Shutters And Your Home Insulation
Many people think that plantation shutters in Las Vegas are only for looks. The classic lines of the plantation shutters style creates an elegant and expensive look in any home based off east coast styles of design that were born from necessity. In days before we knew much about home insulation, people needed a way to close their windows completely due to the fact that it was difficult to seal glass to the home. The gaps that surrounded the window frames allowed cold air into the house, and ultimately made it difficult to keep the home warm. East coast homes rarely heated up the way that homes in Las Vegas do, so the fact that they also worked to insulate against heat possibly went un-noticed. The fact is that it is not cold or warm air specifically that is being kept out or in with regards to insulation systems, instead it has more to do with keeping air that is inside the home inside. Leaks were the major cost of both hot and cold air, and if you were attempting to change the air temperature inside a dwelling you wanted to also keep that air temperature from being changed by the air outside. Plantation shutters were designed to give people the ability to close off a window completely and create a solid barrier against the elements. This exact same thing can provide us with a barrier against the elements in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas is hot, and the majority of our efforts are to keep hot air outside of our dwellings in the summer. Of course there is also the desire to keep cold air out in the winter, but the summertime is more extreme in the desert than the wintertime is, meaning that we have to think of ways to shade more than ways to heat. Plantation shutters serve this purpose perfectly, by giving us an ability to completely block off the air that is being heated up on the inside of windows. Many are unaware that this is the major cause of high air conditioning bills in desert communities, that the air that is directly inside the windows of homes is being heated by the sun, creating a situation where the air that is now inside your home is hotter than desired. Even if you are cooling the interior air, you are now fighting to also cool the air near the windows which is hot. The heated air on the inside of windows can create a situation where the ambient temperature of a room is increased by upwards of 20 degrees, making it so that your air conditioner must work far harder than before. By allowing the plantation shutter to create a barrier between the air and the inside of the room which is solid, the air cannot dissipate and cause your internal room temperatures to rise so dramatically. This will save you money every month, and eventually will pay for the cost of the plantation shutters completely.