Adapting your home for climate change

[Spudlet]

Is anyone else thinking about ways to adapt to hotter weather? We are definitely considering this in light of the next few days, given that this cools well become a much more common event.

For our house (1930s semi) we are thinking about external window shutters, which I remember making a massive difference to the apartment I lived in when I lived in a hot country. And also removing the carpet downstairs and having hard floors, with big rugs that can be put down in winter. And if we can afford it, possibly external cladding on at least one wall to improve the insulation. That will be the most expensive job so I don’t know when it might be possible, but I think it will make a big difference.

I am also building a workspace in my garden at the moment which has a black roof - but if these temperatures become more common I’ll be painting it a light colour. And when I get plants for
the garden now I specifically look for drought resistance. My workspace will have two water butts to collect all the rain over the winter and I want to add at least one more to our house at some point too.

Is anyone else thinking along these lines?

I think going forwards houses with lots of trees in the garden will be very desirable

Tall plants and trees help massively, they create shade which stops the ground beneath heating as much. Also reducing the amount of tarmac/concrete/fake grass where you can will make the area around the house no garden cooler as they reflect the heat up.

I live in Portugal so have shutters, tile floors etc, have converted garden to xeriscape planting (i.e. doesn’t need water) and installed solar panels.

The thing I’m currently working on is water efficiency, as that’s my biggest concern - water scarcity is becoming a huge problem. People blithely use (and waste) so much water these days with daily showers and the like (or twice daily for some, if mumsnet is to be believed). Just read that 1976 thread about dealing with drought, and that was in the old days when people didn’t use as much water to begin with.

I’m planning an adaptation to the house plumbing that will collect rain and grey water for a vegetable garden. We also collect the cold water in buckets while waiting for it to get hot for washing up or showering. I’ve installed flow reducers in all the taps and shower heads.

We are in southern France , summers are scarily hot now and this year the heat arrived in May. We have shutters and they are a godsend. We didn’t have our house ( old farms house, basically made of mud and pebbles) insulated from the exterior as we were too late to benefit from a grant, but pir neighbours did and they have mould now as the house can’t breathe.
We have a well and we r-use bath / shower water for the garden. There are also incentives to install solar panels - I think everyone will end up getting them in my region as there is pretty constant, all round sunshine.
But the biggest thing is a good shutter. With the windows closed, the house is like a fridge inside.

Meant to say that for the first time ever, our water is being restricted. We had no water for two days last week and are now receiving daily messages about reducing daily water consumption. It’s scary stuff.

Repeating from another thread on air conditioning:

If you have a flat roof, solar-reflective paint helps.

If you have solar panels, leaving a gap between the roof and the panels helps with ventilation.

Awnings, especially over south-facing windows.

Or louvres: see and look up "smartlouvre" or "powell blinds"

Basically anything which is outside the room and can stop or reduce the sun from hitting your house, especially your windows. Internal blinds do not help as much because the sun has already entered your room, and they may just reflect it within the room. Oh, but in England you need planning permission to install external blinds in most cases.. Bureaucracy...

If you have skylights, eg in a kitchen extension or loft, put blackout blinds and replace them with openable ones. I have an openable skylight in the loft, it helps get the hot air out, and creates a modest but better than nothing ventilation with the other rooms

Thanks @ParentOfOne those micro louvres look really interesting.

I'll admit I have never seen those microlouvres live but they do seem interesting. I contacted Powell Blinds as they are the installers in my area, however realistically it is now something for next year. I'll probably look into it again around January, with a view to having them in place by next spring.

I did a while ago, bit it was more about becoming more energy independent than specifically climate change. We have a backup generator, solar panels and air conditioning.

Our main motivation was saving money - the RoI on our solar panels is only about 6 years, and that was at last year's energy prices.

It's the same for the water saving. We have a private well, and all the water has to be pumped 500 metres up hill to our tank, and then pumped to the house. The less we can use, the less electricity we need. The aquifer gets lower every year, we have drought conditions effectively all year round now, so it makes sense to be as efficient as we can be with it.

I'm glad that the side-effect is that we're doing our bit for climate change, but let's face it, that ship has sailed.