Dr. Randy Swanson, Architect, AIA, P.A.
Florida Architectural Lic No. AR91787; Tel: 727.368.4785
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RESPONSIBLE AND SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE
Dr. Randy Swanson, Architect, AIA, NCARB, P.A.
Fl. Lic. # AR91787
Having A FIT With Residential Retrofit?
Have an older home that you want to improve?
There is no simple way to up-date most pre-1970’s construction to current Florida Building Code standards. So, unless you have a lot of money to spend a “catch 22” is created that drives the average homeowner into fits of depression and then a shrug of indifference. Is there anything you can do, short of starting over to be more comfortable and save money?
YES! First, get the sun off the south and west exterior walls and roof. Plant a few live oaks - they’ll do an excellent job down the road. Put up a trellis to support flowering plants or cloth screens to shade those walls. Perhaps a porch is affordable. Reducing the exterior wall surface temperature from 130 to 90 degrees and the a/c system will have less work to do.
What about the roof? I would investigate the application of a roof mister. Since we’re paying for city recycled water why not use it to cool down your roof from 160 to 90 degrees. That’s better than using one ton of mechanical cooling each hour. Won’t that take a lot of water? Well, the roof is misted a total of 3 to 6 minutes each hour using less than a pint of water per day for each square foot of roof. If you had a 1000 square foot roof, you’d be using less than 125 gallons per day to reduce the temperature of your roof up to 70 degrees. The system can be installed on an existing roof, perhaps without any penetrations, and can be reused if you need to re-roof in the future. The misting system might even extend the life or your roof. Together, by shading the walls and misting the roof you might save up to 1/3 of your expense for maintaining a comfortable environment without changing any physical construction! If you’d like to investigate this further - give me a call.