Keeping Your House Cool

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August 16, 2012 byOlger Fallas in Carpentry with Comments Off

When it gets hot and muggy throughout the summer months, it can be hard to keep your home cool and comfortable. Short of installing an entire air conditioning system, consider using these other methods to keep the breeze flowing through your home during months like July and August.

Utilize Your Window Shutters

If you’ve got window shutters within your house, utilise them to the best effect during the summer by pulling them closed; leaving just a little sliver of light coming through. This will provide some cool shade for you but still allow some of the actual sunshine through. Alternatively, if you have the option to turn the slats upwards rather than downwards, you’ll get even more light in – but still keep the cool shade.

Fans

Stand-alone fans don’t have to be mega expensive. In fact, you can pick one up from $15 or so and if it makes your household feel a lot more comfortable, it’s a really worthwhile investment. You can also look into getting something a little more permanent with the use of ceiling fans. This is something that has been used extensively in most warmer climates including the United Sates and most European countries. Although some may argue that they simply move the same warm air around the room others will appreciate that a constant flow of air will certainly feel more refreshing. If you have a little more spare cash around, you might want to invest in a humidifier too, as this can decrease the amount of moisture in the air. Whilst humidifiers make the air feel less muggy, fans can actually cool it – so when used in combination, the two can provide significant relief.

Electronics

Turning off any unnecessary electronics that are running on standby or full power can reduce the heat circulating throughout your home. These can provide a lot more heat than you would think and after an hour or so, you are bound to notice the difference that turning them off has made. Turn off any lamps that you don’t need on too, as these too generate heat throughout the house. Hopefully you’ll be letting enough natural light in throughout the house to avoid plunging your home into darkness.

Avoid Cooking

Cooking hot food will not only make you feel flustered from standing in front of the hot stove, but it will also introduce more hot air into the kitchen and surrounding areas. Try to stick to cooler meals during the day, or things like sandwiches – which don’t require any cooking at all. They also require less effort, leaving you with less chance to work up a sweat!

Planting Trees

Many people often look for the more technologically advanced solutions for their needs when sometime the very best solutions can be found when you change your mind set to going ‘back to basics’. How often to you look for the shaded areas when going on a picnic or eating out in summer days? Well you can update your home and garden to include these areas of shade in the forms of planting trees. A tactically placed piece of foliage can not only improve the outside aesthetics of a property but they can also provide numerous other benefits including helping to remove the direct heat from sunlight coming into certain areas of your home. You may specifically want to have added shade within key rooms in your homer like the dining room and bedrooms whilst wanting light in the main living rooms. If you are looking at low cost or no cost solutions to this problem you may also want to consider relocating some of the tress and foliage that you already have to make better use of them.

Carlos Carver is an interior decor consultant. He says buying Wooden Shutters used to be quite an investment. Choose a wood that matches your furniture, and add instant elegance to anywhere. He recommends www.opennshut.co.uk which provides easy to understand information how to make the right choice on Wooden Shutters to look your window different from other and attractive.

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