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After the high utility bills that you paid in the last winter, and now the summer has come and this means you have to prepare your air conditioner to throughout the boiling hot temperature of days in the summer, and finally you will higher chance of getting high utility bills from your air conditioning costs. But fortunately there are also some ideas to minimize air conditioning costs! Let’s explore some of these ways.
It is undeniable that heating and cooling activities are some of the major activities that require a lot of energy for every year. Therefore, you have to be more creative and smart on using each BTU of energy for cooling and heating, otherwise the energy bills that you must pay for each month will significantly drain your pocket!
The following are some ideas on how to reduce or minimize your air conditioning costs, so thus you can still keep cool the temperature of your home without resulting serious problem for your finance:
- First, you have to find and know anything in your home that can generate more heat! When your AC unit is running, make sure there are no other factors that can decrease the performance of your AC unit and then will make your unit work harder. For example, you should not locate a kind of heat producing appliance (such as TV sets or lamps) near to your thermostat. Avoid also cooking during the day!
- Replace your old air conditioner! Or make sure that it still works properly and efficiently! The old unit that doesn’t work efficiently will lead to high utility bill in the end of the month. There are now a lot of new air conditioner products that come with eco-friendly technology (like some that use R-410a refrigerant (this is eco-friendly refrigerant that affects zero depletion ozone)) and can work more efficient with high level of SEER. If you want to purchase new AC unit, make sure it also has ‘Energy Star’ -approval.
- Always remember that you can boost up the energy consumption by about ‘8 %’ for each degree you choose below 78! So, set properly your thermostat!
- Do regularly the maintenance for your air conditioning unit! The maintenance is quite easy for practical AC appliances, like window AC units or portable air conditioners. But for central air conditioning system, you may need to hire a professional service for the completely maintenance. The maintenance is not only helpful to make unit last longer but also important to maintain the efficiency level of the unit when running.
- Don’t forget also to regularly clean the air conditioner filter! It has a significant contribution to capture the unfriendly particles and therefore also significantly affect the efficiency performance of the unit.
- Use a moveable AC unit (like window or portable AC unit) to complement your existing central air conditioner. You can use this free-standing unit when you are alone in your small room, so thus you don’t need to turn on your central AC.
- Optimize the function of the programmable thermostat feature of your AC unit! This can be so helpful to save more energy.
- Place your portable or window AC unit in the right place! Avoid choosing a location that has directly exposed to the sunlight.
- And you can also consider other cooling appliances that are friendlier to the environment, like swamp cooler (if your area is qualified to use it, then it can be a great choice for saving more money on paying energy bills), solar air conditioning, or geothermal heating & air conditioning!
