after direct sunlight through the ENERGY STAR windows. Yes, the device was very hot to the touch.

We also like the price. The cost of EZ Snap solar blinds are under $3 per square foot, including the hardware. This compares very favourably to some interior solar blind products which can cost around $20 per square foot or awnings which for our south facing window area can cost well over $2,000.

Another advantage to EZ Snap is that it can be applied to any size and shape of window. Why? It is because it comes in a 6 foot wide roll that a home owner (or installer) can cut with a simply sharp pair of scissors or utility knife to the exact shape of the window.  The EZ Snap web site has provides lots and lots of information, including short videos, on the simple installation of the product.

Here is what the product looks like when you receive it (you order it simply from their web site or using their phone number; that it, you don’t go through a retail outlet).

 What is in the bags? Well, while their web site explains all this and has very nice and short videos, I’ll explain in our next posting in a few days. To continue with this series of articles on our experiences with exterior solar blinds simply select this link to Part 3 .