this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
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Everything is insulated and sealed shut. There are heaters inside the house. The sun comes through the window and heats the room up. The heat cannot escape.
Then nor can its occupants.
Or, perhaps... perhaps the occupants can open the windows when the inside temperature exceeds the outside temperature. They could use a fan to vent the hot air faster. They could even place some kind of opaque covering in front of - or even behind - the windows to prevent hot air from getting into the room itself.
I'm only being sarcastic because this is the tenth reply on the subject I've made today.
Well, you're kind of being a bit of a bell-end about it, but some of your suggestions are correct, in terms of that's what the buildings lack in their architecture.
You know greenhouses, like you grow tomatoes in etc? They gather all the sun's heat and trap it inside, so it's hot and humid - but even in cold weather, they stay warm enough so seeds can germinate and plants don't die? That's what our houses are like.
Office buildings are especially bad for it. Big fancy glass thing. Triple glazed. No openable windows. No shutters. No curtains.
Houses likewise, you can open all the windows in the house, but there's high humidity and no air movement, so it just sits. A fan can help a little in a localised space.
Even shutting the curtains during strong sun doesn't do much - external shutters would help - so the heat is stopped before it's trapped behind the glass - but it, or air conditioning things are a lot to go through for 3 weeks of too-hot weather, compared to 8 weeks of temperate weather and 41 weeks of too cold weather.
Internal shutters and curtains absolutely do a lot. The difference is most noticeable here in the kitchen, simply because I am more likely to forget to close the blinds there, but it is several degrees cooler after a day of sun intercepted by the blinds versus sun pouring directly into the room. The difference comes from the fact that visible light is reflected straight back out of the window (rather than bouncing around inside the room, heating up each surface it hits), and that a layer of hot air develops behind the blind - this hot air passes its heat slowly into the room, yes - but it also conducts into the outside. Because the air directly next to the window is significantly hotter than it would be with no barrier, it conducts outside much faster than it would be (because rate of heat transfer increases with the difference in heat). Meanwhile the heat transfer into the room is slower (because it's instantaneous if you allow the sun in).
I hope we start putting external shutters on buildings faster. Everyone getting A/C is unsustainable, and as you say, it's a lot for just a few weeks each year.
Absolutely - I'd love it if some of the energy efficiency grants would also go towards shutters (which can work for cold in the winter too). Not so useful for rooms you're actually in, but great for keeping a room at home dark and cool whilst you're at work.
Blinds are probably a lot better than curtains at this time of year as well. Most people (myself included) tend to leave rooms with "whatever they already had in them", but it wouldn't be a great hardship to swap curtains out for blinds for some of the year.
I disagree. Turning the lights on during the day for a few weeks every year isn't a big problem! And I'd certainly rather do that than run A/C.
(As an aside, my desk is right in front of a window so I actually have to draw the curtains and have a light on a lot of the time anyway to be able to see my screen)