With warm weather making a return to many parts of the country, homeowners are beginning to shift their focus from home heating to home cooling. Depending on how warm your current locale gets throughout the spring and summer months, keeping your home consistently cool stands to cost you an arm and a leg – especially if air conditioning is your sole cooling aid. Luckily, getting monthly cooling costs under control is much easier than you may think.
Stay on Top of A/C Maintenance
Since your central air conditioning system represents your most effective line of defense against extreme heat, it’s in your best interest to keep it in prime condition. After all, the more efficiently your A/C is able to run, the more you’re likely to save in utility costs. Furthermore, allowing A/C maintenance to fall by the wayside is liable to result in small problems flying under the radar until they become serious issues that cost a small fortune to repair.
In the interest of staying on top of A/C maintenance, make a point of having your home’s central air conditioning system professionally serviced at least twice a year. This will help ensure that the system remains clean, runs efficiently and has potential problems identified and repaired before they’re able to become larger issues. While you may not be keen on shelling out the money for these services, it’s much wiser to spend a little bit in the short term than to part ways with a significant sum down the line.
Although scheduled service calls are an important part of A/C maintenance, they aren’t guaranteed to prevent every conceivable air conditioning issue. However, you can prevent the problems you encounter from getting worse by having them addressed by heating and cooling pros posthaste instead of allowing them to linger. Nipping small issues in the bud now can help facilitate big savings long-term.
Upgrade to Energy-Efficient Doors
If your home is equipped with standard-grade doors, there’s a good chance it’s costing you a fair amount of cool air. Even if your doors are securely shut, indoor air is liable to escape and outdoor air is liable to enter your home through them. Not only is this a problem during the sweltering summer months, it also stands to make heating more expensive throughout the frigid winter months. Unsurprisingly, the more cool air you lose through your doors, the harder your central A/C has to work to account for the changes in temperature – and the harder your central A/C has to work, the higher your utility costs are likely to be.
You can help minimize escaped air by investing in energy-efficient doors. As you may have inferred from the name, these doors are designed to heighten energy-efficiency by minimizing escaped air. Because they’re composed of much thicker materials than regular doors, they’re far better equipped to seal in cool air while keeping the warm air from outdoors at bay. So, when it comes to benefits of iron doors you never knew, energy-efficiency should be chief among them.
By the same token, you may also want to consider investing in energy-efficient window. Unlike standard windows, they contain multiple panes, thereby making it extremely difficult for cool air to escape. Despite having higher price tags than regular doors and windows, their energy-efficient counterparts have a lot to offer in terms of long-term savings. So, if you don’t mind making a small financial sacrifice upfront, you can enjoy massive savings down the line.
Switch to Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs
In addition to consuming less power than traditional incandescent light bulbs, energy-efficient CFL and LED bulbs produce far less heat. So, if you’re looking to lower the temperature in any given area of your home, swap out any incandescent bulbs in the vicinity for energy-efficient ones. While energy-efficient bulbs may cost a little more at the outset, their comparatively long lifespans ultimately make them the more budget-conscious pick.
Keeping your home comfortably cool throughout the spring and summer months can prove very costly, especially if you live in an area that’s prone to extreme warmth. However, when your choices are essentially “sweat buckets” or “pay a small fortune in utility costs,” it’s liable to seem as if your hands are tied. Fortunately for budget-conscious homeowners, saving money and staying cool don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Taking the measures discussed above can help you beat the heat while keeping cooling costs nice and manageable.
