When temperatures top 90 and start creeping towards triple digits, it becomes more important than ever to use every available trick to keep our homes cool and comfortable. At Huffington Post, Samantha Toscano published a list of ways to keep your home cool without using your air conditioner. For Oklahoma summers, turning off your A/C isn’t typically an option during the hottest months of the year, but using some of these tips will help put less stress on your unit and keep your home cool all summer.
- Windows and Doors
Obviously, keeping doors and windows shut will help keep hot air out of your home, but you can go a step further. Using blinds, shutters and curtains on windows can lower temperatures in your home up to 20-degrees. Particularly if you have many windows in your home, that could result in big energy savings. South and west facing homes are the worst for greenhouse like effects, so be sure to cover those windows. As for doors, during the hottest parts of the day, keep doors to unused rooms like spare bedrooms closed. This keeps the cooler air only circulating in the parts of the home you’re in. At night, open up those doors and let air circulate throughout your home when temperatures outside are a bit cooler.
- Ceiling fans
Using ceiling fans is a great way to keep a home feeling cooler, but did you know that most fans have two settings? In the summer, fans need to be rotating counter-clockwise in order to produce that wonderful cool breeze effect. Operating the opposite way actually pushes warm air down and can make the room feel warmer. Save this function for the winter.
- Personal habits
In many ways, the key to staying cool all summer is about your personal habits rather than the way you treat your home. Actions you take like sipping cold drinks, applying a cold cloth to the neck and wrists and wearing light, breathable clothing will greatly increase your personal comfort. The summer is also a great time to ditch the stove and oven. Instead, grill outside. When applying these tactics, your home can be much warmer without you feeling the heat.
- Light bulbs
Traditional incandescent light bulbs produce a great deal of heat. In fact, about 90-percent of their energy is lost to heat, rather than light. That’s why alternatives like CFLs, or compact fluorescent lamps, are both more efficient and a better option in the summer. You may not realize the impact a few hot bulbs are making in your home until you switch to cooler bulbs.
- Home improvements
If it’s in the budget this year, some long-term home improvements can greatly reduce energy costs and make keeping your home cool much easier. Adding insulation options to your attic is a great place to start. Insulated windows also make a big impact. Outside your home, the more shade you can produce the cooler your home will be. So, consider planting trees or installing awnings.
Keeping your home cool is a constant struggle in the summer, but these tips help make your home more comfortable and efficient.
At Perry Hood Properties, our homes are built with efficient, energy saving features and appliances to help make extreme temperatures more bearable. Explore our currently available homes or contact us to start building a home just for you.