Air conditioning is necessary when you have deadly hot days. While you have to have air conditioning to stay healthy, there is no reason why you should pay too much to keep your home cool. The more you do to keep your AC costs down, the less you should have to pay to keep your house comfortable.
Decrease Heat Gain
During the day, the sun beats down on the roof of your home and streams through the windows. The sun's UV rays will heat up your roof, which then conducts heat into your home even as it leaks through your windows and heats up the interior surfaces of your home. In order to more efficiently keep your home cool, you need to add window film to your windows to screen out UV rays. A good window film will decrease your cooling costs by up to 23% by keeping your home from heating up in the first place.
Keep Your System Running Efficiently
If you don't properly maintain your system, it will lose efficiency over time. For example, the outward pressure of the air flowing through your ducts will cause them to develop leaks. These leaks can decrease your efficiency by as much as 30%. If your ducts are enclosed inside the walls of your home, you will need to call in professionals to inspect and repair your ducts. If your AC costs start creeping up and there is not a corresponding uptick in your electricity costs, you should consider having your ducts inspected to check for leaks.
Give Your AC Unit a Break
If you live in an area that cools down a lot in the evening, you can use a house fan to pump cool air into your home even as you pump hot air out of your home through the attic. A properly sized house fan can cool your home down in a matter of minutes and will use only a fraction of the electricity that an AC unit will use, so you can effectively keep your home cool through the night without breaking your bank in the process.
Running an AC unit can cost a lot of money, but it doesn't have to. The more you do to keep your home cool, the more money you can save. Just remember that you need to find ways prevent your home from heating up in the first place, keep your equipment running properly, and reduce the strain on your AC unit..
