It's summer and it's getting hot again. That only means rising electric bills and water bills all in an attempt to stay cool. One thing that's been brought to me and studies have shown will doing some investigative work on ways to get my air conditioner to run less and cycle quicker was that 40% of your homes cooling escapes through the windows. Not only does the cold air escape out through heat loss, but the air inside the home is rapidly heated thus causing the AC to cycle and run more than it probably should, especially in the summer. Curtains and blinds alone do help, but they are not the most successful at fulfilling this job. We needed something bad that would help keep the air longer and cooler inside the house and also block the sun from penetrating.

Solar curtains do just that. They help to keep your air conditioning costs down in the summer as well as your heating costs in the winter. With their "reflective" personality, all you have to really do is just hang them on another curtain rod in between your regular curtain or blind and your window.

In the summer when the days get unbearably hot, you'll notice that your AC runs and runs and runs. With solar curtains though, you'll see that the AC doesn't run nearly as much or as long.They do an excellent job at keeping the sun at bay from really heating up your house. During those cold winter months, simply turn them around and that same reflective power that keeps the sun rays out will keep the warm air in.

But come on, do solar curtains work?

Absolutely, we've got them up in the front of our house because that's the side that gets the most sunlight (direct) throughout the day. There is a noticeable difference in not only temperature in those rooms but our air conditioner doesn't run nearly as long now. This has helped tremendously thus far as we used to see average electric bills running in the neighborhood of $300. Since putting these up, they've dropped dramatically down around the $150-$180 mark. I really can't wait as the true test is going to be this summer when our electric bills typically soar upwards in the mid-$600's and the air conditioner typically runs about 13-16 hours a day on average trying to keep the house cool.Yeah they look like a fad but so far have been very pleased.

Another one of their touted qualities is that because it does block so much of the sun's rays from entering the rooms through the windows is that you'll find that it protects some against sun-fade on your couches and fabrics. I'm not so sure of this point yet but it's got to help somewhere along the lines. At least to a point where it minimalizes it.

Privacy is another great thing. With these curtains up, you can see out, but it's hard for anyone to see in. This is in large part due to the tough metalized polyethylene that the curtain is made out of to reflect those heat rays.

They're really easy to put up. We've got ours up inside the curtains on a spring curtain rod inside the window. It's out of sight from the inside as all you see is the curtains. From the outside, you can't really even see in. There are some other reports out there on the net where people have actually installed them behind wood blinds and even on sliding glass doors. I suppose you could use them on sliding glass doors as well since they come in a multitude of sizes and are fairly inexpensive, talking McDonald's cheap here.

Overall, have to say we've been very pleased with the affects of our solar curtains.