Manage the heat - don't just react !!

 After many weeks of rushing around, dealing with the sun-driven heat here at La Chaise and so being driven dotty - and a little bit to drink - it has just occurred to me that I was doing this All Wrong!   As some much quoted public figure (whose name temporarily escapes me) said: Take Back Control!!

The building at La Chaise is a long rectangle, with the long sides facing east and west - i.e. where the sun rises and then where it sets - and the short sides facing north and south.    The sun circles round this construction at ever different levels - I have been watching and have just started react accordingly.

The first thing I do, after dragging myself out of bed fairly early in the morning, is to open all doors and/or windows on the East side, then the West side, in order to encourage a cool draught through the house before the sun is sufficiently high to make a direct impact on windows and shutters...A change of air is very necessary.

Then I gradually close the wooden shutters on the long east side - a good rule for sun driven heat is to NEVER let the sun touch window glass - if you have no shutters, put the curtains on the outside ....and wet them.

Not much later I take the garden hose and water the roof of the conservatory on the south side.   It is covered in cannage which will hold water for some time.  Ironically the conservatory is an addition to the house that we made some 40 years ago - for cold winters....

As the sun moves round, so I follow it, opening, closing,wetting, shutters windows and curtains as appropriate.  The short south side of the house has only one window - next to the conservatory - for which I managed to find a 'rideau ocultante' i.e heat repelling - which is permanently in place.

When the sun is facing the west side of the house I fortunately am helped by a deep concrete terrace which is roofed over by a rampant bignonia, so much less watering is required.  But still I keep the shutters on that side closed...

The north side of the house is deeply protected by the woods, centennial oaks and domineering chestnut trees.

But THE major factor in keeping La Chaise cool is that the walls, outer and inner, are some 50 cms thick - made up of chalk stone from the fields, set between cut stone frames, filled with mud and rubble in between... (we once found a dead mouse in a wall we took down)...so very resistant to temperature variation.   

Also, the house is set in a small clearing in the woods - ancient oaks, chestnut trees and random other species. I wonder if the original builder, a Perigueux based lawyer, was prescient....