Why outside is uncomfortable (and how to fix it)
How the microclimates around your home can make or break your outdoor living experience.
(4 min. read)
Have you ever had a patio or deck that you never seem to use for more than 5 minutes?
It can feel a bit bewildering to look outside and see what looks to be a perfectly reasonable space to sit and talk, maybe enjoy a glass of wine with a friend, or just go out and read a book... and realize you rarely (if ever) go out there.
What gives?
Maybe all the space needs is to be cleaned up a bit. So- you pick a Saturday, hose the place down, wipe down the furniture, whap the dust off the cushions, and put a little vase with some flowers on the table.
Then you invite some friends over, share that glass of wine (with some spills and some laughs), and finally feel like you've got this 'unused space' issue checked off the list.
Yet a few weeks later you find yourself staring out the window, coffee mug in hand, realizing you haven't been out there since that afternoon. In fact, that cloth napkin is still sitting there on the table from when you spilled a little bit of the wine...
So, if making the space tidy isn't the solution, what's really going on?
Microclimate mis-match
If you're like most of the homeowners I've worked with, and you have a perfectly good space right outside your door that you just don't seem to be using, it's almost certainly caused by a microclimate mis-match.
What does that mean?
A microclimate mis-match means that something about that space makes it uncomfortable.
And if we're going to figure out what's making it uncomfortable, it helps to know what makes up a microclimate in the first place. To do that, let's take a quick detour...
Going to the beach
Imagine going to the beach. Sun, waves, sand... does it get any better?
*BTW, this is your vision, so you can let as many people join you as you want (volleyball anyone?) or make it your own private retreat. Up to you. ;-)
In your mind, imagine walking along the sand until you find the perfect spot to sit down.
Very quickly you notice that the sand under your bum is hot.
So you turn to your helper Johnny (For the sake of argument you have a helper named Johnny. Go with it- you're living the good life, right?!) and you ask Johnny to grab you a beach towel to sit on.
In two shakes he's back with a nod and a smile and lays out a towel for you.
Better.
The next thing you notice is that it's bright.
So you turn to Johnny and say "Johnny, would you grab me a beach umbrella?"
Right away he comes trotting back with a beach umbrella to give you some shade in just the right spot.
Much better.
At this point you're set up pretty well, but after a while you realize you still feel a bit overheated.
So you ask Johnny to find something to help you cool down.
Soon enough, here he comes holding a few things.
A little battery-powered fan & squirt-gun thingy that lets you squirt mist as you blow air around.
A glass of cool lemonade with ice cubes, fixed up just the way you like it. (How does he know these things? Good thing you found this guy.)
Ahhh. Now that's comfort.
Microclimate Mods
What you've done here (with some help from Johnny) is modify your microclimate.
Let's recap your mods:
Towel - Buffer against conductive heat transfer from the sand
Umbrella - Barrier against radiant energy transfer (light from the sun)
Mister fan - Mist to pull heat out of the air to reduce heating from convective heat transfer
Cool drink - Lower internal temperature so you have less need to try to reject heat through evaporative cooling (i.e. sweat)
And while doing these things when you go to the beach might seem obvious, people often forget to do the same thing with the spaces that are right outside their door.
And it's understandable- Just as it is easy to get caught up thinking about where everything on our wish-list should go and lose sight of defining the spaces, it's also easy to get caught up with how we want a space to look and forget about modifying the microclimate to make it more comfortable.
I vividly remember working with a family in Sacramento that had a covered patio just off the kitchen, with a West-facing view that opened out to the pool deck. It had been so long since they'd used the patio that there was a solid layer of dust on all of the furniture.
Because of the orientation, that covered space became a solar oven for much of the year.
To their credit they had made some efforts to fix the problem. They paid (a whole bunch of) money to have motorized roll-down shades installed to block the sun... but then they never rolled them down because the shades blocked the view out from the kitchen.
So instead we came up with installing an arbor out beyond the covered patio, so that the patio could still get shade while keeping the view open.
The power is yours
To take advantage of the power of microclimates to make your outdoor living space more livable, you really only need two things:
1) To realize that your outdoor space is full of microclimates, and
2) To recognize that you can adapt those microclimates, just like you would if you were going to the beach, going camping, etc.
Take a look around your home and let me know in the comments below - what spaces and mods are you thinking about to make your outdoor living space more comfortable?