Complements of ditchyourfridge.blogspot.com
Half of the energy used in the home comes from heating and cooling needs, and with temperatures rising into the triple digits and heat waves plaguing the nation, it’s essential for homeowners to have a knowledge of simple best practices to make more environmentally responsible cooling choices in the home.
Today we’re providing a few tips and resources to help homeowners make smarter decisions about their energy consumption as we sink into the final, and often hottest, month of summer.
Best Practices:
- Update your equipment – make sure all of your cooling technology and equipment is performing at its best. It only wastes more energy to have an old window unit pushing itself to cool your room to a temperature that it never even reaches.
- Properly seal and insulate – It’s no secret that gaps and cracks are a huge energy suck. Making sure your windows, entryways and all the holes in between are sealed is a great way to save money year-round. Energy efficient windows and blinds are a quick and easy adjustment to help improve insulation.
- Use a programmable thermostat – A smart thermostat like the one mentioned in this post, help homeowners ensure they are using the appropriate amount of energy to heat or cool the home at all times. They take multiple factors into consideration to heat or cool as needed for the unique timing of a day, rather than sitting on one setting at all times no matter the need
Beyond making sure your cooling system is running efficiently as possible, try adopting an alternative forms of cooling and cooling technology. Some options include:
- Solar Powered AC – As solar power becomes more of a mainstream resource for consumers trying to establish a more sustainable lifestyle it seems like a natural tie to join solar power and AC – like Lenox does with this SunSource Home Energy System.
- Dyson’s Bladeless Fans – Dyson introduced their bladeless fan that utilizes Air Multiplier Technology ™ as their way of combating traditional AC technology. The new fans use an energy-efficient brushless motor to pull air in and accelerate it on its way out.
- Cool Roof – There’s always lots of talk about growing a green roof, but another option is the cool roof. As this post from Green Wombat explains, that painting the roofs of buildings and homes white to reflect the suns rays is a way to keep heat absorption down.
Finally, here’s a quick list of tips we bet you haven’t thought of to keeping your home cooler throughout the summer. We pulled these from a list of 25 cheap ways to keep your house cooler from MSN Money.
- Air-dry dishes instead of using your dishwasher’s drying cycle – this keeps all of that heat from flooding into the house
- Don’t place lamps or TVs near your air conditioning thermostat. The heat from these appliances will cause the air conditioner to run longer.
- Plant trees or shrubs to shade air conditioning units, but not block the airflow. A unit operating in the shade uses less electricity.
- Turn off electronics when not in use
