Some of the affordable alternatives to air conditioners to keep your house cool are given below by following which you can also save your cash when the summer comes.
Imagining our life without using air conditioning is absolutely possible and can be quite comfortable. All we need to do is to plan it properly by using natural resources that you are having at your disposal and need to find some creative ideas when the mercury rises. Some of the affordable ways to keep your house cool are given below by following which you can also save your cash when the summer comes.
It was found in the U.S. Department of energy that almost three fourth of the US homes are having an air conditioner which adds up to 6% of their electricity that is produced nationwide. If you are looking forward to reducing your energy consumption, to cut your electricity bill or if your home doesn’t work well with the HVAC system. Some of the affordable ways to keep your house cool are given below by following which you can also save your cash when the summer comes.
Affordable Alternatives for Air Conditioners (AC)
Air conditioners are quite expensive to run for the whole summer but they are not the only solution to keep yourself and your room cool during the hot days. We will discuss some of the affordable ways you can keep your room cool without switching to the air conditioner. These options are quite environment-friendly and also less expensive than air conditioners.
Use fans to beat the heat
We naturally release heat from our body like all kinds of warm-blooded animals. The heat naturally makes the air around us very warm by creating a hot air bubble on every side of our body. The fan helps in blowing away the hot air and its place is taken by the cooler air. In accordance with the California consumer Energy Centre fan helps in making our body cooler up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit when we sit in front of it.
It doesn’t matter whether we use a table model fan, normal fan which remains suspended from the ceiling, pedestal mounted a fan or the old model fan which is a very efficient cooler and a good alternative for using an air conditioner. The moving air of the fan makes the sweat on our skin to get evaporated very quickly and also helps in cooling our body and makes us feel fresher. But it makes no sense if you keep running a fan when there is no one in the room. In that way, the air of the cooler or fan will not become any cooler, in fact, the heat that its motor produces can even make it warmer. It also means that fan will not be efficient enough to cool you when there is an extreme heatwave and the Indore temperature becomes higher than the natural skin temperature of your body.
Freestanding fans air conditioning alternative
One of the affordable ways by which we can keep ourselves cool is by installing free standing fans. Even the cost of the smallest AC window is about $100, but one can buy even a basic desk fan and that is quite powerful for cooling a single person for only about $15. The tower fan is more powerful and healthy and can send cool air in the entire room and it costs around $60.
The energy used by these fans is quite low. You can also make the air of the fan more cooler by spraying some water on yourself from a spray bottle whenever you sit in front of it. The evaporating moisture gets combined with the breeze of the fan and makes your body cool very quickly.
Bladeless Fans- Alternative to air conditioner
If you want to create a “Venturi effect” almost like a turbine engine of an aircraft you can buy non-moving bladeless fans that are available in stylish and sleek designs and are also quite efficient and very powerful. Bladeless fans are very safe to use and they do not cause any harm to children because they are very risk-free to use. Like all other conventional fans, they also have the facility of adjusting swing and its speed. These fans are quite costly and their price starts from $300 and more than that.
The patio misting fan
The Patio misting fans can be considered as good air conditioner alternatives. They are mostly installed outside on a patio or in the garden, in the shade of a parasol or a sunblind. By using the same principle of evaporation these fans give a very fine mist which helps in cooling the air of the surrounding areas. After you install it properly it will make the area very cool without giving out any humidity.
Ceiling fans
The average cost of electricity for a normal ceiling fan is quite less than a penny for running an hour. Another advantage of buying a ceiling fan air conditioner alternative is that it does not only make you cool in the summer days but also circulates the warm air in your room for keeping you warmer during the winter days. Most of the time when the fan runs in counterclockwise motion that pushes the air downwards and helps in making the breeze cooler. When the direction of the breeze gets reversed to clockwise then that pulls the cooler air upwards along the walls sends the warm air downwards from the ceiling and towards the floor.
Attic fans- Air conditioner alternative
During the summertime when the Attic of your home gets heated up like a furnace at that time installing an Attic fan in your wall or for your celling can help in removing the hot air out of your house. This helps in removing the heat which is on the top of your house and moreover it cannot filter down the living space of your house.
Moreover, if you use the air conditioner on a daily basis, then using an attic fan can make your home much cooler. Many times attic fans are not sealed properly so whenever the fan runs the cool breeze gets sucked through its gaps and the air moves out from your house.
However, if the attic fan doesn’t have proper insulation then making your attic cool doesn’t make any changes in the temperature of your house. A roof that is having proper insolation also means that the attic cannot get heated very much from the solar radiation, and a floor that is well-insulated also means that the heat released from the attic does not get spread in the living areas. If your attic is not insulated properly, you can upgrade it and save more money on its cooling cost instead of installing a fan. For many house owners, buying an attic fan cost at least $100 for the fan and you need to pay $400 more as its installation charges that is quite a good investment.
Bed fans
Staying cool in bed is quite hard because the air cannot freely circulate throughout your whole body. So, people who manage to stay without using an air conditioner in the day time might need it during the night. The best solution for solving this problem is buying bed fan, which you can keep at the end of your bed and get a direct cool breeze under your bedsheets. These fans are most suitable for the people who face problems with hot flashes and night sweat. The cost of a bed fan is around $100 and it requires less than 10 watts for an hour to run.
Alternative methods of cooling your house
Using fans and cold compresses can easily make your body cool and quite efficient to cool the entire room even if you are not using any air conditioner. During dry climates using a swamp cooler makes your room cool very easily with evaporating water. If you can make a big investment, then installing a geothermal system is a great option because from beneath the Earth’s surface the cold temperature is being drawn by this system.
Window fans
If you are living in a place where the climate becomes cool during the night, the temperature in your house can get easily reduced by opening the windows let the cool air get inside your house. If you install a window fan in your house you can get the results more quickly. The cost of a window fan is around $60 and they do not use more than 60 watts of electricity for an hour.
If you are living in a house which is having two floors or more than that then you can easily cool your house in the best way by switching on a fan and simply pulling inside the cool air from the windows on the lower floor where the air is naturally more cooler. When the air becomes warm it will rise upwards on the top floor and then it will move outside through the windows. By following this method you can easily create a cooling effect in your entire house.
Full House fans
You can also make your house very cool by moving the air by simply installing a whole house fan. Cool evening air comes inside through this large mounted fans by opening the windows and air blows inside your attic and gets removed through the vents. Installing a whole-house fan can easily remove thousands of cubic feet of air from your home every minute and all the air in your home gets replaced with fresh air every 30 to 60 times in an hour.
Buying a whole house fan costs around a few hundred dollars and another $100 for installing it. It is said by DOE that, installing a whole house fan would require a professional electrician because the electrical circuits are very complicated and can bring changes in your attic vents. Moreover installing a whole house fan is quite cheaper than installing a central air conditioning system that costs around $3500 to $4000.
Running a whole house fan is quite affordable. According to a chart from Silicon Valley power, 500 Watts of power is required by the whole house fan for an hour, on the other hand, the central air conditioning system uses almost 3000 watts of electricity. It means for the summer season running a whole house fan for at least 8 hours throughout the night does not cost more than $50. On the other hand, running an air conditioner would cost more than $300 for that same time.
Evaporative Coolers
Another alternative for air conditioners is an evaporative cooler which is also known as swamp cooler because it blows air over water-soaked pads and makes the air cooler. In accordance with DOE, the air gets cooled by this evaporative water from around 15 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. (You can also create a low-tech version of this and also give the same effect by simply placing ice in a bowl near a table fan.)
Evaporative coolers are quite affordable to buy and run than using an air conditioning system. Buying a swamp cooler will cost at least $120 while an Air Conditioning system will cost around $200. Evaporative cooling system for a large house will cost around $1400 and installation charges will be around $3,300 that is much less than $3500 to $4,000 which you would require to buy an air conditioning system. It does not take more than 25% of energy according to the reports of DOE.
You can easily make your homemade swamp cooler by using simple parts like a bag of ice, a plastic bucket, and a small desk fan. Homemade air conditioners that are featured in online videos and articles are mostly swamp coolers. When these homemade air conditioners are tested by professionals they found that they are not much efficient as the real air conditioners. According to a test in consumer reports, it was found that these cooler can cool a room up to 3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit.
The testers get poor results and with this DIY swamp coolers because they were not used in the right kind of climate. The main disadvantage of any swamp cooler is that they work best only in dry climates. The areas which are having high humidity and the air there is very much saturated with water to get evaporated. It is shown in the map of an appliance company named Air and Water showed that in the Western areas of a country the swamp cooler gives the best results from Montana to New Mexico and to the Pacific. Starting from the Atlantic and towards the Midwest including most of the parts from Texas the evaporative coolers don’t work well.
Geothermal Systems
With the change in seasons the air outside our home also changes its temperature accordingly, the ground which is about 10 feet below the earth’s surface stays hot around 54 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the year. For this reason, it becomes much easier for the heat to get transferred from your home to the ground or vice versa, than transferring this heat to the air in the same way a standard air conditioner works.
The slope of pipe fully filled with fluid is run by a geothermal system is also known as the heat exchanger, from below the ground and to your home. This pipe then gets passed through a heat pump which is also like an air conditioning system and can work in both directions and can add or remove heat whenever it is needed. You can even use the same kind of system for keeping your home heated during the winter season and can use it for making your room cooler during summer. This can also be used for heating your water and during the summer season this heating is free of cost because it uses the extracted heat while making your house cool.
Geothermal power systems are quite costly to install which is around $10000 to $25000. However, if you install a geothermal system while building your new home it will cost around 3500 which is more than conventional cooling and heating system and your home energy use gets reduced by more than $30 for a month. In addition to this at the end of the year, you can even get ENERGY STAR tax credit which also pays back 30% of your total cost up to $500.
If you use the above methods properly you will never feel the absence of an air conditioning system in your apartment. The tricks that are given above are handy, affordable, environment-friendly, and do not cause any harm to your health. Every person is having different internal thermostats so if you feel that this method does not work properly for you and you might not feel comfortable using these alternatives. If you feel that you cannot do without using an air conditioning system on a daily basis, then you must try to use it as less as possible which will save our planet and also your wallet.