Three weeks ago, I listed 13 free or cheap ways to keep your home cool in the summer. But since I was focused on the “free or cheap” aspect, I left out other great, but more expensive, ways to keep your home cool. And thanks to the comments on that article, I was reminded of even more cheap ways to keep your home cool. While some of these tips may cost more up-front, they’ll set you up for long-term savings after your initial investment and have the potential to save you money over the entire life of your home and increase the home’s value if you eventually sell.
Plant A Tree (Or Three)
The summer sun is your enemy when trying to keep your house cool. The best way to fight it is to not even allow the sun to reach your home. If there is room in your yard, consider adding trees to the south and west sides of your home to shade your house from the sun. Maple trees are some of the fastest growing trees with nice large leaves that block even more sun. In just a few years, your tree will be well-established and will provide you with some impressive savings.
Contact a local nursery and see what they have to offer. You can also find trees at home improvement stores, such as Lowe’s, but I chose to go with a locally-owned landscaping company. The company provided me with useful insight on how to lay out my yard and even provided a warranty in case my tree didn’t survive.
Relocate Your Air Conditioner
The purpose of the outdoor unit in a central air conditioning setup is to dissipate heat that was collected by the inside unit. If your outdoor unit is being baked by the sun, it will reduce its cooling ability. To maximize its efficiency, ideally it should be located on the eastern side of the house where it is shaded by the house from the afternoon sun.
Depending on the construction of your home, it may be prohibitively expensive to move your outdoor unit. If that is the case, consider planting a tree specifically to shade your air conditioner from the worst of the summer sun. It may not provide as consistent shade as your house can, but it’s better than doing nothing.
Give Your Air Conditioner Plenty of Space
Not only is it important to keep your outdoor unit shaded, you need to make sure it has room to breathe. The fans and fins inside that unit are designed to move as much air through as possible to maximize heat dissipation. If the air doesn’t easily move through the unit, it will dramatically reduce its ability to cool your house.
Clear an area of at least 6 inches around the sides of the outdoor unit and make sure nothing is above the fan. This will help make sure air can quickly and easily move in and out of the unit and remove as much heat as fast as possible.
Clean or Replace Your Furnace Filters
I can’t believe I neglected to mention this in the “free or cheap” article, so it must be mentioned here. Just as the outdoor unit needs good air flow, the inside unit can’t cool your home if it can’t move the air. Your furnace filter is designed to capture dust and other airborne debris and it does that job very well. But the more stuff that builds up on it, the less air can move through, causing your furnace to have to work even harder to move the same amount of air.
Check your filter at least once a month. Hold the filter up to a light. If it blocks most or all of the light, it’s time to clean or replace the filter. Keeping a your filter clean will increase the life of your furnace fan, keep your house cooler, and reduce your electric bills.
Add Insulation
This may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how under-insulated most homes are. My home is only five years old, but the attic still needed more insulation when we moved in. In this area, it’s not uncommon for home builders to take every shortcut and cut every corner they can. The homeowner eventually pays for this with higher utility bills. Now that we’re happy with the insulation in our attic, we’re considering having insulation blown into our walls to reduce air leakage and help protect from outdoor heat and noise.
If your attic has less than six inches of insulation, you should definitely consider adding more. I recommend contracting with a trusted local company to inspect your attic and blow in more insulation. But make sure not to block the ventilation in your attic with insulation since you can cause other problems and even raise your cooling bills by not maintaining good ventilation.
Sit A Fan In Your Window
It may not be the most visually-appealing solution, but a fan in an open window is a great way to move air in our out of a room. In our master bedroom, we have a small fan that we occasionally set on the window sill to blow the cooler outdoor air in while we sleep. During the day, we turn the fan around and use it to blow hot air out when it gets too warm upstairs. If you don’t mind the way it looks or sounds, it’s a perfectly acceptable (and cheap) way to cool a room.
Tint Your Windows
I didn’t even know this opportunity existed until Cathy at Chief Family Officer mentioned it yesterday. I have a few windows on the south side of my house that won’t take blinds (for aethetic and size/shape reasons). This is the perfect way to cut the amount of light entering and heating our house. It doesn’t cost all that much and you stand to save a lot if you have many unprotected sun-facing windows.
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Thanks for the mention - I’m glad you found the idea helpful. One thing I wanted to mention regarding trees is that you might be able to get some free from the city - I remember reading a while back that the City of Los Angeles gives out shade trees.
Add Sun or Solor Screens to the outside of the house, really cuts down on the passive heat gain.
Planting trees cools your home, reduces CO2 and provides privacy.
Great advice for most of the country. For those of us living in TX it just barely puts a dent into our cooling bills!
@Brian-we added solar screens and you could immediately feel the difference. It was like a 10 differential. It also adds to privacy since it is much harder to see in. You have to be up at my windows to see in during the day (and the shades are closed at night).
Cleaning out the furnace filter is the best and easiest advice. We just purchased a new unit and it came with a filter that can be hosed off and reused. Wonderful way to save even more money. It’s really amazing how dust and hair can accumulate in just one month. Great post. Thanks for sharing.
Fortunately, we don’t do to much air conditioning up here in Maine. There are only about 5 days every summer when we really wish that we had air conditioning.
Some people have the window units. It is very rare to have central air in a home up here.
Ceiling fans work well enough for us and they use realitively little electricity, even on “high”. Typcially 60W compared to over 3000W of your typical window unit for a larger room.
Nice follow up to your first post on the topic!