How Can I Cool a Sunroom in the Summer?
Sunrooms are excellent additions to any home, as they create a space to read, relax and enjoy company in an environment with lots of light away from the rest of the house.
While they let light and warmth in during the winter, they can let in to much light and heat during the summer, making the sunroom almost unbearable and making the entire house warmer. It's important to keep your sunroom cool in the summer months through a variety of techniques.
Adding Air Flow
Air flow through the sunroom will relieve heat, so it's important to install this type of system when building the sunroom or establishing air flow during the summer by temporary means.
If installing air flow, air vents should be placed in the ceiling to allow the rising hot air to escape. An exhaust fan within the vent might help the air to escape more quickly. Setting up or installing small fans at the base of the sunroom will also help air flow. This way the fans at the bottom of the sunroom can blow air up, past where you are sitting and out the vents in the ceiling. This will create a sort of natural circulation.
Sunroom Blinds
Blinds have a number of practical purposes in sunrooms--privacy and to keep the room cooler. Blinds reduce the amount of direct sunroom coming through the glass, deflecting it and the heat back outside. Blinds only do a part of the job when cooling the sunroom, as the heat can still get trapped between the glass and blinds and still rise to ultimately fill the sunroom with hot air. Blinds used in combination with ceiling vents or fans will be much more effective.
Tinting and Insulating Windows
Insulating windows for a four-season sunroom allows heat to escape in the summer as well as keeping cool air inside in the winter. This is done through thick pains of glass that are sealed around the edges. Tinting can be added to the panes of glass to allow less light to enter the sunroom, but this might block out some of the bright, beautiful sunlight you bought the sunroom for in the first place.
Yet with these thick, weather-sealed pieces of glass in your sunroom, combined with a fan or another small portable cooling system, regulating temperature in the sunroom itself should be much easier and much more comfortable to spend time within.
The Drip Cap
- Sunrooms are excellent additions to any home, as they create a space to read, relax and enjoy company in an environment with lots of light away from the rest of the house.
- Setting up or installing small fans at the base of the sunroom will also help air flow.
- This will create a sort of natural circulation.
- Blinds only do a part of the job when cooling the sunroom, as the heat can still get trapped between the glass and blinds and still rise to ultimately fill the sunroom with hot air.
Writer Bio
Hailing from Austin, Texas, Daniel Westlake has written under pen names for a myriad of publications all over the nation, ranging from national magazines to local papers. He now lives in Los Angeles, Calif. but regularly travels around the country and abroad, exploring and experiencing everything he can.
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