Kalk Bay
Valley-mouth homes between mountain and sea, wind included.
Most shading conversations on this coast start with sun. In Clovelly they start with wind. Sitting at the mouth of the valley, with high ground on either side and the bay in front, these houses take the summer south-easter concentrated rather than spread out, and that single fact reorders the whole specification. It decides whether a slatted blind can go on a window somebody likes leaving open, whether a bottom rail needs extra weight or a hold-down bracket at the sill, and whether anything belongs on the outside of the glass at all. Get the wind answer wrong and the blind is technically fine and practically unbearable, because it knocks against the frame every time the afternoon gets going.
It also affects how a house is used. Doors and windows on the sheltered side stay open through summer while the exposed side stays shut, so the two elevations of the same house end up wanting different things — a blind that can live with a draught on one, and a straightforward sun-and-glare answer on the other.
The other Clovelly peculiarity is the amount of shade the landscape supplies for free. With slopes rising on either side of the valley mouth, plenty of these homes lose the low sun much earlier in the afternoon than a house out on the open coast would, which makes the late day genuinely comfortable. The morning is where the work is: east and south-east glass catches the low sun coming off the bay and the reflected glare that comes with it, bright and hard early, then easing as the sun climbs. Houses higher up the slopes are the exception and hold their sun longer, so what a window needs here varies more with where it sits in the valley than with what the house is made of.
Winter brings the other half of it. When the sun is at its lowest it reaches much further into a north-facing room, and that warmth is generally welcome in a valley that gets properly cold at night. Blocking it out with something heavy is a common and expensive mistake.
Living rooms looking down the valley toward the water do best with a sunscreen roller in an openness that leaves the view intact while taking the sting out of the morning. Bedrooms take a blockout cloth for the early sunrise. Where a room is exposed enough that a hanging cloth would move about in the wind, aluminium venetians with the heavier slat and a hold-down at the sill are steadier, and the coastal powder coating handles the salt the wind carries up the valley. Timber venetians are for the dry, sheltered rooms set back from the weather — they are a genuine pleasure in the right room and a mistake in the wrong one.
Any slatted blind will move if the window behind it is open in a blow; hold-down brackets reduce that considerably but do not abolish it, and we will say so rather than promise silence. Sunscreen mesh works for daytime privacy only and reverses after dark. And in a valley that channels salt-laden air, brackets, chains and cassettes are specified for coastal exposure as standard, with the honest rider that an occasional rinse keeps them moving — nothing near this water is genuinely fit-and-forget.
Also nearby: St James, Fish Hoek, Muizenberg and Simon's Town.
Read The False Bay Window Field Guide → — how the east-facing morning glare, salt air and the south-easter change what belongs on each window here.
