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Keeping Your Home Cool: Green Options

By: Lesa Parham Click author's name for more of his/her articles

As the summer heats up, all too often our homes become less and less comfortable to live in. Or, if they are comfortable, it's at the expense of our pocketbook and the environment as we crank up our air conditioners. Keeping cool during the warm summer months doesn't need to use much, if any, electricity at all even if you live in places like Texas or Arizona.

If you're looking to keep your house cool enough to live in without wasting money then first take stock of what you're doing in your home to make the problem worse. An overheated house gets that way for a couple of reasons: internal heat gain and external heat gain.

Internal heat gain is basically the heating of your house from things inside your home. Even with the heat off, there are a variety of appliances and fixtures in your home that are producing heat even if they aren't turned on.

Cooking is an obvious heat source in your house, try to either do your cooking in the morning when it's cooler, use your outdoor grill, or eat more salad! Use the microwave more and try to avoid the oven as much as possible.

Keep lights off as much as possible, especially if you have incandescent bulbs which can throw off a lot of heat. Better yet, buy either compact fluorescent bulbs or LED bulbs. Both of these options cost more initially but use far less energy, throw off less heat, and have longer lives than a regular light bulb.

For electronics in your home that have a standby mode, plug them into a power bar that you can turn off when you're not using them. Items like your TV and computer use energy and create heat even when they're not on. Make sure that your computer is off when you're not using it because it will put out a lot of heat just to run that screen saver.

Don't wash clothes or dishes in the heat of the day. The extra humidity will make your house feel warmer. Use a cold water wash whenever possible for your laundry and only do it in the evening. Wash dishes by hand or at least turn off the drying cycle of your dishwasher. Hang clothes outside to dry instead of using your dryer.

To reduce external heat gain, keep the hot air outside and the cool air inside. Just like keeping the warm air indoors in the winter, the best way to do this is by making sure your home is properly insulated and weather-stripped.

Proper window coverings help greatly with keeping the heat out, make sure that they're white on the outside to be reflective. If you can, hang woven screens outside your windows to keep the sun off them. Keep your windows closed to keep the hot air out in the day and open them in the evening when it's cooler outside to get air movement in your house.

Circulate the air in your house, either with a ventilation system or ceiling fans set so that they're blowing air downward. If you have a heat pump that you can use to suck cool air out of the basement make sure that the filters are clean for maximum efficiency. Moving air will feel a few degrees cooler.

Many people who live in a warm climate have homes set up so that they stay cool in the summer without using air conditioning. This forethought in design makes not only for a much more livable home, but also for an attractive selling point in the future. Try and incorporate as many low-tech solutions to your cooling needs as you can, every little bit of help can save you money.

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