How to Save Money Cooling Your House
It’s blazing hot, but after opening your last utility bill, you don’t dare turn down the thermostat. You’re beginning to yearn for a summer place at the South Pole. Take heart! A few relatively simple measures can help you drop your thermostat’s mercury without raising your utility bill’s bottom line.
If your air conditioner isn’t working properly, see if you can easily get it running. All it may need is for you to clean or replace your furnace or air handler filters according to the manufacturer’s recommendation.
If your system does not have a programmable thermostat, install one and learn out to use it. This will give you precise control over exactly when cooling will be delivered. Raise the thermostat’s set point a few degrees when you’ll be out—every degree you raise your thermostat’s set point will save you about 2 percent on your energy bill—and turn it off entirely if you are going to be gone for two days or more.
Talk with an air-conditioning contractor about installing dampers to restrict the flow of cooled air to rooms that you rarely use. You can also close doors or registers in those rooms, but ask a professional about this to be sure it won’t affect your system’s efficiency.
Update your air conditioner if it’s old. Though this is not a low-cost solution, over-the-hill equipment may be using far more energy than necessary to cool your home, resulting in higher utility bills. Over time, the cost will be absorbed by the savings.
