Some people decided awnings are unattractive so now every HOA and rental bans them. And the rest of us have to suffer because the pretty people who can afford to pay that A/C bill run our entire society.
This is the entirety of what’s wrong with the US in a microcosm. The majority being forced to live under rules made by people that aren’t affected by them.
Eccentric midwestern home owner has strong opinions about home designs, news at 11. I love his channel, did you see his trilogy about oil lamps?
Make them better looking and push-button retractable from inside, and people will want them.
EDIT
At 16:40 he suggests high tech awnings that automatically unfurl and retract to provide the ideal amount of shade on each day of the year. Seems like a nearly perfect solution to me
I haven’t watched the video yet, but vernacular architecture back in the day commonly set shading elements like awnings at the right height/angle such that during midday in the winter, sunlight would still directly go through windows and hit interior floors and walls. During summer, the angle of the sun would be high enough that direct sunlight could not reach windows.
You can get pretty far with just those passive designs. There are tools to help you find the dimensions you’d need based on where you live without having to do any calculations yourself.
While that may be true, it doesn’t make people want them any more than they currently do. People want to have their full window view available whenever they want it. This means it needs to be retractable and extendable at the push of a button. And once you have that, it’s easy and helpful for it to also be automated
Shade doesn’t have to block any of the view. Many very modern houses with giant windows use these principles.
People want to have their full window view available whenever they want it.
damn, too bad you can’t just like, go outside, or something.
You can buy them off the shelf and then put them up yourself. Of course then you have to calculate the amount of pain it’ll be to put them up and the fact that it’ll never be as good as getting it done by professional. Plus in my case they’ll be a lot less blood involved.
10 grand does seem like a lot of money though. How large are your windows?
This is the real reason they disappeared - awnings cost money and don’t increase square footage. That’s also why every modern building is a boring box.
We didn’t forget about them, it’s still covered in architecture school. You can even make them look really cool. But they cost money, and that’s a hard barrier to cross.
“Fun fact: the Sun is extremely powerful.”
Bahahahaha! I like this guy.
I heard that the sun is a deadly laser, ya learn something new all the time
I’m Suprised people don’t just paint everything white in really hot countries. I’ve always felt that would probably help a lot.
True it would probably look bad a lot quicker.
If I could find it and it was as durable as regular paint, I would paint everything that white that converts visible light into infrared that isn’t blocked by the atmosphere. Yeet that heat right the fuck back into space damnit!
That reminds me of the barium sulfate paint that was discovered a couple years ago. It’s so incredibly good at reflecting/moving heat that it could even cool whatever it’s painted on. I’ll have to find a source on this again…
always been confused why roofing in the NA area is often black, or close to black, it simply doesn’t help anybody.
I don’t know for sure but I assume of it is because light roofs require more maintenance to look as nice. Nothing shows up on a dark brown or black roof. A white or light grey would show dirt and debris. I don’t want to waste my time washing my roof because my HOA doesn’t like the way it looks.
i guess so? But a dark grey roof is already literally made from asphalt. It can’t look much worse that proto road material.
Even then you could easily do a brighter grey color. Doesn’t have to be white, but nearly every roof i ever see is either black, some variant of a dark color. Not a lighter grey or red, those are lot less common.
Also, the color doesn’t make that much of a difference. Like a percentage you can count on one hand. Much more significant gains can be had from ridge vents and other ways of getting the heat out of the attic, and insulation to keep that heat from going into the house.
At least according to my acquaintance in the roofing industry, and obvs this is regarding typical US/Canada SFHs
That combined with building materials, where I live we build out of Adobe and my house stays warm in winter and cool in summer, the outside looks like mud smeared on the walls.