As any seasoned homeowner knows, keeping a house comfortably cooled throughout the summer months can be an intricate and costly process – especially if you hail from an area that’s known for swelteringly-hot summers. While there’s no way to completely eliminate home cooling costs, there are numerous ways you can make a consistently cool home a more affordable prospect.
Unfortunately, far too many of us make an assortment of rookie mistakes every summer, resulting in exorbitant cooling bills and depleted finances. Homeowners looking to cool their abodes in an efficient and cost-effective manner would do well to avoid the following blunders.
Failing to Use Ceiling Fans to Their Full Potential
Many of us mistakenly view ceiling fans as low-rent alternatives to air conditioning. While it’s true that AC is generally the most immediate and effective way to cool a home, ceiling fans can do a fair amount of heavy hitting throughout the summer months.
For one thing, dependable fans can complement the efforts of your central air conditioning by circulating the cool air it produces all around your residence. Furthermore, ceiling fans can create cooling breezes of their own when the right settings are in place. By setting a fan’s blades to rotate counterclockwise, you’ll enable the device to blow air directly downward and create the aforementioned breeze.
So, if your home’s ceiling fans are underused – or nonexistent – an upgrade may be in order. When searching for the ideal fans, keep an eye out for options with abundant rotation speeds, ease of installation and remote control. Ceiling fans with remote control can be particularly convenient for those of us who don’t want to get out of bed in the middle of the night to adjust a fan’s settings or turn it on or off.
Not Insulating Attics
Proper attic insulation stands to save you a bundle in heating and cooling costs and make your home a more comfortable place to be. In the absence of sufficient attic insulation, your residence is liable to be untenably cold throughout the winter and unbearably hot throughout the summer.
This, in turns, leads to overuse of central heating and air conditioning units, resulting in enormous monthly bills. Quite a bit of air enters and exits your home throughout the attic, so if this space lacks proper insulation, there’s no time like the present to get on top of this. As an added bonus, good insulation stands to increase the value of your property.
Using Your Oven During Daylight Hours
For many at-home chefs, life without a functional oven is an untenable concept. After all, a dependable oven is required for baking, and without one, a fair number of entrees, sides and desserts would simply be off the table.
Unfortunately, using your oven during daylight hours throughout the summer months stands to make your kitchen – and possibly other areas of your home – considerably warmer. As such, it’s recommended that you minimize oven use over the summer, especially when the sun is out. For those of us who use our ovens on a daily basis, this is liable to be a bit of an adjustment. However, having the chance to become better acquainted with your outdoor grill is a great silver lining.
Keeping Your Windows Closed at Night
It’s easy to see why so many households opt to keep their windows closed over the summer. Since open windows provide conditioned air with a clear escape route, keeping them shut seems like a no-brainer. While this is sound advice during the day, the weather situation is liable to change once the sun goes down. If summertime in your area undergo a considerable drop after sundown, opening your windows and allowing your ceiling fans to circulate the naturally-cooled outdoor air can set the stage for a comfortable night’s rest.
Depending on how hot it gets in your area, summertime cooling costs can eat up a sizable chunk of your income. Unfortunately, many of us are unaware of any truly effective alternatives to cranking our air conditioning 24/7. While functional AC is a necessity in many parts of the country, it’s far from the only cooling tool in your wheelhouse. Unbeknownst to many homeowners, it’s entirely possible to cool a home while preserving your personal finances. If cost-effective cooling solutions are what you’re after, take care to avoid the blunders discussed above.