Energy efficient cooling
Stay cool without spending a fortune
Energy efficient cooling means cooling your house while minimizing air conditioner use. It doesn't get simpler than that. To save money on air conditioning, the best way to start is to look for other ways to stay cool.
Before you spend a fortune on a new air conditioner, I suggest you read my summer energy saving tips, or further down this page, my thoughts on how to survive without an air conditioner! You may be able to get by with a little less cooling power, which will save you money both up front and for the life of whatever air conditioner you go with (or already have). And whether you're planning to replace, repair, or improve the efficiency of an existing unit, or buy your first ever air conditioner, I provide over a dozen separate pages on specific energy efficient air conditioners and related topics:
- 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 window AC unit on sale from your local big box store may actually be a really bad deal when you factor in the lifetime operating costs of low-efficiency window air conditioners.
- Best portable air conditioners - You can roll these units from room to room, and some can serve as heat pumps in colder weather. But gosh those hoses are big!
- 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 ways of harnessing the sun's energy to keep your home cool. And how about keeping cool by not harnessing solar energy?
- 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 their solar powered air conditioning approach is little more than a gimmick.
- York AC units are popular with builders and some are energy efficient. But are frequent refrigerant leaks, component failures, and other issues the result of poor installation by profit-hungry builders, or is there something fundamentally wrong with the quality of these units?
- Intertherm air conditioners - whole house air conditioners for manufactured homes, with minimal efficiency by today's standards
- Maytag window air conditioners - you might Maytag's solid reputation applies to these - but think again! These days, just because it says Maytag doesn't mean you can count on the Maytag man. Find out why you should avoid these units.
- Amana portable AC - this portable AC unit provides 7000 BTU per hour of cooling, and is ENERGY STAR compliant. A good deal if you can get your hands on one, but watch out for support issues.
- An air conditioner mister can make your central air conditioner more efficient for under $100 up front and a trickle of water, because, as you might have learned in high school, evaporation is a cooling process. You may even be able to build one yourself for $30-40. Find out how.
- The best window air conditioner is one that provides improved efficiency, is properly sized to the space being cooled, and runs quietly and reliably. Find out what factors to look for.
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!
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