so thursday morning the apartment building is bringing in contractors to put reflective film over half my windows, which should hopefully cut down a lot on the “wow, this whole south wall of windows is remarkably greenhouse-like” heat woes which result in an 80+°F apartment on sunny days even with the a/c running constantly.
the upshot of this means that i have to move everything away from the wall o’windows before they get here. this includes my bookshelf of reference materials (soapmaking books, french stuff, english stuff), my desk with computer and printer, my heavy-ass 1600VA UPS, my futon/bed, and two cat trees.
so i stayed in tonight to get started moving shit. i got the shelf moved okay, and so far i’ve cleared basically everything off the top of the desk. woe! seriously, i just *got* all that stuff organized. meep. the cat trees are going in the kitchen thursday morning. michael’s going to come over tomorrow to help me move my desk, since it’s a two-person lift (stupid carpeting! i wish i had hardwood floors again). the futon i can move myself, but obviously i won’t be moving it until after i wake up thursday morning.
then the nice men will come in, stick goo on my windows for a little while — seriously, i don’t expect it’ll take longer than an hour; i’ll spend more than that just preparing for them — and then i get to move it all back. if i’m lucky, i can con one of them into helping me scoot my desk back into place, so i don’t have to con a friend into coming over thursday to help me put it back.
i’m looking forward to having the film up, as i do think it’ll help a lot with the cooling woes, but i wish they were going to put it over all the windows. there are six columns of four panes of glass, in total, and they’re only going to cover the top two rows. they’re doing it for free, so i can’t complain, but i wish they were putting it on the bottom two rows — for one, it would make me feel a lot better about privacy. the apartments across the way are close enough that looking out my windows (and not up) pretty much means i’m watching someone eat dinner or something. so i try not to look out, so i won’t invade their privacy.
and then there’s the blinds; if i have the blinds tilted so that the sun stays out, because of the angle of the windows the blinds are tilted, the neighbors can see straight in (that is to say, the windows are at a roughly 45° angle, so the permanently-mounted miniblinds tilt from basically straight vertical to straight horizontal, instead of how normal blinds, mounted perpendicular to the earth, rotate from one 45°F angle to the opposite. anyways, where was i? right, if i have the blinds tilted to shade the sun coming down from straight above, the neighbors can totally see in — but if i have the blinds tilted so the neighbors can’t see in, more sun gets in, and it gets hotter in here. so, i was way happier when the apartment across the way was empty, so i could just leave the blinds tilted to shade the sun, because nobody was looking in at me.
(why not just change the blinds’ tilt twice a day, you ask? easy, it’s annoying to change them. the poles that you twirl to change the tilt are very long and they’re warped from hanging at the angle for years, becoming melty in the sun, so they’re actually sort of S-shaped now. when you turn them, they thwap-thwap-thwap the walls, and it’s harder to turn them. also, they’re behind my futon, so i have to put the futon back into a couch before i can step behind it to work the tilt-poles. so, yeah, annoying.)
anyways, if i had reflective film mounted on the bottom two rows of window panes, it would make it harder for neighbors to see in (especially while sunny outside), so i would be more happily secluded. (deluded in my seclusion, perhaps?)
the apartment people are doing this for me for free, so i can’t really complain, but for the bother i really wish they were doing all twenty-four panes of glass instead of just twelve. (their official reason is that most of the heat comes in through the top panes. huh? i mean, i’m no environmental engineer or anything, but i’d say that, inch for inch, each pane probably lets in as much heat as any of the others. at best, this is going to help keep it cooler around the ceiling, where my air ducts are located, so the cool air will have a chance to come down before it gets heated to broiling by accumulated heat. oh well. like i said, they’re doing it for free, so i can’t really complain.)