You can make your air conditioner use significantly less energy without spending any money at all.
Get into the habits below, and I guarantee the temperature in your home will be better managed – for less money.
Removing and blocking heat sources
The most important part of keeping your home cool isn’t actually cooling, but not letting it get hot in the first place.
Removing heat that’s already there is generally harder (and more expensive) than preventing new heat from entering.
These tips are great for limiting, removing and blocking that unwanted heat:
- Keep windows that are directly exposed to sunshine closed – especially the ones facing west and south (north if you’re in the southern hemisphere), as these receive the most heat from the Sun.
- Keep blinds, curtains and other window coverings closed over windows exposed to sunshine.
- If your window coverings are blinds, keeping their inside edge tilted upwards will block the most heat while still letting some daylight in.
- If you have any sun-exposed rooms that are seldom used, keep them closed off. This makes them act as a buffer zone between the heat outside and the adjacent rooms. Remember to switch off any air conditioners or fans in rooms you’re closing off.
- Turn off any electric devices and equipment that doesn’t need to be on, including lighting. There will always be some waste heat from any electrical device – even if it doesn’t feel warm to the touch.
- For devices and equipment you have to keep on, consider moving them into your cooler rooms. This keeps the maximum temperature in your hotter rooms lower.
- Make sure the devices you keep on perform as good as possible, energy-wise. The energy your refrigerator uses, for example, can easily be reduced.
- On the same note, if you have to work out or do physically exerting activities inside, try to do them in your cooler rooms. One person doing heavy work will generate about 200 watts of heat – about a fifth of what a typical electrical heater might generate.
Cooling by removing heat
The tips above will work well to improve the temperature of your home. If you live in a hot climate, though, chances are that some heat will find its way into your home even if you implement them all.
To get rid of this heat, you’ll have to do a bit of actual cooling. Don’t worry, though, we’re still in spending-no-money territory:
- While the Sun is still up and shining on your house, try to create a cross draft by opening windows that are shaded. This creates a flow of cooler air through your home.
- Once the outside air is cooler than the inside of your home, fling your windows open.
- Ventilate well at night. Leftover hot air will be expelled, and your interior walls, furniture and everything else in your home will be cooled down. The cooler these things get during the night, the more heat they can absorb the next day. The more they absorb, the cooler the air will be.
Ideally, the tips in my mini series on green home cooling (of which this post is a part) will allow you to keep the air conditioner switched off most of the time. If you do have to keep running the air conditioner, keep all your windows closed. Open windows will just bleed the conditioned air out, wasting a whole bunch of energy in the process.
While this post has kept its focus on the practicalities of green home cooling, the next post in the series (‘Effective shading for green home cooling‘) will take a closer look at exactly what you can use for shading and in what situations each type of ’shading device’ can be best put to use.
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This post was tagged with: air conditioning, airconditioning, cooling, energy efficiency, energy saving, energy use, energysaving, energy_efficiency, green habits, home cooling, home improvement, indoor temperature, landscaping, saving energy, unwanted heat
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Great ideas. I’ve been using them … all … and they work. Last year, in the very hottest part of the summer, I experimented with these techniques and was able to reduce the heat in the house by 5 degrees … all without using the A/C or spending any money. It doesn’t take all that much effort either.
@Small Footprints: Glad you liked them. Hopefully you’ll find something you haven’t tried already in the next posts in the series