Worried About High Cooling Costs This Summer? Do This

When it comes to cutting your summer cooling costs, you’re probably tired of hearing the same old tips like:

• “Install a programmable thermostat.”
• “Turn the AC off when you’re not home.”
• “Wear lighter clothes.”
• “Keep your blinds closed.”

Can those tips help lower your costs? Sure, but there are other tips that you may not have heard that could be even more effective, as we’ll reveal right now:

Try These Fan Tricks

Can turning on a fan keep your home cooler and ease the burden on your AC? Yes, but these fan tricks work wonders, and they may be new to you:

1. The Salty Ice Cube Trick

You’ll want to get in the habit of making plenty of ice cubes this summer. Why? Not only can they keep your drinks cold and refreshing, but they can also amp up your fans’ cooling power.

Grab a regular fan, a pan, some ice cubes, and rock salt. Load up the pan with ice cubes, and give them a nice coat of rock salt. Put the pan in front of the fan and turn it on. Then sit back and enjoy some of the coolest air you’ve ever felt.

A fan by itself can cool the temperature by eight degrees. But if you put a pan full of ice cubes in front of it, the fan can make a room downright chilly. And so you can enjoy this effect for more than just a few minutes, the rock salt keeps the ice cubes from melting too quickly.

Try this trick for an hour a day while keeping your AC off. Studies show that eliminating AC usage for one hour per day can lead to a $20 drop in your bill.

2. The Current Trick

No matter how hot it gets where you live, you probably have times when the outside air is cooler than your home’s inside temperature. This is usually during the morning and night, and you can use these lower external temps to save some money while keeping cool.

When those cooler temps hit, turn off your AC and put fans in your first-floor windows. Make sure they’re facing in. Then, open your second-floor windows. Doing so will allow the first-floor fans to create currents that will shove hot internal air out of your second-floor windows.

Try this trick for an hour a day, and as mentioned, you could trim your monthly bill by $20.

Check Your Vents

You may not know it, but some of your AC vents may be closed from previous owners, or maybe you closed them yourself to push more air to occupied areas. While this may seem like a wise tip to follow, closing vents can increase your cooling costs by creating leaks caused by increased duct pressure.

If you have air leaks, cool air will move to unwanted places like your attic or crawl space. To prevent this, open all of your AC vents, keep that duct pressure low, and enjoy an overall cooler home. And since this move increases AC efficiency by 20 percent, you can also enjoy overall lower utility costs.