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Friday, June 3, 2011

Foiled Again

On my way home yesterday I was driving down the road and noticed some houses with foil on the their windows. There was a time when we did the same thing every summer to help with the cooling of the house. I told the wife I did not like the look of it back then and still don't to this day. I always thought it to looked kinda cheap and played to much into the stereotypical redneck thing or even going as far as some people calling it white trash air-conditioning.
I don't know how it all got started. Maybe it was from the yuppies or something but never the less, I have never liked it.
Last summer to beat the heat we bought these expensive drapes that are insulated on the outside and were advertised as a heat barrier for your windows. They did work to some degree but in the end, heat still passed through. The bubble wrap idea appealed to me but the kind you buy for the absorption of heat is cost prohibited when you have a lot of windows like we do.
Seeing windows wrapped in tin foil on the way home was no surprise. This week it has been in the upper 90's and today I think it hit over 100 where I was and after being out in it all day I really do not want to come home and sweat while I am in the house. My thought is, if I have to sweat to earn it then I am not going to sweat to enjoy it.
I drive up to my house and there it sat in all it's tin foiled glory. Every window was covered and shinning like a prized jewel. The suns reflection on it would put your eye out at 100 yards if you stood in the right spot long enough. With a cringe I walked in the house from the hot outside temp of 98 to find it a very nice 74 degrees. Best of all, the AC was not running.
So as I sat down and took a big drink of ice tea. The wife was waiting for me to say something but all I did was smile and say how nice it felt in here.
Needless to say, I was the dummy last year by paying the high electric bills and buying those stupid drapes and still sweating. Not anymore. I will take my tin foiled windows over any high dollar drapes any day.     
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3 comments:

  1. coleyJune 3, 2011 at 9:34 PM

    Up here in Missouri it has been miserable mid to upper 90's plus high dewpoints for the next week or so. We try to save electric by keeping the A/C at 78 and running all the ceiling fans plus a couple of smaller fans with a box fan blowing the air up from the basement(which runs several degrees cooler). Doing this we keep the cool air circulating so the A/c only has to kick on once or twice an hour even during the hottest part of upper 90 days.By three or four in the afternoon the trees behind the house start to block the sun. We do have several people around here that do the foil, although one did it for other reasons till they got busted lol.

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  2. AnonymousJune 4, 2011 at 9:18 AM

    if it saves you a few bucks it is no ones bussiness but yours they don't pay the bills at your house I call it smart thinking looks better then torn up mini blinds now that is trashy to me

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  3. Modern Day RedneckJune 5, 2011 at 5:46 PM

    We keep the Ac at 80 during the day and turn it down to 72 at night. If I have to work and sweat to keep cool then I refuse to sweat when I sleep.
    That is funny right there about getting busted. I hope we don't. Thanks Coley for the comment.
    Thank you Anonymous for the understanding.

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