I put up insulating shades last night... *fist pump!*

I loved mine but they do have an Achilles heel which is the strings, when they break, its very difficult to replace them. I had a set of three for my office that are about 8 years old. I lost the string on one set about 3 years ago and just broke another yesterday. There are places that will restring them but the shipping is ridiculous. There is also a website that sells parts to restring but the pulleys in the head works are really not designed to be taken apart and put back to together end. My later order of blinds have the side tracks and I ordered extra heavy duty lifting mechanism that has a loop of rope that turns a top shaft. So far so good. I am probably going to upgrade my originals to the side tracks.

If you like them in the summer, you will love them in winter.

If you are buying more take look at the ones with side tracks http://cellularwindowshades.com/22-sidetracks

We put in Comfortex shades when we moved into our house ten years ago. We got them at the Comfortex Outlet Store in Latham. We have had no problems with the corded model but the cordless models keep on breaking. They've replaced them under warranty (forgot the duration) and last couple of times are replacing with a different mechanism.

I do not have a single curtain or shade in my LR, DR or kitchen. The way the windows are setup, it would have made the rooms look really small and this allows for lots of sun! Everyone that comes in our house doesn't even notice the lack of window "treatments" (I hate that word!!).

Congrats on the install, you're gonna love them! My FIL has similar ones and needs them: the living room window faces south and is 4 feet high and 10 feet long! It's like a magnifying glass.

Andrew

They make a big difference with radiant heat in the winter. Its night and day when standing in front of double pane window with the blinds open and cold. They are not so good with convective heat as the air gap to the glass is too wide so convective air flow starts. Room air gets in on the sides and the bottom and gets cooled by convective heat and then spill out the bottom. The side tracks help this but there is still some cold air leakage under the bottom of the shade. If the moisture level in the house is high in the winter, the also can be the cause of condensation on window frames as the window glass is colder than it would be without the shades.

EatenByLimestone said:

We ordered three cell insulating window shades from blinds.com for the upstairs.. I put them up last night. It was a sunny day in the low 80s today. There is 1 window facing directly South, and 2 facing directly West. The 2 facing East are shaded by Norway spruce and aren't a factor. The temperature in the room rose 2 degrees. Downstairs did not raise a single degree. I think I'm going to like these shades!

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What was your temp rise before the shades were installed?

EatenByLimestone said:

I've wished a couple times I'd been bright enough to get low E glass in the windows.

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Careful what you wish for. I did the low E glass, added 4 months to the heating season. I'll take a few weeks of to much heat any day over needing more heat in winter. The solar gain in the fall and spring is gone with low E, very much missed.

It's surprising you've had issues with those cordless shades, @velvetfoot. Our whole house is done in cordless Comfortex cellular shades. They range from more than ten years old to several I purchased just this year, and almost every year in-between. Haven't had a single one fail, but we do have one (out of maybe 25 that sometimes takes a yank or two to retract properly.

The real slick ones are the motorized ones I just put in our office. Two shades are behind our desk, and it's impossible to reach them without climbing up on the desk, so we went motorized with remote on those. So fun to watch them go up and down on their own.

Our only issue with Comfortex is that you can order the same color in different years, and get completely different fabric (not just a different color, but a completely different sheen, weave, etc.). Because of this, there's no hope to ever replace a single shade in a room, you must always do the whole room on a single order.

This color matching is what I'd dread if, for example, the cat took to scratching one up.
I just got a call from Comfortex that they repaired it. I'll pick it up at some point. It was within the 3 year warranty of the last repair.

velvetfoot said:

This color matching is what I'd dread if, for example, the cat took to scratching one up.
I just got a call from Comfortex that they repaired it. I'll pick it up at some point. It was within the 3 year warranty of the last repair.

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Step 1: Kill the cat, make it look like an accident.
Step 2: Buy new shades for the whole room. It's your only hope of getting a match, based on my limited experience.

EatenByLimestone said:

I went upstairs last night and heard an odd noise. The wife has turned the air conditioner on while it was sitting on the desk... Not in the window. I pointed out that it was heating up the room. She was fine with that. And would probably start puking water all over the desk soon, a little surprised to learn that. Somehow it was my fault, so the ac is now in the window.

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That's hysterical. She blonde by any chance?

She's been watching the Simpsons.

I have a glass door and two fixed glass units between my den and outside deck. It's about 70 sq feet of glass, facing south west, and it gets full mid-day exposure. The den heats up quite a bit as a result. There are two skylights facing the same direction as well.

I've been thinking about different ways to mitigate the summer exposure. I think I need a 2-3' extension on the roof overhang to shade the glass. The soffit is about 8' above the deck surface.

So, rather than curtains (block the view) or film (which will help in the summer but hurt in the winter) or a retractable canvas awning, I'm thinking about a lightweight wood structure that shields the summer sun, but doesn't catch rain or snow. I could also make it removable...but I'm not sure that's necessary. I think the key is to get the dimensions and the shading right for summer time...the winter sun will be lower in the sky and won't be blocked by the shading.

The other key is to make sure it has good wife acceptance factor.

Something like this pictured below. That's not my deck.

How do heating costs compare to your cooling costs? Assuming you spend at least 4x as much on heating as you do on cooling, I'd be just running the AC more in summer, and focused on maximizing winter solar gain.

Ashful said:

How do heating costs compare to your cooling costs? Assuming you spend at least 4x as much on heating as you do on cooling, I'd be just running the AC more in summer, and focused on maximizing winter solar gain.

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The den is a big room, and it gets toasty. Also, we don't have central air (yet...). Those wood shades should block summer sun but not the lower winter sun...

We will probably add central air next spring. I hate window AC units!

By then we will have a good sized PV setup providing the juice for AC.

I used to have a similar issue with a angle bay window on my house. The sun really cranked in an warmed the house up. I installed a PV array that hangs off the front of the house over the angle bay. I adjust the angle seasonally. It shades the angle bay completely in the summer but allows in the sun in the winter. It really makes big difference in the temperature in the house on hot days. I expect that it saves a bundle on AC. Unfortunately for most folks it looks too "technical".