Vines as Natural Air Conditioners

You can take advantage of the effects of passive cooling by planting vines to cover your mobile home or the side of your house.

August/September 2009
By Shirley Braverman 
Vines on home
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Vines can shade your home, cutting down on the need for expensive air conditioning.
SHIRLEY BRAVERMAN
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I had a mobile home I thought would be a great place for my brother to move into, but it was an old unit, built in 1979. Our fix-it man explained to me that because of the price of electricity, the cost of adding air conditioning to the mobile home would be prohibitive.

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He tapped on the outside wall. “See, aluminum,” he said. Inside he stuck a nail in the wall and moved it around and frowned. “There’s nothing between this wood veneer and your outside wall but a few 2-by-4s and air. That’s how they built them in 1979. To replace it with vinyl and put in insulation could cost up to $10,000. It would be cheaper to buy another mobile home.”

As he left, he knocked again on the outside aluminum siding. “Nothing will keep this wall cool,” he said.

“Not unless I can keep the sun off the wall,” I thought. At the nursery, I asked for a vine that would not be prickly and would grow quickly. I bought a climbing fig and planted it by the front corner of the home and lavished it with fertilizer and water. The first year, it did well.

About vines, my grandmother always said, “First they sleep, then they creep, then they leap.”

In the third year, the fig vine covered the whole front of the home. Delighted with our success, we bought honeysuckle and cat’s claw vines to cover the other sides of the mobile home.

The passive cooling savings are considerable. The house isn’t hot until almost 3:30 p.m., and the air conditioning bill is now about $200 a month during the summer — a bargain in the desert.

Shirley Braverman
Las Vegas, Nevada
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Comments

  • WoundedEgo 8/8/2009 2:28:34 PM

    What effect does it have in winter? Does it increase or decrease you heating bill? I realize you are in the desert so this may not apply.

  • P L 7/16/2009 12:47:47 AM

    So what keeps the vines from working their way inside and/or tearing up the house? Why prickly vines? Is it to keep rodents away? I have an aunt that planted vines against her house and they creeped up the eaves into her attic and started to kind of tear the roof off.

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