How To Escape The Summer Heat In Your Sweltering Home
Summer is in full swing now, meaning two things for your home: higher energy bills and soaring temperatures. Depending on where you live, summer temperatures can become unbearable, even indoors, and that can take its toll on you and your family. If you want to beat the summer heat without breaking the bank, use these tips to keep the air cooler in your home.
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Simple Switches
While some changes in your home might seem small, they can actually have a fairly significant impact on the average temperature throughout your home. For example, if you haven’t already, consider switching over your light bulbs to LED options. Unlike incandescent bulbs, which release 90% of their energy as heat, LEDs use energy far more efficiently with little wasted heat. Normal light bulbs can release additional heat into your home, meaning your A/C unit will have to work harder to keep your home cool. Switching to LEDs or similar high-efficiency options give you the same bright light throughout your home without accidentally adding heat.
Remembering Renovations
If you’re planning on making any necessary repairs or upgrades to your home this summer, consider keeping your home’s average temperature in mind when selecting your materials. Pay attention to areas like roofs, doors, and windows, which can be largely responsible for varying temperatures throughout your home. Don’t be afraid to look outside the box on your material choices; a metal roof, for example, can easily help save as much as 25% off of your annual home energy bill as it helps with heating and cooling. Any areas that could potentially cause a draft in the winter also can let in hot air during the summer, so pay attention to these spaces and prioritize them when working on home improvement this season.
Pro tip: just make sure when you’re fixing up these spaces that you’re not cutting off air flow too much inside of your home. Atmospheric oxygen concentration below 19.5% or above 23.5% can be dangerous or even fatal.
Seek Out Sources
If you find yourself a bit short on finances necessary to make temperature-adjusting changes in your home, look to your local community for resources. Many areas offer grants and financial assistance for making energy-saving changes to your home. This is especially true for areas where you might already be paying homeownership association fees; U.S. homeowners paid approximately $88 billion in assessments toward community associations in 2016. It’s possible you’re already paying for access to these resources and you don’t even know it.
No Energy Needed
Not all cooling tips require electricity use or major changes to your home. There are plenty of easy hacks you can use to cool down individual rooms that see more traffic throughout your home. By using these creative solutions and focusing on cooling individual rooms, you can decrease the need for energy to cool the entire house. Some of these solutions are more inventive, but many are as simple as switching out your bedding or cooking outdoors.
The summer heat can be tough on your home, and without the right changes, you’ll quickly find yourself frustrated with the heat and humidity. However, there’s no need to suffer through summer with some easy tips and tricks to beat the heat. How do you keep your home cooler during the hot summer months? What energy-saving tips and tricks do you use to weather the warmest season of the year?
LED lightbulbs are awesome. Regular lightbulbs put off so much heat and it really makes a difference in the summer time! I also use blinds and blackout shades to keep my house cooler, and ceiling fans really help too.