Furl the sails

It looks like it’s time to furl the sails for the cool weather.

We only have a narrow back yard, just on 4 metres and it bakes in Summer. So I put up some posts and washing line cable and made 4 sails of shadecloth that we can rollout in Summer and back again in Winter. That means that the backyard is pretty adaptable throughout the year.

I use a maximum of 70% shadecloth because we have so many plants in that area and they need the light. Thinking back, I probably should have bought white because it doesn’t have the colour cast and the space beneath it is brighter.

Some sections can overlap to temporarily shade almost 100% of the sunlight t in an emergency. They can also be pulled back for safety during a bushfire. The shade material is plastic, so can catch and burn from embers Gotta plan for everything!

With the climate heating up and weather becoming more variable, it’s good to design and install flexible systems to cope. We really don’t know what’s ahead for us, weather wise, just that there will be a trend to warming and more frequent severe events. We’re overhauling the rain harvesting system too to catch more of the intense downpours that we’re tipped to have coming. It seems that less rainfall in general but heavier downpours will be our lot.