If your household is typical, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that around 20 percent of your energy bills go toward cooling your home. The EPA’s Energy Star program and other experts offer many ways to conserve electricity and expenses while staying cool and helping ward off climate change.

No-Cost Solutions

1. Shut your fireplace damper. Like many other people, you may forget that your fireplace damper still is open wide from winter usage, says Danny Seo, an environmental lifestyle authority. If you leave it or a window open during summer heat, your air conditioner must overwork to cool your house.
2. Place furniture strategically. Arrange furnishings so they don’t obstruct your air-conditioning vents. Move heat-producing devices far from your thermostat. Energy-saving expert Jeffrey Orloff advises that lamps and televisions generate heat that might make your thermostat continue cooling your home even when your house is cool enough.
3. Create refreshing breezes with ceiling fans. Raising your thermostat just two degrees while using ceiling fans can reduce your cooling bills by as much as 14 percent. Ceiling fans are designed to keep people comfortable, so turn them off when leaving rooms.
4. Program your home thermostat to accommodate your summertime routine. Set your unit to go up by several degrees whenever no one is at home, so you don’t waste electricity cooling an entire empty house. Using a programmable thermostat properly should cut your energy costs by around $180 per year.
5. Close window treatments before leaving. This will stop sunlight’s thermal effects from overheating your home’s interior. Plant shrubs and trees or place container versions to shade windows from sun exposure.

Low-Cost Recommendations

1. Inspect your HVAC system air filters each month. Filters trap particles including pollen and dust so they won’t circulate in your indoor air. If yours look dirty, Energy Star encourages cleaning or replacing them. Despite their appearance, change your filters every third months at a minimum. Internal buildup slows airflow, overtaxing your system while wasting energy. But clean filters can reduce the energy they use by 5 to 15 percent, says Orloff.
2. Seal your ductwork. You can lose up to one-fifth of air travelling through your ductwork via poor connections and leaks. Check all seals where vent and register connections meet ceilings, walls, and floors for disconnected ducts and leaks. Use duct tape or mastic sealant to stop seepage problems. Insulate all accessible ducts in areas like your attic, crawlspace, and garage.
3. Schedule annual HVAC system service calls. Cooper Climate Control offers cleaning, component checks, and setting adjustments to ensure that your unit is running at optimal efficiency.
4. Plant or place potted trees or bushes near your compressor. Shade will cool the surrounding air, advises Seo. When your unit pulls in milder air, it needs less energy to chill it within your home. Don’t put anything too close, though. You wouldn’t want to block air-flow.
5. Replace conventional incandescent light bulbs with newer energy-efficient options. Compared to incandescent bulbs, lights that pass Energy Star qualifications conserve energy while also producing only a quarter of the heat, reducing your cooling bills. Seo advocates switching to LED bulbs because they’re long lasting and remain cooler while lit.
6. Use your toaster oven more than your traditional one. During your large oven’s lengthy pre-heating cycle, warm air heats up your kitchen environment, cautions Seo. But a smaller toaster oven probably runs on convection technology, giving off less heat while using less energy.
7. Switch from standard to quick-drying towels. Beach, pool, and bath towels are among the greatest energy hogs during tumble dry cycles, making your dryer generate a lot of heat, Seo warns. But quick-drying towels’ special loop-weave designs dry up to a third faster than conventional towels, which also helps you avoid smelly mildew buildup.

Other Conservation Tips

1. Hire professionals to inspect, seal, and/or insulate interior ducts that you can’t reach. Call 480-460-7417 to schedule these Cooper Climate Control services.
2. Add attic insulation so cool air stays inside. We could lower our collective annual energy costs by over $1.8 billion if every American household did that.
3. Replace your central-air unit if you’ve run it for over 12 years. Select an Energy Star model to decrease your cooling expenses 30 percent.

Choose Energy Star room air conditioners. If all American purchasers followed that recommendation, we could stop 900 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year. That’s as much as 80,000 automobiles discharge