Ways to Save Money on Your Home Cooling
As the temperature creeps upward, so do your energy costs for keeping your home nice and cool. You may feel that your only choices are to suffer from the heat or suffer from high utility bills.
Thankfully, some solutions can help reduce your cooling costs without sacrificing any of your comforts.
Use Your Ceiling Fans
Often, people believe that there is no need to use ceiling fans when the AC is running. That’s not true. Cold air is heavier than warm air. That’s why your basement is usually cooler than the top floor. Using your ceiling fans can help draw that cooler air upwards to achieve a more even temperature throughout your home.
Another benefit from using fans is that, by displacing air and helping sweat to evaporate from your skin, they are aiding your body’s natural ability to regulate its temperature. When you use ceiling fans, you may find you can set your thermostat a degree or two warmer and still feel just as comfortable.
Use Your Thermostat for Optimal Energy Efficiency
When you’re not in your home, there’s no need to keep it quite as cold. The same applies when you’re sleeping at night. Merely by adjusting your thermostat to a few degrees warmer during those hours, you can save as much as 10% on your cooling bills.
If you have a programmable thermostat, it can be programmed to return to the cooler temperature before you wake up or before your return home, so you’ll hardly be able to tell the difference.
Schedule Regular Maintenance for Your AC
The more an air conditioning system ages, the less likely it is to be running at its peak efficiency. By having it inspected and maintained annually in the springtime, your service technician can ensure that it continues to run as efficiently as possible so that it doesn’t waste energy or money.
Check for Leaks in Your Ducts
Most homes have ductwork with cracks or holes in it. You could be losing up to 30% of the conditioned air from such leaks, preventing it from getting to the areas in your home that need it. As a result, your AC has to work even harder to deliver cool comfort everywhere.
Find and seal these holes, and you’ll be boosting the efficiency of your cooling system so that it doesn’t have to burn up as much energy.
If you implement these four strategies, you’ll soon be saving money on your cooling system cost.
If you’d like some professional help to install a programmable thermostat, maintain and tune up your AC system or find and seal leaks in your ductwork, the friendly experts at Green Horizon, in Durham, NC are always there for you. Contact us at (919) 323-8705 anytime for more information.
