SHADE NEEDED

[ClematisPurple]

Please help, I'm dying of heat stress.
The back of my house is WEST FACING.
It is sheer hell in this heat.
The kitchen is in the back of the house.
I'm going to pieces unable to cope with the blinding tortuous sun beaming directly in through my kitchen window and back door (next to window) every single solitary day when I'm trying to make dinner.
It's so hellishly, tortuously, insanely bright and intense that I get sunburn whilst standing at my kitchen worktop preparing a meal, the backs of my calves actually burn, and I have to wear sunglasses in my kitchen, and still I am squinting like mad and getting migraines from the intensity of the sun shining in to my eyes as it shines directly in to my kitchen at 5pm, 6pm, 7pm.
My kitchen sink faces the west facing window.
My kitchen is a shitty little tiny box kitchen 10ft long x 7.5ft wide and the back wall of the kitchen is all glass because the massive window and 100% top to bottom glass door take up the full width of the entire wall of the kitchen that faces west, and I HATE IT.
We are elevated on a hill, with no natural sun screen i.e. no trees. We are completely exposed to the elements.
I feel like I'm going insane.
I can't use my kitchen between 4pm - 8pm every day in this heat.
Outside my kitchen is our tiny patio only 18 feet wide and we are boxed in by tall brick walls since my next door neighbour that we are joined on to got a 4 metre rear extension which has created a breeze less sun trap at the back of our house. I hate it. We used to have air circulating at the back of our house bit their massive rear extension has stopped this.
Today, preparing dinner for DC at 5pm made me feel sick. I still feel ill now. I got sunburnt whilst cooking at my hob/oven becausethe sun hits my oven as it drops down lower in the sky. I got a migraine from standing at the kitchen sink washing up because the sun sank lower in the sky until it was straight opposite my window above the sink.
I bought a gazebo from argos and stood it against the back of the house. It helped. It lasted 4 days then we had a windy day on Saturday and the frame snapped and it collapsed.
What should I do?
Please advise me on what is better for this situation - another gazebo or a patio awning?
What is best?
I feel ill with heat stress even now at nearly 10pm, after getting in such a state in the kitchen earlier.

I’m looking forward to my shop-bought quiche and salad tonight and no doubt so are the hundreds of other shoppers who haven’t bought one 😁

Can you fit blinds to the window and patio door? Or a light voile curtain? We have blinds in some rooms (not for sleeping) that are very thin and light, they let through lots of light but offer privacy but they would also have the affect of reducing glare.

A gazebo really helps, but a cheap one is no good. Ours cost about £300 2-3y ago, and we tie it down on 3 sides to wall-eyes drilled into the walls. The 4 th corner is tied down with a guy-rope to a ground anchor in the lawn. So that's not an instant solution. Definitely one with doing, though.

Temporarily, a no-DIY solution is to buy white paper tablecloths and black paper tablecloths from Amazon (must be paper, not plastic or whole-clean 'paper'). Cover your windows by taping on a couple of layers of white paper on the inside. These will reflect some of the sunlight. Next, take the black paper over the white. This will cut down on glare. Do not skip the white paper as it reflects the heat as well. Black on its own will bring more heat into your kitchen.

And stop cooking.

Spray the window wuth water. Float tin foil on the inside of the windows. Total blackout. Don't do what I did and use window cleaner in the water...I did this on one window and the heat permanently etched the windows I thin because of the chemicals! Just water is best 😉😎

OP, I found the perfect temporary solution for this problem. I taped cardboard over the entire window on the inside frames. The cardboard stops the sun and acts as insulation from the heat.
I promise this works! HTH

Get Blackout concertina paper blinds -they’re thick cardboard , are cheap & last really well & have a peel off sticker to fix to your pvc frames. Get several & keep closed with windows closed. Don’t use the kitchen at hottest time of day. Too hot to cook - prepare a salad or have sandwiches out of fridge & eat in living room. Close door to kitchen at al times & keep your window blind shut. Miserable but the only way. Long term invest in a permanent awning type thing & /or mirror window uv film.

Get a reflective blind/s over the windows, install a canopy/sail shade to back of your property. Sounds like you could attach to the wall of your neighbours extension?

https://www.laredoute.co.uk/ppdp/prod-350063699.aspx?dim1=1&dim2=1&cod=PSN00201044UK&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20641023351&gclid=CjwKCAjw7MLDBhAuEiwAIeXGIV60OPE8nR9TKcDTVPHuHwBX2xidPlaLTTR1n8zJ8vJ12rdU5GwPyBoCEN8QAvD_BwE

We have a similar issue in our kitchen and bought these. Super cheap and you can remove them after summer.
https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/schottis-pleated-blind-white-20242282/

This is what we use. I stick them up in early summer and take them down in autumn. They're £3.50 each so I don't mind buying new each year

Solar glare film on your windows...its amazing we just put on our s.east facing windows and skylights which are horrendous in this weather..
Bought on amazon and b&q as needed different suppliers due sizing..not that dear ... Bit of a pain to put on....but degrees of difference

Time to decorate & sell the house & move somewhere more suited to your needs even if it's a flat.

Temporary black out blind which come with suction cups for windows are a god send. www.amazon.co.uk/MaximoLife-Blackout-140x240cm-Temporary-Permanent/dp/B08K95N9LR/ref=ex_alt_wg_m?_encoding=UTF8&pf_rd_r=GYPYV45KRC79NHKJG17T&pf_rd_p=d259b6e9-3107-41f5-a02c-8909afb44623&pd_rd_i=B08K95N9LR&psc=1&pd_rd_w=l1YVI&pd_rd_wg=aDQPZ&pd_rd_r=81213a95-31d5-48de-9b6f-3b9f9e362506&content-id=amzn1.sym.d259b6e9-3107-41f5-a02c-8909afb44623

Ok I'm looking in to shade sails.
I've been researching about them, and learning how to fix them to the back of the house.
Is it unreasonable to fit a fixing in to the next door neighbour's extension wall whilst they're out?!😅
To those of you that have shade sails - from images I've looked at, it looks like the edges aren't straight, the edges look very curved inwards. So a rectangle shade sail is not straight edged, it's concave edged along all 4 edges. Am I looking at them right? So the edge against the back wall of the house won't sit flush against the house, it will have a big semi circle gap between the wall of the house and the edge of the shade sail - am I correct? Surely that means the blinding sun will still shine directly through my kitchen window? In which case I wouldn't be any better off.
Please correct me if I'm wrong!
I'm finding it really difficult to sort this out by myself. Thank you for all your ideas!

Most have slightly curved edges as then they don’t sag. You fit them trying to pull diagonally outwards from the corners if you can rather than square on to get the right shape.
The gap is not really big enough to make much difference but keep in mind that if it’s very low sun that’s the bother (with the glare of the cooker etc) then you need to angle it down, but as ours makes it so much cooler in the day a little late sun doesn’t bother us.

Is it unreasonable to fit a fixing in to the next door neighbour's extension wall whilst they're out?!😅

Absolutely (but you knew that).😱

According to the BBC, you paint the outside of your windows with Greek yoghurt (10% fat apparently)

Wouldn't you end up with a plague of ants ?

They didn't say...
They did say that it dries fast and leaves a film on the glass that stops some of the heat from passing through.
I mean, if I was as desperate as the OP and had a tub of yogurt in the fridge, I'd be looking for a paintbrush. I can never do a link on here otherwise I'd link it but it's a recent article.

https://www.heatwavetoolkit.com/solutions#:~:text=Return%20to%20Top-,Paint%20Yoghurt%20on%20Your%20Windows,washed%20away%20when%20not%20needed.

I didn’t do a thorough job on the yoghurt, pasting it over most of the window that’s not covered by houseplants, and calling it a day.

By 16.32 today, the temperature was… 26.1C. What’s more, the room is darker - I can definitely tell the yoghurt is doing something. And so far, it doesn’t smell, it hasn’t attracted flies, and it doesn’t even look that bad. It just looks like white paint.

www.express.co.uk/life-style/property/2080769/putting-yoghurt-windows-heatwaves

1. No cooking other than microwave!
2. If it’s too terrible at tea time and you just need to get them fed and they had sandwiches for lunch, take them to a supermarket cafe. They can eat in the AC.
3. Get a big, monster fan on a tall stand
4. Get an awning to come out from the back of your house
5. Get AC installed. This heatwave WILL pass but more will follow. This year and beyond. Climate change.

I wonder if this would work
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Silver sun screen for cars with suckers on to stick to the glass.

houses in Spain including flats use wooden shutters + awnings as standard. It’s time we start using them too to cover glass from the outside.

External shutters are of course the ideal long-term solution as stopping the heating hitting the glass in the first place is the first (and most effective) step in keeping the heat out.
Unfortunately (and as has been pointed out many times) in this country we are not set up for this as we have outward opening windows which would not permit such shutters to be fitted.

We have shutter blinds matched with heavyweight curtains and together they do a great job at helping to keep the heat from the windows reaching the rooms but we would love to have external shutters.