Energy efficient cooling
Stay cool without spending a fortune
Energy efficient cooling means cooling your house with as little use of an air conditioner as possible. It doesn't get simpler than that. Sorry! If you want to save money on air conditioning, it's best to find other ways to stay cool. So start with my summer energy saving tips, before you go looking to spend a fortune upgrading your air conditioner!
But if you do want to know about energy efficient air conditioners, I have a whole set of articles on that topic:
- Energy saving air conditioners - the main article that pulls all the others together - general guidelines, such as how and when to buy, and how to get the most cooling for the least energy.
- How air conditioning works - learn how different air conditioners work so you can choose the best system for your needs.
- Home air conditioning problems - don't ruin your AC while trying to fix it. Learn how to troubleshoot, and when to call the experts.
- Residential air conditioning units - An efficient residential air conditioning system might be your biggest energy saver.
- Window AC units - That $200 special window AC unit from the building center may actually be a really bad deal.
- Best portable air conditioners - You can roll these units from room to room, and some can serve as heat pumps in colder weather.
- Air conditioning ratings - Yes, you should buy an ENERGY STAR rated air conditioner. But there's more to ratings than that.
- Solar powered air conditioning - It sounds simple - generate electricity from solar panels for your AC. But there are better alternatives.
- The Trane AC unit - The Trane XL19i is a good example of a central AC unit with a very high efficiency rating.
- Nordyne air conditioner - probably even better than Trane - with ultraefficient SEER 21 to 24.5 central air units and ultra-quiet iQ Drive technology.
- Lennox air conditioners - fair to decent energy efficiency, and some are also fairly quiet, but consumer feedback on these units suggest Lennox may have serious quality issues they need to address
- York AC units are popular with builders and some are energy efficient. But watch out for refrigerant leaks, component failures, and other issues.
- Maytag window air conditioners - you might Maytag's solid reputation applies to these - but think again! Find out why you should avoid these units.
If you're looking for information on a particular brand of air conditioner, check out this air conditioner reviews website, which covers major brands including Amcor, Frigidaire, Haier, LG, and Whirlpool. If you need further education on what to look for when buying an air conditioner, check out Best Air Conditioner Reviews.
Another great site with lots of reviews on the best air conditioners is AirConditionerAnalysis.com.
Perfect-Home-Hvac-Design.com provides a thorough discussion of the factors you need to take into account when planning an air conditioning installation for your home.
Can you live without air conditioning?
It's really astonishing to me how much people have come to rely on air conditioning to stay cool in summer. In some climates - ones where, without air conditioning, cities would probably not now exist - AC is pretty much unavoidable. But do we really need air conditioners where it rarely gets over 90F?
When I was a kid, air conditioning was unknown in my city. The most energy efficient cooling was the front lawn sprinkler. Now half the houses on my street have a central or window AC system. Some neighbors run their system all day and night, when there are really only two or three hours a day of uncomfortably hot weather. Sometimes it's cooler outside than in, and those units are still churning. A few open windows would do the trick for free!
We have central air as well. Energy efficient cooling it is not - a 15-year-old hunk of iron that churns away noisily and hardly cools at all. In the last five years I think we've had it on a total of five times for an hour or two each. In 2007 and 2008, I only turned it on to see if it still 'worked'! (It's surprising how much you can be motivated to conserve, when your air conditioner is basically scrap iron!)
If you want to achieve energy efficient cooling, start with simpler technologies and techniques. In my house, we have bidirectional window fans in the upstairs sash windows, that can blow vast quantities of air in or suck it out. They run all night - usually at low speed unless it's a scorcher. In the morning, we turn off the fans, remove them, and close the windows. We draw all the blinds except where we need natural sunlight.
It's surprising how cool the house stays. One hot afternoon a visitor from the Caribbean actually complained to us that the air conditioning was on too high - when all we'd done is capture the coolness of the previous night and hold it inside!
Ceiling fans are a great way to achieve energy efficient cooling. Placed in a bedroom, they provide a steady stream of air down onto the sleeping bodies below. They can keep you cool at night at a tenth or less of the cost of a window air conditioning unit, plus you get to leave the windows open and enjoy fresh night air.
What really used to make our house hot in the summer (especially from mid-afternoon until about midnight) was the heat built up in the attic. When the roof was re-shingled in 2007 we had the roofers install six additional roof vents, and baffles were added between the soffits and the open space of the attic.
These subtle roof changes made all the difference in the world. Before, our attic got hotter and hotter during the day, and slowly released that heat, some of it into our upstairs rooms, through the afternoon and night. Now, with proper venting, the attic doesn't heat up as much, and doesn't heat us up as much either!
Return from Energy efficient cooling to the Green energy efficient homes site home page.
© Green Energy Efficient Homes 2010 Privacy policy | Disclaimers
