As the leaves start turning colour, our thoughts need to turn inwards to our home in preparation for winter. Houses in the southern hemisphere tend to be designed for summer, and are not that well adapted to colder seasons, leaving us freezing for a couple of months or with huge heating bills. This said, when we adapt for climate, we want to be sure that we are optimising for summer as well as winter.
A room may be cold for any one of a number of reasons: it may face away from the sun, all day or maybe only for part of the day when the room is in use; the sun may be blocked by vegetation; the ceiling may lack insulation; the house may have an open-plan layout. Let's look at each of these to see how we can make our home more comfortable for winter. We can set aside one room as a "snug" with the best orientation (north or west) for our main winter living room. When I was a child, we lived in an open-plan house which was cool and airy in summer, but in winter, we holed up in a small study every evening with the TV and comfy chairs.
Vegetation blocking the winter sun may be possible to trim back, if the trees are on your own property. As a long-term solution, you may consider replacing evergreen trees and shrubs with ones that lose their leaves in winter, so that you have their benefit all year round. Insulation in the ceiling is a good year-round investment - heat rises, so any warmth generated in the room immediately rises and disperses to the outdoors. In summer, roof insulation helps to prevent the direct radiation from the sun from overheating the house. There are several companies offering different types of insulation, so here is a useful guide.
My childhood home had a large livingroom with huge sliding doors and windows and an open plan into a dining room and entrance hall. This was almost impossible to heat in winter, so my dad had the simple solution of installing heavy curtains to compartmentalise the space for winter, but the curtains were drawn back during the rest of the year.
Curtains and blinds are great and inexpensive ways of improving the thermal comfort of a room. I have found that a combination is ideal. In the photo, you can see that the Roman blinds are divided into three panels, partly because a single blind would be too heavy to manipulate, but also so that one can have the side panels open on a gloomy day to be able to see out, but the central panel closed to shut out the cold. Roman blinds that fit exactly in the window opening help to exclude drafts, and can be made with thick fabric or even padded for extra insulation. At night in winter, I close all the blinds and the thick curtains to minimise the heat loss, one of the disadvantages of large areas of glazing.
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| Blinds and curtains in my bedroom |
Large areas of glazing can be a problem in both summer and winter: in summer they may let in too much sun, and in winter, the warmth in a room easily escapes through the glass. A more expensive solution is the installation of shutters. Ideally, these should have adjustable louvres, so that you can maximise the ventilation in summer and close them tight in winter. Curtains also help to make a room look more cozy, which can be extended into the loose accessories such as cushions and throws.
Doors are also an easy escape route for warmth, especially along the space at the bottom, so good old-fashioned draft excluders are an easy answer. Some doors fit so poorly that it is worth installing draft exclusion strips all the way around the door frame.
Once you have finished insulating your space, you also need to think about the air quality: if you have excluded all the sources of drafts, you have also shut out all the fresh oxygen! It is important to avoid blocking up air vents: these are usually situated above windows or doors and can be nasty dust traps, but essential for the health of the building and its occupants. If you have wooden floors, these may also have air vents that need to be kept open to allow the floor to ventilate to prevent mould and rotting.
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| Air brick above my kitchen door |
Another way to ensure good air quality is to introduce indoor plants: these absorb the carbon dioxide that we breathe out and replace it with oxygen. A good choice is succulents, such as spekboom (portulacaria afra), that require minimal maintenance and are great for air exchange.
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