So our floor to ceiling windows face south and east in the living space, which is great in winter for heating but we do have to keep the blinds and everything buttoned up during the daytime in summer.
We also do the lock the house up tight and dark during the daytime to keep it cool and then open it up at night... but I just remembered why this year is different, ha.
Mr. Bear. With only 1200 square feet we still have three large 8-foot sliding glass doors, one in our bedroom and two in the main living area. At night, those wide open provide extremely ample cooling to the point where with all 3 doors open we can almost match the outside temperature by morning. It’s almost like sleeping in a tent but inside, ha. We can lock the screens and with no crime and a dog as an alarm, we’ve always been comfortable with them open.
This year though we have a resident bear for the past 3-4 weeks now. He’s been at our screen door at least twice... once we only saw the paw prints on the porch after the dog scared it off, the second time we had Piecasso pizza on the kitchen counter and I ended up staring at him 4 feet away with only a screen separating us, he had his nose up near the screen sniffing.
After a bear entered a house on River Road in Stowe to get to the kitchen, and another one walked through a screen door in Underhill at 3am to get to the kitchen... my wife will absolutely not allow the doors to be open after dark. So we need to A/C as windows aren’t doing it. The Underhill story is identical to us... couple keeps their slider doors open at night to cool off, bear came through it and the couple woke up to plates smashing in their kitchen.
I keep thinking the bear might be gone but then even this morning I found a huge pile of black, berry-filled bear scat right off our back steps. So he still makes the rounds nightly looking for food. He’s an adolescent and truly isn’t aggressive (we’ve seen him several times in the daylight too), but this is his zone on the Rec Path apparently. He just doesn’t know any better.