Daily Home Renovation Tips

You can find the first of the series of articles on the installation and usage of this energy conservation product in our own home by using this link to Exterior Solar Blinds - Part 1 - The Need.

The product we used, EZ Snap, can even be used on Recreation Vehicles (or RV’s) and Motorhomes for custom window shades.

What I wanted to write about today is our use of our EZ Snap exterior solar shades in the winter.

As those of you who have read our articles in the above series know, we have large south facing windows in our Family Room and Kitchen where we installed ourselves these wonderful, simple product.

Heck, as the above picture shows we even installed them on the outside of the French Doors leading to our deck.

I decided to leave them on this winter after contacting the manufacturer who indicated that many of their customers leave them on all year.

Why?

Well, it was partially because last winter, our first in our home (which was prior to us installing the exterior solar shades), even on the coldest days it was uncomfortably hot in the family room. So, we wanted to be able to keep our interior blinds up for the view of the forest behind our home which is quite picturesque with the snow on the tree branches.

It was also because of the sun’s position in the sky.

Remember, in the winter months in the Northern Hemisphere, as the Winter Solstice is approached just before Christmas the sun rises lower and lower in the sky.

We noticed this with our recently installed solar air heater. Back in early October the shadow from the large trees in the forest behind our house were not going to reach the back (south) wall of our basement walkout. However, once we installed the solar air heater in early November the shadows from those same trees covered our new solar air heater until 11 am. Yikes!

Now, one of those trees was on our property, a 22 foot Norway Spruce. The rest were deciduous trees whose shadows were not that wide . Once the Spruce was removed, our solar air heater went to work much earlier in the morning.

However, this experience made me more aware how much lower the sun rises in the winter for us.

Even if we had shutters on our south facing windows, the low position of the sun in the winter would still allow it’s direct sun light and UV rays to enter through our windows and into our home.

So, leaving the EZ Snap exterior solar shades on our 5 foot high south facing windows and on our south facing French door window inserts during the winter works for us. We think it will work for you as well.