25 cheap ways to keep your house cooler, Part 2
June 13th, 2006 | by mbhunter |With the summer temperatures already here off and on, we’re thinking that cool is the way to be. This article on MSN.com, 25 cheap ways to keep your house cooler, will help to tame the heat waves without a big cooling bill, and without meaning that you wilt this season.
Today we continue a five-part series with “cool” landscaping! (The descriptions from the article are bolded; my unbolded comments follow.)
- Plant trees or shrubs to shade air conditioning units, but not block the airflow. A unit operating in the shade uses less electricity. Heat exchange with the environment is more efficient with a breeze, and a cooler environment helps this even more.
- Grown on trellises, vines such as ivy or grapevines can shade windows or the whole side of a house. Don’t know whether the vines encroaching on the building material is harmful, but plants love the sun!
- Avoid landscaping with lots of unshaded rock, cement, or asphalt on the south or west sides because it increases the temperature around the house and radiates heat to the house after the sun has set. On the flip side, concrete slabs are used deliberately in other configurations to store solar heat to provide additional heat in the winter.
- Deciduous trees planted on the south and west sides will keep your house cool in the summer. Just three trees, properly placed around a house, can save between $100 and $250 annually in cooling and heating costs. Daytime air temperatures can be 3 degrees to 6 degrees cooler in tree-shaded neighborhoods. If it’s cooler outside, it’s going to be cooler inside!
That’s it for today! Tomorrow, some little things that will add up to a lot cooler of a house, while saving money as well!
