The heat

We have very large south facing windows in our Scottish home, nothing between us and the Irish Sea. We have wide slatted Venetian blinds that are left down and upward tilting during the sunniest days. This does work well, although we are experiencing exceptional heat.
In the winter they are pulled up to allow any radiant heat from the sun

We're just back from Holland and France - exterior metal roller blinds are the norm there. I wonder if these can be retro fitted to windows?

Iam64 we have a kitchen like yours. We bought, and fitted ‘perfect fit’ blinds. Help keep the heat in in the winter and have kept the kitchen coole in the dreadful heat we had last week. I also kept a velux in the roof open for any hot air to escape. This year we had perfect fit shutters fitted to all the south and west facing windows. They have been very successful at keeping the heat down in those rooms.

Just had a anall clap if rhundee here.
It doesn't feel like nearly enough!

Oh for goodness sakes.
New phone, new fingers, and new eyes needed.

I fitted perfect fit blinds too, on our kitchen patio doors. Thinking of spashing out for some for the living room patio doors. We have vertical blinds there at the moment, they are a nuisance when the doors are open & let a lot of sunlight in when it's too hot.Inherited from last owner.

We have a big open plan living area and lots of windows with the sun on them until midday. Blinds pulled down on 2 big windows helped this last week but that wasn’t enough to keep the heat out. We bought a portable aircon unit which has to have a tube to the outside through a partly open window. It has helped quite a lot so is a good investment for the future although hope this won’t be needed too often. Thanks to those who have posted about salt intake - I came to the conclusion that our inability to think straight was something to do with that so we’ve addressed it with extra in cooking, crisps and salty crackers.

Pimmi

We're just back from Holland and France - exterior metal roller blinds are the norm there. I wonder if these can be retro fitted to windows?

That was mentioned on BBC London News. Some of the Councils there are considering installing these on their blocks of flats as air con is expensive to install, run and maintain.

We have a large glass roofed conservatory. It used to be freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer. We had an air-con installed three years ago. Marvellous …the conservatory is usable all year.

Hopefully a normal Summer week now, tho temps of around 30c for next weekend.I expect we will have adjusted more to the heat by then.

We too have huge awning with lights. First thing we put it out with the touch of a button, put our big fan on and the room stays cool all day.

I don't worry about spending inheritance money, my children are better off than me. I still work at 75years old so use it to make life easier & safer by adding home adaptations for future use. Thanks for the amazing suggestions blackout blinds do the trick, keeping temps down internally.

What a great excuse to eat crisps David

NotSpaghetti

What a great excuse to eat crisps David

A bag of crisps only adds 0.16gr 3% of daily needs, it's surprising how much salt you need if you are eating a lot of fresh fruit & veg, even cereals and bread much less than I expected.

We eat very little processed food and no ready meals