How are you finding the heatwave if you have south-facing sliding / bifold doors

[Bizzle123]

We’re about to move our kitchen from the front of the house to the back and have large glass sliding doors onto our south-facing garden.

Is that a bad idea in terms of hot weather? Will we fry or will blinds be enough to keep out the worst of the heat? Are there any better glazing options?

would love to hear people’s experiences, thank you!

We have this! It can be warm when I go down there in the morning (I don’t think we face directly south but pretty south) but I have just been throwing them open completely and it’s fine. Quite nice actually. You do notice it on a sat if you come back home from the morning out the back has really heated up, but again we just throw the doors wide open as soon as we’re in (no different to going round upstairs opening the windows). For me it’s worth it for the few hot weeks we have in the year.

We have this and it does get hot - but we also installed a retractable awning above the doors and I thank god we did every day!!

An awning is better than blinds IMO because 1) it stops the sun before it hits the glass so is more effective 2) you can still look out at the garden and open the doors and walk out easily and 3) in our case, it also shades our outdoor table area.

Make sure you order anti UV glass

Oh and I find that when it is 30 plus, it’s actually better to keep the doors shut during the hottest hours, the triple glazing does a good job of keeping the hot air out

We have a lot of glass which is south facing, in our kitchen/diner. We’ve just fitted blinds which have a thermal lining, they are absolutely brilliant and have made such a difference.
You don’t have to put the blind fully down for them to be effective, just enough so you can’t actually see the sun.

You’ll be roasting. We have a large kitchen/diner/games room. 1 window and a regular sized set of French doors - the room goes all along the back of our house which is south facing: it’s permanently roasting in the summer: I can’t even imagine what it would be like with a wall of windows

We have sliding doors with by pass shutters plus a pergola with a shade

We have a canopy blind. This means we can sit in the garden and it keeps the kitchen cool.

Ooh this sounds good, how does the awning work, does it support itself or does it need pillars? Do you have to pull it out by hand?

Ours has pillars and it’s electric.

Ive been sticking my grow blind to them and using the side door. I have only had to do this infrequently and it does help. Get good blinds.

We have South facing bi-folds with no blinds and it's absolutely fine. The only thing ever found is we have to move the fruit bowl out of the sun. If you have velux windows opening them seems to suck the heat out but our kitchen seems to remain fairly cool

Hi, I'm in Italy so face this problem a lot in the summer! I have a wall of French windows opposite each other north and south facing. We have no aircon or insulation in a top floor flat, so we get all the sun making it often around 35°C indoors plus the drenching humidity. We make sure all windows are covered by shutters or curtains and currently have a sun sail over each window. We want a canopy blinds really but no funds right now, it's what most folk have here.
I've been thinking of trying these too free standing canopy

Just have some kind of blackout blind / curtain and it'll be fine. We have hard flooring - in fact, our downstairs stays lovely and cool it's the rest of the house!
We have a blackout roman blind on the kitchen window, and large French doors with a big blackout curtain.

We have bifolds and are south facing - we made sure that we had an opening skylight and a very large ceiling fan. The latter is brilliant for keeping us comfortable, even out on the patio with the bifolds open! The front of the house stays very cool, so the fan also draws the cool air towards the back, which is a bonus.

We have blackout blinds and a retractable awning (electric, no pillars). It's fine, even when we had the 40 degC a couple of years ago. If it is really windy we can't use the awning (it brings itself in) and the blinds need to be thick to work, our old blinds that weren't hardly made a difference. We use the blinds a lot in the winter too when the sun is so low it is glaring in the room.
We had a really cheap shade sail before which worked well for years too.
Edit; too many blinds!

@minipie What awning company did you use?

So glad I have a north-west facing garden in this weather! I don't envy you.

I sympathise though, I've have two previous homes, one South, the other West. Both were too hot (both had living areas at the back of the house) in hot weather. Couldn't watch TV, decorative candles would melt.

Despite blackout blinds doubled with blackout curtains, DCs would complain it was too light and warm to see and would wake early in the morning. Didn't find any real solution but I guess it depends on many factors.

We have this but also have curtains and blinds over our velux which does the job.

If you haven’t put it in yet, choose thermal glass to reduce the amount of heat absorbed, and blinds/shutters/an awning or pergola outside.

We have massive south-facing windows in our living room and have the windows open and blinds shut for exactly this reason.

I just made a thread about loving my East-facing garden more than I thought!

I lived with a South-facing balcony for 3.5 years in a new build flat on the third floor (so direct sun all day) - absolutely stunning sunrises and sunsets but I was so hot 2 summers ago, I cried.

I wrote to my local MP about the building overheating. It was that dramatically bad.

After that year, I learnt to keep the curtains closed and bought a portable aircon. Just about survived last summer but loved it when it was cold and raining, which is sad!

I'll see if I can find some photos of the thermostat reaching near 40C INDOORS I sent to the MP but I at least have a photo of the balcony - and the spectacular view (almost worth it haha)

I've not long bought a house with a south facing garden and a shit ton of glass on the back - loads of patio doors & windows. I knew it would be a problem and it is indeed vile in this heat, even with reflective blinds. Thankfully the kitchen is on the front of the house (north facing). It's a do-er upper, and I will be reducing the amount of glass, installing pergolas and what not asap. Love the idea of ceiling fans too from upthread- nicking that.

I will say though, it was lovely and warm in the winter. We definitely saved on heating costs as a result.

Thanks for all the replies and some really helpful suggestions. Sounds like - on balance - it’s manageable for most people with the right blinds etc.

That sounds horrible, glad you’ve moved on!

Thank you, I’ll look into thermal glass.

This sounds great, can I ask how much the retractable awning was?