I have been involved in home repair and Do It Yourself projects for over 25 years, so I know a thing or two about energy conservation and efficiency. A lot has been said about how to make your home as tight and right for the winter heating season, but not all that much has been written about the same thing for summer cooling. Well, here are some of my favorite tips to keep you cool, comfy and as energy green as possible all summer long.
Obviously, opening windows and letting the breeze flow through them is the best and greenest tip there is. There is no energy waste here, and natural airflow is the best there is. However, on some of those absolutely hot and sticky days when an AC unit is needed, whether it’s a window type or a central air type, try these ideas:
- Purchasing a unit with the highest EER rating (and the higher the EER, the better the efficiency) is the first step to being efficient. The next thing to do is to think of yourself as cold air. Where do you want to go? You want to go straight to the floor, because cold air sinks. That means the floor is where the cold air will leak if it can find a way out. Leaking air means more run time for your AC, which means more energy burned and less efficiency.
- Floor mounted furnace vents absolutely suck the cold air out of every room in the house and send it straight into the basement. Just closing the vents doesn’t do much, since the cold air will just weave its way past the grill and get to the basement anyway. What you want are furnace vent covers, and since virtually every hardware store sells them, they are easy to find and easy to use. Most are magnetic, so merely stick them over your vent and you are good to go.
Door thresholds are next on the list. They leak as much in the summer as they do in the winter, and need to be addressed the same way. Taking care of a worn threshold by replacing it is half the battle, and if your threshold is new already, try this with it:
- Take one of those pre-made threshold socks, or make one yourself—they are sometimes called door snakes—and push them up against the bottom of your door. This, plus a good threshold itself, will virtually seal in the cold air.
Lastly, if possible, run your overhead ceiling fan on low, pushing the air downward. Why? This creates a slight breeze in the house, and a slight breeze of air will make you feel cooler (did you ever hear of wind chill?) and therefore, you will turn your AC unit down a little bit, saving money and gaining efficiency. Running an overhead fan is far more efficient than any AC unit, and if your body can made to feel cooler by using less juice, then that’s exactly where you want to be.
Source: BecauseAction.com
