What You Must Know About Sunlight and Your House
Wherever you reside on Earth, you manage the sun. Close to the equator individuals seek colour. Toward the sticks sun is valuable. The sun provides more than light; it could create heat in houses: desired in winter, averted in summer.
Sunlight also degrades several materials. Untreated wood actually falls apart, blackens or is bleached under sunlight. Plastics fade and become brittle. The heat created on the south side of structures by sunlight can lead to buckling of asphalt shingles at unvented roofs.
In short, if your house’s design ignores sunlight, you will suffer. Most stock plans don’t think about that the sun’s path across the website they happen to be constructed upon, but a lot of designers find sunlight a inspiration in custom layouts for brand new houses and for renovating those inventory, sun-ignoring layouts.
FINNE Architects
The architect of this home created an easy glazed living room that opens to be a front porch to a gorgeous water view. During the hot summer months, the dwelling room feels like a large, open porch however with big overhangs for rain and sun protection and metal siding (recycled steel) for maximum durability.
A residence’s skin dissipates faster and requires upkeep in the event sunlight blasts any surface save stone or stucco. Painting is needed much more frequently wherever sunlight has extended contact with painted siding. All surfaces possess their colours. Natural wood left raw — if siding or roofing — degrades in sunlight, often getting brittle enough to erode and almost always becoming stained. Tile and slate roofs are fairly impervious to the sun’s impact but are very pricey. Painted aluminum fades, and asphalt shingles become brittle as their aggregate coatings clean away over time.
Any surface may be painted and painted, but the best defense against unwanted sun contact on a home’s exterior wall surfaces is a roof overhang or any other shading device — a awning, a trellis or even strategically placed trees.
Burr & McCallum Architects
Natural states drove the kinds of this rural house on a windy hillside. Capturing the warmth of sunlight was particularly important here, as the house is used primarily in winter, but it was challenging since the perspectives have been in every other way, most spectacularly to the west, from which direction a barbarous wind blows through winter.
Three barn kinds are now connected to one another with simple sheds, forming a south-facing courtyard that shelters the entry. A second courtyard faces west using a south-facing “sun-catcher” porch opening onto it. Three big sliding barn doors may shut off the west wind without blocking sunlight.
Duo Dickinson, architect
The ways we deal with getting sun into our houses or averting its overheating them may have a massive influence on the appeal of where we reside. A large shade porch like this one generates its own universe in almost any home.
Burr & McCallum Architects
The backlighting of this nonview facet of interiors prevents glare and creates daylighting an effective way to decrease the cost of daytime light. In this home light is brought in from above via clerestory windows put at a sawtooth roof. Sunlight spreads across the middle of the home to even out the daylighting in the interior.
However, overlighting any area once the sun is low at the start or end of a day may wreak havoc on TV seeing or getting enough sleep, unless attention is given to the place of openings or, more often, what dividers, curtains or shades are used. Shading skylights can be possible but problematic and expensive, so if you can’t sleep when the sun is up, or if you like daytime TV, maybe skylights should not be in areas where beds and TVs are.
Duo Dickinson, architect
Light may fade fabrics and carpet, but solar shading glass may look like cheap reflective sunglasses onto your residence. Assessing new eaves on present houses does cost money, but designing eaves into new homes or additions is almost free.
This home demonstrates how extended eave overhangs can let light in during the winter, once the sun is low, but shade south-facing windows once the sun is high in the heat of summertime.
Watch more about how this functions
Renovation Design Group
With one of the most spectacular viewpoints in Salt Lake Valley, Utah, the owners of this home wished to make the most of it both from the inside and the outside. The pounding sun, however, made the deck too hot to use, and interior window coverings obstructed not only the solar benefit but the view as well.
A closely spaced pergola has been the response. Positioned at 10 ft above the new deck, it reduced the solar benefit without undermining the sense that you are on the cover of the world when lounging out. Better still, the French doors have no need of window coverings, so the view could be appreciated from dawn to night from within the home as well.
Duo Dickinson, architect
Designers of new houses get inspiration from the need. This home has a water view directly south. Its large windows needed to be cast in shade or the home could be an oven in summer. A radically extended roof lets full approval of this view while avoiding sunlight.
Like death and taxes, sunlight is a universal constant when it comes to each site’s natural characteristics. As opposed to retrofit awnings or combat the sun’s intrusion with internal shading devices, custom layouts can choreograph a residence’s sun dance in ways that look simple.
More:
Architect’s Toolbox: Solar-Powered Design
Look to the Sun for More of Your Home’s Lighting
