In order to effectively and inexpensively keep your home cool, you have to have more than a one-component cooling system. While many homes use an air conditioner with adequate, albeit, costly results, you can keep your home cooler and costs down by adding more components to your cooling system.
Air Conditioner
The first step to keep your cooling costs as low as possible, is to buy the most efficient air conditioning system you can afford. Look for a unit with large coils, multiple compressors, and a multi-speed fan. Once you have this system in place, maintain it properly so that it can run at its optimum level. Change the filter regularly, keep the coils clean, and inspect your ducts for leaks, sealing any leaks you find. Leaky coils alone can reduce your AC efficiency by up to 40%. In other words, the price you pay to stay up with maintenance is nothing compared to the price you pay to run a malfunctioning AC system.
House Fan
An air conditioner can fall behind heat gain and thus struggle for hours even after the sun goes down to cool your house. To correct this problem, you can take steps to reign in heat gain (more about this in a moment), or you can use a more efficient system to cool your home in the evening. Installing a house fan will allow you to open your windows when the outside temperature is cooler than the inside temperature and vent heat out of your home through your attic even as it pumps cool air into your home. A properly-sized house fan can cool your home in a matter of minutes, and use 90% less electricity that an AC unit.
Window Film
If you can prevent your home from heating up in the first place, you don't have to worry about paying to cool it back down. Much of the heat gain that your AC grapples with comes into your home through your windows. Covering your windows with reflective, low-e window film will filter out UV rays and reduce your cooling costs by up to 23%.
If you are paying to much to keep your home cool, don't. Using an air conditioner alone to cool you home is a recipe for overpaying on your utility bills. The three steps described above are not all you can do to keep your home cool, but they are a good start. For more information, contact D & R Service Inc or a similar company.
