New “Cool Room” Design Service Offers Low-Cost Ways to Keep Homes Comfy During Weather Extremes

It is called the “Cool Room” Concept, but this new design service also works to keep you home warm too!  Created by Will Thomas of Will Thomas Designs, the “Cool Room” Concept offers homeowners and renters with low-cost ways to deal more effectively with extreme weather - like the Pacific Northwest Heat Dome of June 2021.  And the same approach works for extreme cold weather and big storms too!

The “Cool Room” Concept adds an additional  layer (or in many cases  layers) of protection to your current home weatherization.  According to Thomas, a Certified Building Designer (a professional designation similar to an architect), the “Cool Room” Concept includes isolating a central area of the home from the outer rooms “to enable a smaller-size, far lower-cost, heating/cooling system to keep them cool in summer heat waves and warm in winter freezes.”  It can include both interior and exterior improvements, such as adding covered porches for passive heating and cooling or increasing roof slope to increase usable living spaces. 

In Seattle, with its abundance of vintage homes, basements are often a good choice for the “Cool Room,” both for staying cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  “This basic factor remains present because all around the world the soil temperature (except in the north and south poles regions) at about two to four feet down is in the 50s degree range,” says Thomas.

According to Thomas, the Cool Room Concept can be applied to almost any home - each according to the existing configuration of the structure.  “Sometimes the concept works better as part of a larger addition/remodel project, sometimes it works fine with an existing house layout, maybe very minor changes inside,” he says.

(To see more about Will Thomas Designs visit his website at https://wtdesigns.biz/)