Referring to my blog entry of 6/25/09 entitled Thirteen Quick Tips to Save Money, I want to expand upon one of the thirteen tips, the one about window insulating. Although this idea is certainly nothing new, it is an important energy-saver. Let me tell you about what we did recently.
First, we already had wooden shutters up on most of the windows, which are marvelously energy-efficient, if not always exactly in style. Pooh on that notion, because I like them! Besides, wooden shutters have the highest "R" factor of all the customary window treatments. However, several notably hot windows do not have wooden shutters, all three facing west. I'm not sure we ever can put them there, either, because there's not enough open/shut clearance for them. They're in the kitchen, which always got unbearably hot in the afternoons, even with heavy white canvas curtains. Summer afternoon sun turns those windows so hot that a hand placed near them feels like reaching into an oven. Even the cats avoid sitting in them mid-afternoon, despite the nice wide ledges, because the glass gets hot enough to burn!
We pretty much avoided all kitchen activity in the afternoons, and could almost HEAR the electric meter racing, trying to keep our house cool. Of course, that meant all daytime cooking activity ceased, because no way were we going to generate any more heat in there. The air conditioner was struggling, as it was. For us to eat the overwhelming majority of our meals at home--a conviction for us--that meant we cooked only late at night and/or early in the morning. After two years of enduring the kitchen sauna and the accompanying high energy bills, I did something about it. Finally!
Now I will say that what I desperately wanted to do was to erect some sort of physical barrier outside to keep the sun from coming into the house in the first place. That would have been ideal. I had in mind a huge rose arbor that spanned the entire length of the kitchen and extended out from the roof enough that the kitchen was completely in the shade. Lacking the funds and know-how to do this, I decided to work on what I could handle INSIDE the house. That would be window treatments that prevented the heat that passed through the window glass from radiating into the room.
I added a second layer of curtains. More nearly accurately, I guess they should be called window blankets. I cut lengths of white Polarfleece to fit the windows with only a little bit of extra ease so they'd cover the window edges, too. I edge finished with my serger and put a simple casing on one end of each panel. Then I hung them on tension rods inside the window frames, behind the decorative curtains. Oh. my. GOSH! What a difference! Even on the hottest days, the whole kitchen and dining area now stay as pleasantly cool as the rest of the house, without that open oven door feeling we always got in the afternoons.
I had a little extra white Polarfleece, so I made two more curtains for two East-facing windows in the office/sewing room that already have wooden shutters, but which catch the full brunt of the morning sun every day. The difference has been felt here, too, as the room does not warm up the way it used to early in the morning. I used to think it was the computer generating all that heat, but I was wrong.
All this got me to thinking about our enclosed garage/playroom that stays too warm in the summer and too cold in the winter, despite the air conditioner and gas fireplace in there. Might the windows and glass doors there also be contributing to the heat problem? We had wooden shutters in there, so I'd thought we were covered, but maybe not. Maybe heat was escaping into the room at the shutter door edges. One of the glass doors stayed oven-door hot, even with the decorative curtain hanging over it, so I knew we could improve there.
Fresh out of Polarfleece and time, I picked up some cheapo plain insulated curtains from my friendly dollar store. The curtains were $8.00 each, and I got five, one for each window and the two glass doors. I cut them off, hemmed them and hung them and then fully realized why they were marked down--they were pug-ugly! What I'd thought to be a lovely neutral taupe in the package looked like a pair of boring khaki Mom pants when hung up. Boring would never do--not in the playroom! We needed color! We needed bright color! So, fast-forward to a fistful of acrylic paints in primary hues and an afternoon of amazing mess and now we have these gorgeous hand-print curtains. I think they're stunning, and fun, fun, FUN! As a result, yes, the playroom now feels just as cool in the summer as the rest of the house. Not to mention, those hand-prints make it LOOK cool. : )
Now let's get down to brass tacks on the money part. I did all of this curtain work at the beginning of the summer, about the first of June. We made NO other changes in our electricity usage. Entergy says that their per-kilowatt hour charges for the summer months this year have increased over last year's. That means, even if we used precisely the same amount of energy we did last year, we'd be paying more for it. That being said, our electric bills since I put up the curtains have averaged--drum roll, please--fifty dollars LESS each month than the corresponding months of last summer. Yes, even with an energy cost hike, we paid fifty dollars LESS each month over last year! Do The Happy Dance with me!
What that boils down to is one month's power bill savings paid for the cost of the curtains I was compelled to buy for the playroom. The rest of them came from my home "fabric store," with fabric I bought about ten years ago at ten-years-ago prices. If I had to guess, I'd say that cost me no more than $20-$30 total, because I rarely ever paid more than $2-$3.00 a yard for fabric. These curtains will last us for years and years of power bill savings. They all machine wash in cool water, so no dry cleaning bills. The store-bought curtains must hang dry to avoid ungluing the insulating layer, but the Polarfleece ones endure the dryer just fine.
Of course, it isn't simply about the outright energy savings of $50 each month, although that's fun enough to make me nigh unto giddy. It's also more than saving on the wear and tear of our air conditioner, which, if you've priced central cooling units lately, is still nothing to sneeze at! No, as much as anything, it's about the resulting immediate comfort factor in all these rooms, which are now more appropriately the hubs of activity of their created design.
Moreover, what insulates against summer heat will also do the same for winter cold. I cannot wait to see how the curtains help our power bills over the next few months of our schizophrenic weather where we may have alternating very cold and very hot days. This is our typical Mississippi autumn/winter. I expect the curtains will help keep those rooms more livable and cozy on the chilly days, too.
One more thing: there is a type of daily maintenance necessary with insulating window treatments like this, especially if you have cats and/or children who push the curtains back or even occasionally yank them down. We call them "breakaway" curtains, because a good tug will bring the whole thing crashing down upon a head. While the bright side is that nothing has been broken since the whole assembly is so lightweight, the dark side is that the tension rod must be re-installed each time the cat/child pulls it down. It also must be re-installed straight or it looks really unkempt and trashy from outside.
Also, for the insulating properties to be most effective, the curtains need to be flush against the glass and the curtains need to cover all edges. Further, during the summer, it's best to keep the West side curtains, blinds, shutters or other window treatments open in the morning and shut in the afternoon. On the East side, keep them shut in the morning and open in the afternoon. Reverse that whole process through the cold winter months to maximize heat retention/heat gain benefits. It also helps to put some kind of draft stopper at the bottoms of doors and windows, even if it's only a rolled up towel.
Yes, it is yet one more thing to do each day, this opening and shutting of curtains and shutters, and it can tend toward the tedious. However, I find the routine most comforting, a necessary physical grounding. It helps me start the new day when I open up the house in the morning. I check the weather to gauge what to wear, and see the continuity of life with the birds and squirrels feeding outside my window. It helps me keep track of the passing time and stay accountable. When it turns noon and is time to make the window curtain switches on the East and West sides of the house, it reminds me when I'm off-track with what I'd planned to do that day. I still have time to adjust, to reduce distractions, to re-focus and to change what I'm doing to make sure the truly important things get done.
Then, as I shut down the house in the evenings, it helps me to "power down" myself. As I go about closing curtains and shutters, I assess the day. I decide what I need to do in order to meet my goals tomorrow. I release the hurts of the day to my Heavenly Father, because I don't want to carry them to bed. I thank Him for the day's blessings, because even on the most difficult days, the blessings far outweigh the trials. Gratitude goes a long way toward sweetening even those. An old, possibly eye-rollingly corny idea to some folk, but it recharges me, centers me and warms me...insulates me, if you will...just as shutters and extra layers of curtains insulate my home. Some old ideas are worth clinging to, corny or not, simply because they work. Selah.
Frugally yours,
Barbara Houston Garrett
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