Cooling your West Palm Beach, Florida, home with air conditioning all the time gets expensive, but what’s a homeowner to do? Hanging shades and blinds, installing ceiling fans, using natural ventilation, and painting your house’s exterior with light colors offer energy-efficient alternatives to cooling your home mechanically.
Hang Shades and Blinds
Shading your windows reduces the indoor temperatures by as much as 20 degrees. Indoor window treatments, outdoor awnings, and shutters give your home effective shading.
Install Ceiling Fans
While ceiling fans won’t necessarily cool the air, they can make rooms feel several degrees cooler. You can use ceiling fans on their own or pair them with your central air conditioning unit. Ceiling fans work best when you keep the blades about 7 to 9 feet above the floor. When you turn on the fan, turn up your thermostat by several degrees.
Add Some Natural Ventilation
When Florida temperatures rise during the day, open your windows in the evening for some cooling relief. As long as you have a well-insulated home, by the time your home’s interior heats up toward the evening, the outside air is cooler. When you are fortunate to have daytime breezes, add some cross-ventilation by opening windows on opposite sides of rooms and keep interior doors open.
Paint Your House Exterior With Light Colors
Did you know that dark-colored exteriors can absorb between 70 and 90 percent of the sun’s radiant energy? Through conduction, your home’s exterior becomes like a skillet on a stovetop, transferring that radiant energy into your home.
In hot climates such as Florida, paint your home’s exterior in white or light colors. Light-colored exterior paint helps reflect the heat away from your home and prevent a great deal of heat absorption.
You can keep your Florida home cool without using so much mechanical energy to do it. For more energy-efficient ways to complement your home’s cooling system, contact our HVAC service professionals at Preferred Air Conditioning & Mechanical at 561-202-1422 in West Palm Beach and 772-905-3358 in Port St. Lucie, Florida.
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