Keep your Backyard Cool This Summer
After reading our blog post on ways to keep your home and backyard cool this summer, you’ll know:
- Different methods of adding shade, bringing in breezes, and insulating your yard and home
- Who you can trust in Dallas-Fort Worth help add shade and cool breezes to your property
Summer’s a time to spend time outside and soak up the sun. However, there comes the point where the sun’s rays can become a little too intense and makes you scramble inside to switch on your A/C. Even then, you may find yourself continually cranking up your fans as pounding heat makes its way into your home and pushes your air conditioning system into overdrive.
Luckily, simple solutions prevent this from happening and allow you to enjoy time outside, even during summer’s hottest days. All it takes is smart landscaping and a brick or concrete screen walls to create shade and offer an efficient path for cooling breezes.
Cool Your House with Smart Landscaping
You don’t need a brand-new, high-powered air conditioner to keep your yard cool during the summer. Getting creative with the design of your yard can help keep the overall temperature of your property – both inside and outside – cool, breezy, and comfortable.
Of course, what does “getting creative” actually mean here? There are a variety of common additions or adjustments you can make to your yard that help create shade in summer, allow the sun in during the winter, and keep your home insulated, so the climate-controlled air inside doesn’t leak.
Some of these additions are things you can do yourself or with minimal assistance. Others may require the professional aid of Brick Experts. Either way, you’ll find it easy to keep your yard and your home comfortable all summer long.
Add Screen Walls
Screen walls, usually built from brick or concrete, are an excellent way to create shade and add a new design element to your yard. They are also surprisingly customizable, with the ability to find the exact look that perfectly melds into the rest of your property.
For instance, you could choose to go with a perforated brick wall. This will block out much of the sun but allow some direct light through and provide good airflow, too. Concrete walls can be designed and built to include planters to create more vertical space for greenery.
Additionally, screen walls add privacy to your yard. No more prying neighbors trying to see why some members of the community were invited to your backyard BBQ and not them.
Paint Your Patio and Home Cooling Colors
Dark colors are known to trap heat. That means for your yard to stay cool, you need to use cooling colors to reflect heat away.
There are a couple of different ways to do this. The first is to make sure that you’re using materials and colors that keep heat away when you have a patio or backyard space. If you stick with black asphalt, you’ll find that the pavement traps the hot rays of the sun. This not only makes the pavement a cooking surface for your feet, but it also makes the ambient air temperature warmer too. Instead of asphalt, consider marble, light concrete, or white granite.
Your home’s exterior walls should also be painted to help reflect light and heat. Stay away from dark colors and sick to pastels or lighter neutral shades to help keep your yard comfortably cool.
Plant Trees and Plants
Trees and plants offer shade, bring in breezes, and can help insulate your home during both the summer and winter seasons. On top of all that, they’re also good for the environment and potentially increase your home’s resale value.
However, before you start going all Johnny Appleseed on your back yard, you do need to put some thought and planning into where your new plants, bushes, and trees will go. For instance, short trees or tall shrubs and bushes make an ideal companion to the west side of the house. It’ll block the sunlight of the late afternoon sun and help keep the ground around the house cool.
You should keep taller trees away from your house to ensure their roots have ample room to grow and prevent those roots from damaging your home’s foundation. It should be noted that while quick-growing trees will offer shade sooner, they also tend to be less sturdy than slow-growing ones.
Screen Wall Professionals in Dallas – Fort Worth
Brick Experts know how important it is to keep your backyard cool. Our team of expert, professional concrete and brick masons can help you design a shade wall and quickly get to work building it in your yard.
Featured Image: Piyawat Nandeenopparit/Shutterstock
