Outside Shutters Can Make Your Home More Energy Efficient

In this era of global warming and climate change, many people are converting their homes into a more energy efficient place. Green building typically means putting more energy efficient appliances in the home, using recycled materials during construction, installing a more sophisticated thermostat, and adding solar powered lighting. However, often overlooked is the source of the climate change problem - the sun.

Using the sun's rays effectively can help to save both energy costs and protect your furniture and carpet from the harmful rays of the sun. A good way to do this is to install functional outside shutters on your home. Functional outside shutters can be closed to keep out the sun's rays in the summer time which will lower your air conditioning costs. In the winter, you can open the external shutters wide to allow the sun to warm your home naturally, which will also make your home more energy efficient.

Many people look at the price of operable outside shutters and the related hardware and they can't see the value of installing something on their windows that costs so much money. However, when you consider that outside shutters do more than make your home more aesthetically appealing and can in fact more than pay for themselves through years of energy savings, you can see that outside shutters really do add value and savings to your home.

Global warming is a reality and unless energy usage in most homes is lowered, climate change is inevitable. You can do your part by making a few improvements to your home such as installing solar powered lights and putting outside shutters on your home's windows.

Of course, in addition to energy efficiency other some other benefits of outside shutters include:

Security - Functional outside shutters can make your home more difficult to break into because they can protect the glass from being easily broken. Also, because they typically latch on the inside, outside shutters make the window opening more difficult to penetrate. Outside shutters can be secured shut whenever you leave town to keep your home safe.

Privacy - Closing your outside shutters can avert your neighbor's prying eyes from penetrating your windows. Whenever you don't feel like having an audience, simply pull your outside shutters closed.

Harsh Weather Protection - If you live in an area that is prone to hurricanes, putting the right outside shutters on your home can protect the glass from shattering in high winds. Outside shutters can also help prevent your skylights from the heavy weight of snow in the winter time.

Solar Control - The ability to control the amount of light in the room with outside shutters can not only lower your energy bills, but also make your home a more comfortable place to live and work. Some operable louvered outside shutters work in 2 ways to control the amount of light that enters your home - they can be opened and closed over the entire window just like other outside shutters, but also the louvers can be opened and closed while the shutters are in the closed position using a tilt rod. This changes the angle of the louvers on the outside shutters thus controlling the amount of light that can pass through. In addition to making your home more comfortable, outside shutters can protect your expensive furniture and carpet from the sun's rays, meaning you will need to replace them less often over the years.

Elegance - Operable outside shutters can move your home up a notch in the pecking order of luxury and add a new dimension to your windows that you didn't have before. Installing functional outside shutters adds both to the perceived value and actual value of your home.

Aesthetics - And of course, the most popular reason to install outside shutters is to make your home more beautiful and to add a touch of personal style to its appearance. This can be done with either functional outside shutters or decorative outside shutters. While decorative shutters don't provide the other benefits listed here, they can make your home a more beautiful place and still add to its overall value.

When considering outside shutters for your home, it is important to realize that there is more to consider than just the price when determining the bottom line. Through years of use, functional outside shutters can pay for themselves many times over by providing other benefits.

Shad Storhaug is the founder of ShutterContractor.com and is an expert in providing advice about selection, measuring, installation, and maintenence of outside shutters. For more information, please visit ShutterContractor.com or http://www.external-shutters.com/.

This article is copyright (C) 2008 Shad Storhaug. You have permission to republish this article in its entirety on your blog or website provided all hyperlinks are left intact and no changes are made to the content of the article.

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