After a winter of trying like crazy to drop my heating bills, I thought I’d get ahead of the game on cooling. I don’t particularly want to get another surprise like the insanely high heating bill I got this winter–prevention my friends, prevention.
Here’s how I plan to keep my cooling bills manageable this summer:
- Plant shade trees around your house. Everyone has those rooms in their house that get ridiculously hot. Plan your landscape around those rooms. It’s one of those investments that might take a couple of years to pay off, but it will go a long way in making your air conditioner work a little less. Plus, trees are rad.
- Use ceiling fans/box fans to circulate the cold air you’ve already paid for. Fans are waaaay less expensive to operate than air conditioning units, and they help keep the air moving, which can make it feel cooler than it is.
- Use a programmable thermostat. This is especially effective if you work away from home during the day–no need to cool a house that is empty. You can set it to start cooling an hour or two before you get home, and your comfort barometer will never know the difference.
- Use cool mornings to your advantage. Open windows and place box fans to pull in the cool air in the morning, and as the day heats up, close the house up tight, drawing shades and curtains. This works really well for me, because I get up in the wee hours of the morning, and can totally take advantage of cooling the house for a couple of hours for nearly free.
- Avoid using appliances that are counter-productive during the hottest parts of the day. Baking at 3 p.m., running the dishwasher, or the dryer all make your air conditioner work harder.
- Set the thermostat no lower than 78 degrees. On those super hot days, it’s tempting to set the thermostat lower, but it basically means your unit will be running all day long. It’s like cash flying out of the vents.
- Maintain and service your AC unit religiously. Keep the filter clean and have it serviced per your units instructions.
Hopefully, these little steps will keep money in my pockets for cooler {no pun intended} stuff–like dirt and landscaping fabric.
~Mavis
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Deborah says
Hey Mavis. Great ideas! As a southern gal, I would add “Dress for the weather.” I am so tired of hearing my adult son complain it’s too hot in the house when he’s wearing jeans and long sleeves. He needn’t lower the temp for the whole house just because of his wardrobe choice. Just sayin…
Patty says
This past summer I had 3M film installed on all of my windows. This is similar to the film you use to tint car windows, but it is NOT the car windows tint. I could not believe the difference in the temperature of my house. My brother in Texas, installed solar screens on his west facing windows. these are also called Arizona screens. Well worth the money.
Dave says
This may sound silly, but I’d love feedback. All last summer I kept my thermostat set to 78 degrees. The AC bill was a lower, but it felt like all of our fresh fruit we purchased went bad/moldy uncommonly fast. Apples in 2 days, berries in a day (seriously! If they lasted 2 days we considered it a miracle). At the end of summer, out of curiosity I decreased the AC to 72 degrees. Food stopped spoiling so quickly. So I’ve been left with a dilemma… have the AC set higher and either increase food waste (or increase number of trips to store with smaller purchases/trip… I already go 1-2 times a week and try to limit purchases) or set the AC lower and pay more for electricity but have our food last longer.
I finally decided that it was less wasteful to spend the money on extra electricity and not extra trips to the store and/or throwing out extra spoiled food. I know this may not be a problem for many people, but it is just the wife and me and even buying 5 or 6 apples last summer meant extra wasted food.
Shawna says
I’m not sure why but when we kept our ac lower it seemed like our bill was lower, it seemed like my ac ran more and harder trying to keep the house at 78 then at 70 which doesn’t make sense but it did so maybe maintaining the cooler temp constantly even over night due to the humidity in the south costed us less money.. Maybe we were just lucky? I’m not really sure why it worked that way…
Katie says
We live in Central Texas and keep our air at about 78 degrees 24/7 when we have the air on for the summer months. It works to get the air to 78, then works very little to maintain it. If we turned it off when we weren’t home then it would work hard every day to get the temp back down to 78. I’ve always done this and have never had an outrageous electricity bill. Our current apartment is closed off and has poor circulation so we use ceiling fans too. Our bill is still reasonably low 🙂
Yvette says
I live in sunny California, and have also noticed the produce issue when allowing our home to hover around 78. It also affects bread! It will get moldy INCREDIBLY fast. So much so, that I have begun putting it in the refrigerator, as soon as I come home from the store. Don’t even get me started on the avocados that ripen and/or get that stringy brown action seemingly overnight because of the higher temps. I love having a ton of fresh produce at home during the summer, so I can prepare quick, healthy meals, but the fact that this has created waste for me simply drives me nuts.
LynnDinKY says
#6 is the argument that happens every single night. Seriously. 78* is like asking me to sleep in an oven . I can’t sleep until it’s 69*. My husband on the other hand wants the temp to be at least 75*. He freezes below that. The rest of us ( 3 teens and a middle aged mother) are roasting at that temp. I think the simple solution would be to put a window unit in my bedroom. 😉
Jane says
Or you could just move here to the mountains at 7100 feet….warm sunny days, cool mornings and cool nights, zero humidity! Most people in our town don’t even have A/C.