Our rainy season is about to start, but before it does, it gets warm, some might call it hot, I call it mildly uncomfortable. It only lasts a month or less, and it’s not terrible, not compared to when I lived in the DFW area in Texas, where it was hot and humid, a nasty combination.
One of the ways we live on the cheap, with a small solar system, is by living in the high desert, I’m sure you have heard the phrase “dry heat”, well that sums it up quite nicely. And if you can drum up some shade, especially in a breezy locale, then even those mildly uncomfortable days are quite bearable.
Over the years, we have put up tarp shade in the front and back yard, mainly when our friends and family come to visit in the summer. It works great, but it only lasts one season, our sun and wind really destroy the tarps. So this year, PB decided to use up some scrap aluminum sheeting we scavenged from an old mobile home being torn down, it’s the same mobile home where we got the frame that PB turned into a bridge.
I have a little spot under a patch of oak trees that keeps me cool as well, it’s my art nook and nap place. Here are some pictures of the metal covering, oh I should tell you about what these are mounted on. A few years back, a friend from across the neighborhood gave us a bunch of sucker rod from a well, it’s made of fiberglass and can be bent pretty far, just don’t slide your hands across it unless you want itchy hands. I believe they are about 30 feet long each. Since putting them up, we have not had a major wind storm, but we have had some weather, it is holding up quite nicely, barely moving in the light gusty winds we have had so far.
There is one more picture, it’s the semi-enclosed deck area between the bedroom and the laundryroom/closet/junkroom… we still don’t know exactly what to do with that space, turn it into another bedroom, or make it an outdoor kitchen, or even just a place to sit outside but be protected from most of the elements…
