Posted By trmontgomery on 08/31/2007 1:30 PM
This is our first summer in our newly built stick home.
That was your 1st mistake.
We have been experiencing our home warming as much as 8 degrees (almost 80 degrees in the house) during warmer days when the sun is out. We live in Iowa and our home does face the South with many huge windows. We even tinted the upstairs windows in hopes this would help reflect some of the UV heat. Our heating and cooling company ran loads on the house based on the direction the house sat, color of roof (black), and window area, and ceiling height, but chose to select our needs based on the heat load primarly. We even told them we would not be putting window coverings over the windows prior to building our home! The tech has been out and stated everything is running properly. The owner of the company told us to put window coverings up (there goes the views!) and provided no other solutions. The system pretty much runs non stop during the summer. Any ideas?
I would add film to the rest of the South facing windows. Llumar and VISTA are 2 films that I know of. You should get a 50% to 75% reduction in heat gain. I used a similar film on sliding glass doors in Omaha, and the results were great. But remember, you are not trying to tint the windows, you are trying to reflect the heat!
Should the company have run the loads based on cooling needs or heating needs primarily?
You will find that many companies just use a standard gain/loss figure and don't perform heat loss/gain calculations for each house. And, if you have a well insulated house, your heating and cooling equipment can be oversized. And oversized equipment can present it's own set of problems.
Good Luck!