Living AC Free
In my part of the world, we’re experiencing a very early season heatwave–both yesterday and today have brought near record temperatures (right now my computer is showing 91 for my town of Newton, MA. Temperatures like this are more typical for late July and August, not May.
Granted it’s only been two days of the extreme heat, but I’m happy to report that–at least so far–we’ve been living AC free. Here’s how:
- During the day we shut our windows and put down our shades to keep the sun from heating up the house.
- When the temperature begins to fall in the evening we open windows to introduce as much cool air as possible.
We use our grill for cooking and our microwave for reheating. Mostly we eat cold food like salads & sandwiches.
- We take cool showers before bed.
- We use powerful but fairly quiet window fans that fit snugly into the window, minimizing light infiltration.
Once summer kicks into high gear living AC free can become a lot more challenging, especially as high nighttime temperatures make it hard to maintain comfortable indoor temps.
Last year we did pretty well and kept our use of our central air conditioning system to a minimum (maybe 7-10 days the whole summer). But last year we didn’t consistently close our windows and shades during the day, so our house was probably hotter and more humid than it (hopefully) will be this summer. Stay tuned for updates…
2 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Very interesting, I have not come across anyone with such a lofty goal as getting rid of AC use altogether, but these are some great tips to accomplish this goal. One thing you did not mention is that ceiling fans use much less energy than the AC and could help with this goal.
Comment by Jonathan — June 6, 2010 @ 8:11 pm
Thanks for bringing up ceiling fans. I neglected to mention that I have also have a ceiling fan in my bedroom and I have found it to greatly improve our comfort during hot summer nights.
Comment by Rachel White — June 7, 2010 @ 7:00 am