With temperatures above thirty degrees, it is for many puffing and groaning; looking for coolness. But how hot it gets in your own garden or house is partly up to you. A different color tile or blinds can already help.
Armed with a thermal camera, Geert Starre of the Nature Conservation Watch walks through Meppel. He stops at a house with black blinds to focus his lens on it. Immediately the meters go high. “The temperature here rises to 52.5 degrees. That is an unlivable situation, you can’t sit inside there now.” He detects warm spots with his device. In this way he wants to show that the way in which people decorate their house and garden influences the heat in their environment.
“Black materials cause problems on a hot day like today,” continues Starre. “A black door, for example, and there is black gravel there. I immediately see that it rises to above 50 degrees. While the gray paving stones are only 38 degrees. Now you can nicely see that something that is black becomes much warmer and therefore more nuisance. if it is in your garden. You can easily detect the errors with this camera.”
According to Starre, the black sun protection is therefore not smart, it actually heats up the house more. “Something that then has to be cooled with energy-guzzling and noisy air conditioners,” says Starre. He also notices that life on the street is becoming less and less pleasant. “We are now on the street here, but it is not nice. You actually want to leave as soon as possible. You have trouble not sweating hard. Cycling or doing something in your garden is not possible. And that is partly due to all the dark materials that only amplify all that heat.”
Starre’s advice: white, whiter whitest. “White reflects and it doesn’t heat up. That’s why it stays cool. If you own a house and you can choose your color, make it white. That makes it a lot more comfortable for yourself. Furthermore, I hope that the fashion of black tiles, black gravel or black garden furniture will soon be over, which really makes the neighborhood less livable.”
But what if someone just likes black tiles? “What can you do about it? I can’t do more than warn. There is no law that forbids it. Taxing would be nice. Each black tile one euro per year. But that’s up to the politicians and not me.”