Even when you’ve got a good HVAC system at home, it pays to have other alternatives for cooling your home. You never know when an emergency could arise, where your air conditioning system breaks, and the repairman can’t fix it on the day or may take some time to do so.
When you’ve got kids at home, you have to make sure that you’ve got alternative options. That way, should your air conditioning system break and the weather is just too hot to handle, you still have a means of keeping your family cool.
Thankfully, there are many ways on how you can cool your house. Whether this is merely a supplement to your current HVAC or is now your chosen cooling system, these work very well for your home.
Here are some of these examples:
1. Close The Windows And Blinds
This first tip applies to you if you’ve got an electric fan in the room or even a small air conditioning unit that, unfortunately, is acting up. Despite this, there’s a sneaky way for you to cool down a room – closing the windows and the blinds.
The trick here is you want to keep the cool air trapped in the room, no matter how little it may be. When you open the windows, this could mix with the hot air from the outside, making your room even hotter.
As you close your windows, if you’ve got blinds, you also want to keep these closed. There are generally two ways for you to go about with it:
- Close the blinds downward so that it creates a darker and cooler atmosphere
- Roll the blinds upward, so that you’re bringing the direction of the sun outward as well
2. Close The Doors
As you strive to keep the windows closed, you should also do the same with your doors. Heat can travel quickly through your doors, even when you’ve got a screen barrier in place.
Also, the principle here is that the more light comes in your room, also means more heat, particularly on the days when it’s just too hot. Keeping the doors closed and the room dark will leave any excess heat off the room.
3. Use An Evaporative Cooler Or Swamp Cooler
In warmer countries, an evaporative or swamp cooler is a common existence in homes.
For an evaporative or swamp cooler to work, you’ve got to crack open your windows so that you can allow the hot air to escape. That way, only the cooled air is left inside the room. The machine itself works through a fan and a water-soaked pad or sponge. The air is then blown by the fan while passing through the pad.
Through this kind of mechanism, the air that’s cooled by the water spreads through the room.
4. Attic Fan
An attic fan is one of the most economical alternatives to a centralized air conditioning system. A caveat with this type is that you can’t expect too much from it, especially when the temperatures get too hot. Once the temperatures go above 80 degrees, it still needs the aid of a cooling agent.
An attic fan works to cool the air on the inside by circulating air and pushing stuffy and warmer air out of the house. This system allows for a consistent cool breeze on the inside.
5. Whole House Fans
As its name implies, a whole house fan is one of the most effective forms of cooling the entire room. Especially when you’re trying to cool a bigger room, a whole house fan is the best alternative solution. This works by having the power of a large exhaust fan draw out all of the dry, hot, and stale air from the inside to go out of the vent. When this is achieved, cool outdoor air makes it inside the room.
Another tip that you can apply is that when you’re looking for new whole house fans, you may want to choose one that sits close to the ground. When you tilt this upward, it spreads colder air in the room since it takes the coldest air coming from the floor.
6. Have Enough Ceiling Fans
On extremely warm months, having ceiling fans as a back up in every room is a very good way to keep the heat moving in the whole room. Because air is constantly moving across the room, it’s able to sneakily keep the temperatures down. A bonus tip is to make sure that your ceiling fans are running in a counter-clockwise manner, as this can help make the room feel cooler.
Ceiling fans are also good to have, in addition to your existing HVAC system at home, as these are also effective at keeping the air in a room cool.
Conclusion
When an HVAC system isn’t enough to keep your house cool, you’ve got to be creative and think of other alternatives. This is especially true in the warm summer months when the sun’s scorching heat is just too much to handle.
Thankfully, there are now alternative ways of cooling your homes, like those enumerated above. Through these means, you become more energy-efficient, too.