25 cheap ways to keep your house cooler, Part 4
June 15th, 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’ll melt into a blob this season.
Today we continue a five-part series by plugging up those little leaks that heat your home beyon recognition. (The descriptions from the article are bolded; my unbolded comments follow.)
- Caulking and weatherstripping will keep cool air in during the summer. Yep!
- If you see holes or separated joints in your ducts, hire a professional to repair them. A different kind of leak. They say to hire a professional because if you try to do the repairs yourself and you do them incorrectly, you run the risk of increasing your indoor air pollution and possibly bad effects on your health.
- Add insulation around air conditioning ducts when they are located in unconditioned spaces such as attics, crawl spaces, and garages; do the same for whole-house fans where they open to the exterior or to the attic. Metal ducts are excellent conductors of heat, so you lose a lot of the benefits of the air conditioning if the air travels through uninsulated metal ducting.
- Check to see that your fireplace damper is tightly closed. Yep!
That’s it for today! Tomorrow, we wrap up this series with some tips on how to plan ahead.
