In honor of the fact that the temperature in Maine has been hanging just under 100 degrees over the last few days (you read that right: in Maine, in May), we thought we'd remind our loyal readers that YES, you can stay cool all summer long, and run the air conditioner less, by making a few simple adjustments to your home.
Fact is, your home is full of hidden heat sources (we've said it before, we'll say it again): things that, though their primary purpose isn't to make you and your family hot and miserable, go ahead and do just that. The good news is this: you can make them stop. And it's so easy. Here's how:
1) Ventilate.
Air that's moving feels about 8 degrees cooler than air that's standing still (it's that good old wind-chill effect that's so much fun when you're shoveling your driveway). Something as simple as a ceiling fan, or even a bathroom ventilation fan, running continuously, will make you feel much better. Exhaust fans in the kitchen and bathroom will also exhaust hot air from the shower and the stove before it has a chance to spread around the house, AND will improve your home's overall air quality. Smart move.
2) Upgrade your lighting.
CFLs aren't just for the environment anymore. As an infrared scan during an energy audit at the Energy Circle house about a year back pointed out, incandescent lights act like mini space heaters in your house. In the EC house, the incandescent light clocked in at 327 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to 167 for a CFL and 107 for an LED.
3) Insulate your water pipes and water heater.
Sound like small potatoes? Maybe (nope), but small potatoes are easy to fry. The hot water pipes that run from your water heater to your faucets and shower heads are probably made of either metal or plastic, neither of which are good insulators at all, which means that a good bunch of the "hot" in the water is being released into the air before it reaches its destination. That makes your house more uncomfortable, and it also costs you money, because you pay twice: to heat the water more than you need to in the first place (if you insulated your pipes and your water heater, you could turn the water heater down), and to run the air conditioner to get rid of that excess heat. Silly. Pipe insulation and water heater blankets are both cheap and wicked easy to install.
4) Close your window shades during the day.
Before you head off for work in the morning, just take a minute to close the shades in the house. Old school style. My grandmother did it, my friends don't. My grandmother is much smarter than my friends.
5) Grill.
If you can't stand the heat, get the heck out the kitchen... and cook on the deck! Come to think of it, maybe grab some horseshoes and have a little fun while you're at it. It's summer!
Comments
Too much exhaust/vent fan will suck the AC out of the house and pull in hot air from the outside. Need to be careful on how that suggestion is implemented.
Posted by David Glover on May 28, 2010 4:06pmIt's not a cheap solution, but keeping that that old refrigerator instead of ditching it for a new high efficiency model is like running a 1000 watt space heater in your kitchen for four-five hours a day.
Posted by Glaurung-Quena on Jun 1, 2010 12:19amDavid -- your point is well-taken; my assumption when reading this was that this idea applies in cases when the A/C is off. When it's cool enough in the evening, we're able to use a whole-house fan with windows open to bring in cool air from outside. As far as an item to replace or augment A/C, we love ceiling fans. In my old company, we had some industrial A/C with a rattly old air handler that was so noisy we could hardly hear each other talk. We added ceiling fans in a few key locations, and only ended up turning on the A/C when it was super-humid -- they;re nearly silent, and very pleasant. Ceiling fans probably saved us a few hundred dollars a year, and we were much more comfortable.
Glaurung-Quena -- you're absolutely right -- the old refrigerator problem is far more widespread than I think most people know. Today's ENERGY STAR rated refrigerators are dramatically more efficient than ones made even 8 or 10 years ago. People who replace their main fridge with an ENERGY STAR model should strongly consider the new ENERGY STAR recycling program, rather than relegating the old model to the basement to keep a six-pack cold.
Posted by Tom Harrison on Jun 1, 2010 7:53amTwo quick notes on the refrigerator replacement:
- After a moment's reflection, I realized I missed the original point made by Glaurun-Quena -- if you have an older fridge, it's getting cool on its insides by running a motor that makes the room itself warmer, just like a heater would. If you have air conditioning, it has to work that much harder (also using electricity) to remove the heat from your house, so there's sort of a double-whammy penalty for having an inefficienct fridge, and
- I did a little research on a fridge I bought in 1998, and replacing it with an ENERGY STAR model (of the same design, size, etc.) that I could buy today would use less than 1/2 the electricity ... and if I got a more efficient design, it would use 1/4 as much ... and if I got the most efficient model of the efficient design, it would use something like 1/6th as much. And none of this accounts for the important point that all of that inefficiency is in the form of heat, which makes my house hotter! Yikes!
Posted by Tom Harrison on Jun 1, 2010 8:19amVery good points all around. David: as Tom noted, when suggesting using exhaust ventilation as a supplement to AC I was thinking specifically of the "proper" way to go about that, which would be to run the fan during the coolest parts of the day (early morning, evening) to draw in cool air from outside, and much appreciate your pointing out that running an exhaust fan at the same time as AC would most likely do more harm than good. For more specific details, I wrote a post last summer about how a whole house fan can replace AC altogether if used properly (depending, of course, on the climate, and one's heat tolerance), and Tom more recently wrote about how ceiling fans can be a good replacement for AC. Worth pointing out, too, that since ceiling fans aren't exhaust fans, running a ceiling fan at the same time as AC would not do any harm, and could potentially cut back on the time you need to run the AC to stay comfortable, since air that's moving feels cooler than air that's standing still.
Glaurung-Quena: duly noted. While this post focused on the lowest of the low hanging fruit (pardon the cliche) in terms of minimizing hidden heat sources, the bigger culprits (like the fridge, energy efficiency's elephant in the kitchen) we'll plan to take on throughout the summer. Given that the refrigerator is one of the biggest energy hogs in the house, and that it does have that double-edged detriment, yours is an important point.
Thanks for the great comments all around, keep em comin!
Posted by Will on Jun 1, 2010 10:31am