Video Highlights:
00:00:10 – Greetings from Jason!
00:00:40 – Thick fabric myth
00:00:43 – Jason explains how your house is heating up
00:01:03 – The convection process
00:02:40 – Internal blinds significantly lessen heat inside the home
00:03:36 – Thick fabric myth – false!
00:04:09 – Why it’s better to choose a lighter color blind
00:04:52 – How awnings keep out the heat
Hi everyone, I’m Jason from Blockout Blinds and I hope your day is going well. I’m here to talk to you today about how the inside of your house heats up and how blinds and awnings can help this and also the myth about how thick the fabric on your blinds need to be to help keep the heat out. We get a lot of customers that look at the fabric and they start to think that it doesn’t look that thick so how is this going to keep out the heat from my home. Well, at the end of the day, it does not really matter and we’ll explain why.
So let’s start with how the house heats up.
First of all, the air in the environment never gets heated up directly by the sun passing through it, believe it or not. So the sun beams come down, they’re going through the air, but the air itself, does not heat up. The air heats up through a process called convection which means the air needs to be touching some type of solid object that has heat in it, to in turn heat up the air. Now, when it comes to your home, the sun comes in, heats the glass, and what happens is that the glass gets really hot when you touch the glass you can feel the heat. So, in turn, what that does is the hot surface of the glass then comes in contact with the air inside your home, that air, then heats up and of course, what does hot air do, it rises. So the hot air touching the glass rises up, and as that rises up and heats the roof, more cold air comes from underneath to touch the glass and in turn heats up, rises up and creates a cycle. It’s a little bit like having a mini weather system inside your home believe it or not.
It doesn’t just heat up from the glass. The sun comes in, it heats the floor boards. The floor boards get hot, they heat the air up. The furniture gets hot, it touches the air and heats up the air as well. So anything that has direct sunlight in your home, it then directly transfers the heat to the air in your home creating the inside to get hotter and hotter.
So how do blinds stop this?
Well, first of all, you have your internal blinds. As I have said before, the air is touching the glass and heating up. Now by putting a blind on the inside, it creates a barrier. So the first thing is, the air that heats up, it gets trapped between the glass and the blinds and doesn’t recirculate back into the room hence stopping more air from coming in. Now, of course, blinds are not fully sealed all the way around so some air escape but it dramatically reduces it. So, also, what happens is, when you’ve got your blinds down, the sun no longer heats the floor, or it no longer heats the furniture. So these items no longer heat up and in turn, don’t heat up the air.
So the myth that you need thick fabric to reduce the temperature in your home is false because all the blind is doing is stopping the direct sunlight from coming inside and it’s just creating a barrier to stop the air flowing around the home.
If you have a blind that has just one solid piece of material, that’s going to do a much better job than a venetian blind that has lots of slots and gaps. Because with the gaps, more airflow. Of course anything with a plymouth is going to be even better again because it stops air flowing up from behind the blind up to the roof. So that in a nutshell, is how it works. Now of course, the sun is going to be heating the back of the blind, now the blind itself will also be heating up. So once that blind gets hot, the blind itself will also start heating up the air inside. Though it takes a while for the blind to heat up. So if you are really trying to reduce the heat of your home, you probably want to go for a lighter colored blind. Or, we do have fabrics available that are dark on the inside so in other words, it matches your interior but the back of the blind is white to maximize the reflection of the sun. So white reflects more than black absorbs more. A white back means your fabric is not going to get as hot, so when you touch the fabric on the inside, you won’t feel the heat as much.
An alternative to blinds – The Awning
The best way to reduce heat is to put awnings or some type of covering on the outside of your home. Why is that? Good question. Of course, if the sun is not heating the glass in the first place, the glass is not going to get hot and no heat is going to be transferred inside. So best option for keeping the heat out would be to install an external awning however if this is not an option then internal blinds will be the next best thing. Probably one of the best internal blinds for heat is a honeycomb blind but we’ll talk more about that later.
Summary
So there you have it, an insight into how a home does heat up and why the thickness of your fabric does not make much difference, it’s just really about creating that barrier to stop the air circulation.
So I hope that has helped you, and please don’t hesitate to contact the team at Blockout Blinds if you’d like to have a chat about the best solution for your home or office.
