[pistoleer]

It surprises me to read about "fixed metal frame" awnings. You don't _have_ to make that trade off.

In the Netherlands a lot of houses have electrically retractable awnings (or even just mechanically windable by hand), especially above the giant windows facing the back yard.

During winter and bad weather, we retract the awning. When it's too sunny, we deploy it.

typical row house layout with big windows on both sides: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doorzonwoning

retractable awning: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zonnescherm

[zukzuk]

A house I lived in during the pandemic had a pergola covered in wisteria vines over the south facing windows. In the summer the vines would leaf out and block most of the hot sun, and in the winter the leaves fell away and let in a ton of light.

Worked great, looked great, and smelled great for the two weeks of bloom in may.

[reneherse]

This is a great technique that I believe has been used for ages and was re-popularized in recent decades by advocates of ecological and sustainable architecture.

I've heard of grape vines being used in place of wisteria, which might be better in places where the latter is considered an invasive species. There may be other "friendly creepers" with similar deciduous qualities as well.

[hedora]

We’d put something like that near the house if not for the fire risk. I feel like there should be a solution to that problem though.

[schiffern]

You can select vine species that are fire-resistant (including grape and wisteria).

Paradoxically, this can make a building more fire-resistant than just having a bare wall. Plants contain water, after all.

https://www.blm.gov/sites/default/files/documents/files/Fire...

[intrepidhero]

At my first house I built garden beads in the back yard about 4 feet from the house, each with an 8 foot tall trellis for peas and beans. Seeing that lovely green wall outside the window in the summer was the absolute nicest window treatment I've ever had.

[ahoef]

My house has three carefully pruned lime trees (not the fruit). Works perfectly for privacy and the exact dynamic you note here.

[ninalanyon]

In Norway we have them with sensors for wind speed and sun so that they are deployed automatically to shade the window and retracted if the wind rises too high.

[bafe]

In Switzerland most offices and the majority of houses have exterior metal slat blinds or rolling shutters. Almost all are operated electrically and quite a few are controlled by inputs from wind and sunlight sensors. Since you can adjust the angle of the slats you can significantly cut down solar gains and glare while still providing ventilation and natural light

[dumbo-octopus]

We have them in america too. But every moving part comes with inflated costs for both acquisition and ongoing maintenance.

[pistoleer]

In the Netherlands it costs around a grand, as for maintenance... Haven't needed to do any in more than 15 years. The actual screen retracts into a weather proof metal casing, so there's not that much that goes wrong, whereas fixed awnings are exposed to the full weather gamut 24/7.

Let me put it this way: it's cheap enough that a lot of social housing and other cheap forms of housing inhabited by the "lower class" feature them.

[strken]

In Australia you can get a 3x2m awning from Bunnings for $300[0] and install it yourself in a couple of hours. I'd be surprised if Lowe's in the US didn't have something for the same price, although they've apparently decided to geoblock Australians from accessing most of their website.

[0] https://www.bunnings.com.au/windoware-3-x-2m-charcoal-easy-f...

[nick3443]

The "name brand" sunsetter awning starts at $2500.

The china brands with no reviews do go down to $4-500 though. The labor to have someone install one of those (if you're not diy) and find out it's crap would cost more.

[thaumasiotes]

Lowe's advertises awnings, but they're more expensive than that. I see a listing for "144 inch wide x 120 inch projection x 10 inch height metal solid motorized retractable patio awning" for $426. (I tried switching stores from San Francisco, CA to Albuquerque, NM in case of location-sensitive pricing, but prices didn't change.) One meter is about 39 inches, so this appears to be a bit under double the area (including 50% more projection) for a bit over double the price. But the vast majority of their listings are much smaller without being cheaper. Even the cheaper one is one square meter for US$100.

[dumbo-octopus]

A government paying for a thing does not in any way imply that the thing is a good use of money. How many decades of fabric replacements could you get from the savings of bolting on a simple metal frame as compared to an elaborate electromechanically actuated arm mechanism?

[Etheryte]

This is such a silly argument. A movable awning isn't some complex apparatus, it's literally a hinge and two sticks. You're trying to frame this as some kind of an expensive problem when it really isn't.

[dumbo-octopus]

You forgot the actuator.

[skrebbel]

It's a stick with a handle that you turn

[jve]

Reading your comments, including down the thread I'd want to remind some guidelines:

> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Your comments currently stand close to trolling and it is annoying.

You may find other useful ones, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[dfxm12]

Interestingly, trolling does not appear to be against the guidelines, but posts like yours suggesting someone might be (close to) a troll are. After all, the guidelines tell us to assume good faith, but do they say anywhere that you must post in good faith? It seems like our only recourse under the guidelines is to flag a post and hope for the best.

[gacklecackle]

* "should" vs. "must", you might find this useful. And also: "guidelines", not "rules".

[malermeister]

In the Netherlands? If its bolted on, it won't even last a year. The North Sea has a lot of storms ;)

[fhars]

And who would even want a fixed structure that keeps out the little bit of winter sun there is?

[pistoleer]

> A government paying for a thing does not in any way imply that the thing is a good use of money.

Agreed, nor is the inverse implied of course. But what is your point?

> How many decades of fabric replacements could you get from the savings of bolting on a simple metal frame as compared to an elaborate electromechanically actuated arm mechanism?

That's what I'm saying, fabric doesn't really need to get replaced in 15 years and going from personal experience. The mechanism is simple enough to be reliable as well.

Ultimately, it's impossible to analyze the cost benefits of this. It's a matter of personal taste and what the harshness of the local climate allows. I don't doubt that fixed awnings are cheaper - but actuating awnings fix their drawbacks, and the maintenance they introduce is minimal in my experience. And frankly, for the price of giving up a single vacation in 15+ years, it's not that expensive. Again, cheap enough that those in social housing can make the choice to get them installed.

ETA: my point of mentioning social housing is to say that people with lower income can still get them. The government doesn't pay for it. I just wanted to paint a picture of the relative cost.

[dumbo-octopus]

What is your point in stating that public housing uses them? (aka the government buys them).

No clue why this turned into a huge debate. I don’t have a dog in this fight, all I’m saying is that america has retractable awnings, they have some downsides, and a government (or a “low class” individual) buying something doesn’t convince me it’s a good investment.

[kuschku]

> What is your point in stating that public housing uses them? (aka the government buys them).

Who said anything about the government buying them? The renters in public housing usually buy and install them by themselves. That's why usually every balcony has a different type of awning, in a different state of disrepair.

While I'm nowadays in IT, when I was a child our family lived in this type of public housing, and we had a retractable awning of exactly that kind that my parents had installed themselves.

[pxndxx]

What? Who mentioned the government paying for them? Who said that the fabric needs replacing often?

[dumbo-octopus]

The parent…? Who pays for public housing? And what relevance would the weather otherwise have..?

[kuschku]

You might be misunderstanding something.

Even a working family, if they're earning very little, may be living in subsidized public housing.

Renters have lots of rights over here, allowing them to customize a lot about the apartment. Awnings are usually owned and installed by the renters themselves.

So a family that has so little income that they need to live in subsidized public housing may still have enough income to buy a retractable awning.

[Cthulhu_]

While this is true, awnings aren't that expensive, and while I don't have the knowledge to do the maths, they will earn themselves back over time with how much heat they keep out and how much you'll need to run the AC.

[apexalpha]

They save more in energy than they cost, though.

[otikik]

Would you be surprised to learn that in Spain almost all windows have built-in blinds?

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persiana

[ricardobeat]

Well, they have sun and don’t need the insulation provided by double-pane glass.

Dutch (northern european?) windows also open to the inside, making blinds impractical unless they’re built into the window frame.

On top of that, historically blinds are uncommon for cultural reasons, they impair looks and the amount of light coming through, even when fully open. It’s already dark enough in here most of the time :)

[oersted]

I don't think you have the right mental image of Spanish blinds (persianas). They are indeed built into the window frame and are fully retractable. The windows also open to the inside.

They have a similar function as awnings, because you can have them part of the way down, so they block the sun at whatever altitude it is, while allowing you to keep the window open for airflow or light. They are also less obstructive on the facade than awnings.

Random example: https://as.com/actualidad/sociedad/por-que-hay-tantas-persia...

I've lived both in Spain and the Netherlands.

In Spain you have the wooden blinds that are vertically retractable, they can fully black-out and insulate the room, but you also always have very light translucent curtains next to them, that let light in but can block visibility for privacy.

In the Netherlands you usually only have very thick curtains that are not translucent, they fulfil both purposes in one, light/temperature insulation and privacy, but they are an inferior solution for both.

My parents and grandparents from Spain are surprised and often note how many windows in the Netherlands are wide open, particularly on ground floors, you can see everything in the house from the street. In Spain we would simply use the translucent curtains that block very little light but provide privacy. And in the north of Spain it's just as grey as in the Netherlands, the light level is similar most of the year.

We also have fewer ground-floor households, they are generally unpopular, there's often shops there at street-level, and apartments are far more common than detached houses.

[lbschenkel]

In Brazil these "persianas" are everywhere as well, and they look exactly like the one in the example you gave.

[oersted]

As I understand it they come from Muslim heritage, from the 700 years of Al-Andalus in the Iberian peninsula. The word clearly points to "Persian".

I know them from Spain, but I'm not surprised that they came to Brazil from Portugal, and I assume they are popular in many places around the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

[ragazzina]

completely different from an awning from a heat point of view. The persiana traps the hot air between itself and the window pane, which usually becomes really hot.

[gacklecackle]

* "almost all" or just "most"

[oersted]

"almost all" is correct, they are nearly universal. At least for residential windows, maybe not in offices.

[otikik]

Yep. Thanks

[FooBarWidget]

"Many"? It seems to me like there are many without. Homeowners Associations everywhere keep blocking them as well because they ruin the street image, so they say. Oh and they block AC too because it's too noisy and the outside unit is too ugly. And so many homes are stuck with scorching summers.

[JoshTriplett]

> Oh and they block AC too because it's too noisy and the outside unit is too ugly.

I've never seen an HOA that bad; that's horrific. I've seen ones that ban window AC units, but never any that had anything to say about central HVAC.

That's the kind of thing that ought to get legislatively challenged, perhaps as an accessibility issue.

[greener_grass]

The Netherlands seems like the most sensible country on earth. How did they manage it?

[niemandhier]

That changed in the last decade, among other things the population is dissatisfied with immigration.

I cannot tell you if that is justified, but I can say from personal experience that in some cases the praised Dutch directness turned to racism. Things like, people not believing that you have a phd, or refusing to take your credit card because the color of skin does not match the ethnicity of the name.

[jjmarr]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_Piet

[brnt]

> but I can say from personal experience that in some cases the praised Dutch directness turned to racism

It always was a thin line. What has changed is that victims are now speaking up, and a silent majority realizing that brutish-directness always was a subgenre that somehow kept being taken as representative of directness.

One can be direct and courteous (and not racist), but the Netherlands (as in Holland) isn't the best place to find that.

[account42]

> The Netherlands seems like the most sensible country on earth.

> population is dissatisfied with immigration.

I don't see the contradiction.

[JonChesterfield]

Low population and high income from natural resources.

[Etheryte]

The Netherlands has a higher population density than the US (520 people per square km vs 37) and lower GDP per capita ($62k vs $82k), so I'm not sure if that framing is exactly useful. In absolute numbers, yes, there's fewer people, but they're packed into a very small area so you have to be smart about how you do that.

[masklinn]

Also natural resources in the Netherlands? At least 20% of the country is reclaimed land, and more than half is under high tide water levels.

I think GP confuses the Netherlands and Norway.

[ninalanyon]

When it comes to resources Norway and the Netherlands are radically different. But it's in how the resources were used not in whether they existed. The Dutch had a lot of North Sea gas but they, like the UK, squandered the income from it. Norway was lucky to avoid what has become known as the Dutch disease partly because Norway was later to the party.

[apexalpha]

Squandered is a bit much be built the Delta works, among others things.

There's more than one way to invest money. Though I agree they could've put at least some of it in the stock market like Norway.

[rahkiin]

The Netherlands lives on trade. From slaves and spices to the Rotterdam port as entry to the waters of europe and Schiphol Amsterdam airport.

[JonChesterfield]

Yep, parsing error on my part. Too tired today. Norway also being a country that seems to do most things right.

[blitzar]

Education.

[082349872349872]

in the row house article's picture I see the house, with the tree, but where's the beestje?