Maximize Your AC – 5 Tips For Staying Cool In The Heat

Summer is just around the corner, and we’re all dreaming of baseball games, cookouts, and lounging around the pool all summer long.  

However, we still expect our HVAC units to perform, regardless of what the heat brings us in Alamance and Orange counties.

It is not uncommon for temperatures to reach well above 90 degrees, and don’t even get us started on the humidity!  

There are steps that we can take, though, to help us keep our homes cool and comfortable without spending a fortune on electric bills and overworking our AC units.  

5 Tips for Maximizing Your Air Conditioning Through The Summer

Below is a list of five tactics that can help keep you cool as a cucumber this summer:

Change the Air Filter

One of the simplest steps you can take to give relief to your hard-working HVAC unit is to regularly change the air filters.

This one step can help add years to the life of your unit and help prevent outages and subpar operations.

You can use a cheap monthly air filter (honestly, that’s what we use in our home!) or you can use the three-month models.  

If you have someone in your home who is susceptible to allergens, you can also opt for the more expensive hypoallergenic filters.

Regardless of what you use, or what schedule you prefer, make sure you always change the air filter on time!

Use fans to move air around

Another very easy tip is to use fans throughout your house to help circulate the air.

Blowing air tends to help warm people feel better fast, and using fans to move the air can help bring relief to everyone.

There’s hardly a home that’s been built in the last twenty years that doesn’t have ceiling fans installed, but so many people never even think to turn them on!

This is one of the easiest things that people can do, but unless the AC goes out many don’t turn them on.

In the summertime, it is recommended to have the ceiling fans rotate in a counter-clockwise motion, then reverse it back to clockwise in the wintertime.

In addition, using free-standing, box, and window fans can help keep cool air moving through the house, reach warmer parts of the house, and help reduce the load on your HVAC unit.

Put blinds and blackout curtains to work

If you’re anything like us, we tend to set the curtains and blinds for our windows and then never give them another thought.

This can be a costly mistake!

By using blinds effectively, you can help reduce the amount of direct sunlight that enters your home.

Just this one step can lower the temperature in a room by nearly 10 percent!

Also, if you don’t already have blackout curtains installed, now may be a great time to look into them.

Blackout curtains do just what they say – blackout any and all light from seeping through the window.

Use these heavy-duty curtains to completely block out any additional light that may be creeping into your warmer rooms and corridors.

Avoid cooking with with your oven

If you’ve been looking for reasons to do more grilling, here it is!

During the summer, you want to do anything possible to help keep the heat sources inside the home to a minimum.

The oven is one of the biggest culprits of generating heat in the home, and one of the easiest to avoid during the warm summer months.

Grill your food to help avoid the oven, or look into alternate cooking methods like sous vide, slow cookers, pressure cookers, and more.

Anytime you run the oven, the residual heat can stay in the home for hours afterward, so be strategic if you must use the oven to bake something.  

Use timers to help you cook in the early mornings or late evening, if possible.

Embrace warmer temperatures

While it’s easy to focus on simple steps to help make the home more energy-efficient, running your AC at 72 degrees – or lower for many people – can pack quite a wallop when the energy bill comes in.

It is estimated in the summer that for every degree below 78 you set your thermostat, you increase your energy costs by six to eight percent!

So, why not adjust your thermostat to a higher temperature?

Yes, it may take some getting used to, but with the rising cost of energy, this may be the best, simple step you can take to get some relief for your wallet.

Learning to use schedules on your thermostat can be very effective here. 

If you have several hours that you are away, or find that you can manage to have the house be a little hotter while you sleep, a schedule can make this automatic for you.

Keep Cool This Summer By Following These 5 Tips

The above five tips can go a long way in helping you stay cool this and every summer.  

By implementing just a few, you can help reduce your costs and keep your system running trouble-free.

However, if you find that your AC unit isn’t getting the job done, contact us and we’ll have you running again in no time!