Summer is an amazing season because it makes it possible to be up and about, visiting friends and family and having fun outdoor events. When you get back home, however, it may become a different story. That’s because it may be extremely hot and uncomfortable, and your efforts at keeping cool might rack up the energy bill. The good news is that it’s possible for you to keep a cool home this summer in a manageable way, and eight of them are outlined below.
1. Get the Right Window Treatments
To begin with, you should think about getting the right window treatments. This can help you keep your home cooler by blocking out the sun’s rays so that they don’t get the chance to raise your home’s interior temperatures in the first place. The best window treatments for keeping out the sun are those that are heavy and practically opaque. These should be installed on the windows of your home that face the sun when it’s at its hottest. This way, they can help you not just keep a cool home this summer, but also protect your interior furnishings from the effects of too much direct sun.
A window treatment service in your area can help you figure out the right window treatments to get. These may range from blinds and curtains to screens and window films. Learn about the options that exist as well so that you know the details of each. This way, it will be easier for you to make a decision when the window service that you hire makes some suggestions to you. Once you know things like the pros and cons of each method, its price, and maintenance, it may be easier for you to choose the one that you want. With a window treatment, you’ll notice an improvement in your home’s temperatures when the summer heat checks in.
2. Make Use of Ceiling Fans
Next, it’s a good idea for you to make use of ceiling fans to keep a cool home this summer. These are the perfect solution when you only need to cool a specific room rather than the whole house at once. To this end, think about looking for a good ceiling fan if you don’t currently have one. It can help move air around and will be even more effective when paired with other solutions such as keeping the windows open when it’s cooled down significantly outdoors. The hotter it gets, the higher the setting on which you can set the fan to run.
This is a solution that can come in extra handy if you have to call your AC contractor to take a look at your air conditioner. Remember that you need to set the ceiling fans to rotate in a counter-clockwise direction so that they push the air down and create the most cooling effect. Additionally, you can position a floor fan in a room’s entryway so that when the air conditioner is on in an adjacent room, it can transfer the cooler air into the room you intend to cool without turning on its air conditioning. This way, you can be sure that it will be easier for you to keep specific rooms cooler or even the entire house if you choose. These solutions will help you do so more affordably.
3. Switch to LED Bulbs
Something that may be warming up your home without your knowledge is your home’s source of light. If you use regular bulbs, these can warm the room up as they release a lot of heat whenever they’re on. They also consume more energy to do so, and this makes them overall poor options for energy efficiency. LED bulbs, on the other hand, can help you cool your home down considerably. That’s because they emit minimal amounts of heat when they’re on, and so they can’t contribute to heating your home up. They also take less energy to stay on, which makes them amazing options for someone who wants to make their home more sustainable.
AC repair companies may not mention this fact to you, but with some research, you’ll come across it on many trustworthy websites. This makes this one of the best methods to put to use when looking for practical ways to keep a cool home this summer. That’s mainly because you stand to benefit from taking this step not just this season, but throughout the year. Additionally, LED bulbs have a longer lifespan. This means that you’ll have to replace them less often than you’d have had to replace regular bulbs. In this way, you’ll enjoy cost-saving in yet another way. Switching to LED bulbs is one of the easiest things that you could do, and yet one of those that will have a marked effect on your home.
4. Get New Sheets
This may not be a direct way for you to keep a cool home this summer, but it will certainly help your family avoid overheating in this season. Getting new sheets could help your family enjoy staying cooler this summer. The best sheets for this effect are cotton sheets, which not only freshen up a room instantly but also help keep it cool. They do this because they breathe easier and stay cooler as a result. They can therefore make bedtime more relaxed and not force you to crank up the AC to its highest setting just to make sure that the temperature is bearable.
When you pair cotton sheets with buckwheat pillows, you’ll get an even better cooling effect when it’s time for bed. Buckwheat hulls naturally have an airspace in them and don’t hold on to the heat from your body the same way conventional pillows will. This will ensure that you don’t have to miss out on a comfortable night’s sleep while trying to keep cool. When you do this, your air conditioners won’t be overwhelmed by being forced to run all through the day as well as all through the night. On nights that aren’t too hot, you can even simply leave a window open or turn on a fan for a while, and your cooling cotton bedsheets will do the rest.
5. Clean and Service Your AC
Everyone should know that HVAC service is important to prioritize. This is because, with proper HVAC service and maintenance, your unit can run optimally. This means that it won’t consume as much energy to cool your home to the degree that you need it to be cooled. When you find good professionals, they should help you come up with an AC maintenance plan that works well for your home’s needs. This is something that will vary from one home to another. It fluctuates depending on details such as the number of occupants in the home, the number of rooms and size of spaces, and whether there is a pet or someone who suffers from allergies in the home.
When you take all of these factors into consideration, you’ll understand why your home may have different air conditioning maintenance guidelines from someone else’s. That said, if you want to keep a cool home this summer without putting too much weight on your air conditioner, it’s best that you make sure that it’s in a good state to begin with. This doesn’t start and stop with mechanical maintenance, but it can also extend to something like cleaning up your unit. You can clean your unit and take basic steps like swapping out used air filters for fresh ones. However, you may need to call a professional to do a deep and thorough cleaning which will reach the areas of your air conditioner that you typically can’t reach by yourself.
6. Manage the Flow of Air Indoors
Another way for you to keep a cool home this summer is to manage the airflow indoors. When you keep the air moving around, it will have a cooling effect on people inside the house. To do this, there are a number of things that you can do. The first one is to set up fans strategically at doorways. When the fan faces out of a room that has air conditioning on, it can help cool the room that the fan faces. Similarly, you can place a cool item like an icepack or a bowl of ice at an angle in front of a fan. This will ensure that the fan blows out cool air as a result.
Another way for you to manage the airflow in your home is by closing doors to rooms that aren’t in use. This is the best thing to do if you have a portable air conditioner. That’s because, in this case, the air conditioner won’t have to cool the entire house, but just the room in which it’s on. It will be a lot more effective and affordable for you to do this as the cooled air won’t keep getting replaced by the warm air from other rooms in the house. This is something that you can see in action in an application like air conditioned storage. In this case, the interior of the storage stays cool because there’s no constant flow of air through the space.
7. Install Motion Sensors and Smart Thermostats
You can also keep a cool home this summer by installing motion sensors throughout your home. These should turn on lights when someone walks into a room and then turn them off when someone walks out. This is something that local interior contractors should be able to help you with. You can especially benefit from this upgrade if there are many people in your home, and the house itself is big. Otherwise, consider instead getting a smart thermostat for your home. This is something that you can also install alongside the motion sensors in a large home if you like.
Smart thermostats can help you only cool the house when you’re actually home. You can also set it up to start the air conditioner when you’re almost home so that the house is cool and comfortable by the time you get home. This way, you don’t have to spend energy keeping the house cool when no one is home just so that you can come back home to a cool house. This is an amazing way for you to take advantage of technology as it could save you a considerable amount in terms of energy over time.
8. Open the Windows Strategically
Finally, you can let nature give you a hand when you’re trying to keep a cool home this summer. To do this, open and close your windows strategically so that the hot air can move out of your home naturally. With the air conditioner off, opening the windows will prove helpful as it can reduce the indoor pollutants in your home from the air. To get the most out of opening the windows, you can promote cross-ventilation by opening windows at opposite points of your home. Air will move in at one window and move out through another, ensuring that the house is naturally cooler.
You can also open the windows at night when the air outside is cooler, leaving the screen closed so that bugs and intruders don’t break into your home. Remember to turn off the air conditioner as it may be wasteful to keep it on and also open the windows. Even if you only have a single window that you can open in your apartment, you can leave it open throughout the day so that the heat indoors can get pushed outdoors as the day cools down.
These tips can help you keep a cool home this summer and also help you save some money in terms of energy. Remember that you’ll need to stay vigilant with doors and windows. This way, you won’t leave your property prone to risks such as burglary whenever you’re making use of them. Since different homes have varying layouts and a number of needs, it’s best to find the specific methods that will offer your home the best results by trying out different things.
