Air-conditioning units are not always the most desirable ways of cooling homes, as these can heavily skyrocket your utility bills. Even if we use commercial air-conditioners in hot areas, we might want to improve the efficiency by augmenting these with natural ways to cool down our premises. Learn about the best tips to cool down your home in a natural way.
Top 12 Tips to Cool Down a Home
Use dark-colored curtains, keep them closed during the daytime.
You can save your room from turning into an offhand Greenhouse by using dark-colored opaque curtains meant for blacking out the light. Keeping these closed at daytime would prevent the hot sunlight from entering into space.
Ventilate with windows and inside gates at bedtime.
Better keep the door that leads to the kitchen closed in the day. This prevents the warm air from cooking food from circulating through the entire house. Nevertheless, one can let the air pass through these internal windows and doors in the evening or at night to let the cooler air move through the entire premises.
Put cold water or ice cubes and blow a fan.
The science which works here is that melting of ice would produce cold air particles in the surrounding area. The fan would then blow off and disperse this cold air. You should not sit too close to this mechanism as that might lead to eye irritation.
Fine-tune your roof fan as per the season.
Did you know your roof/ceiling fans can work in two modes? Considering how the blades move, these can be used to create flowing air, or these can be used to push the lighter hot air down (otherwise it goes up).
Ensure you choose the correct style so it leads to cooling the bedroom and not warming it up.
Sleep near the ground level.
Warm air always rises up and due to this, the air near your feet is always cooler than at the ceiling. You can go for a very low bed, or just disassemble it to lay the mattress on the floor. You can even try one night on the floor with no mattress if you are okay with hard surfaces to check for yourself.
Allow for air to move in at night.
The outside degrees fall at night and one must open the window to the bedroom at this time. To accentuate the effect, you must open all the windows at night and shut them close in the morning when you feel the outside degrees rising.
Change all your lighting from traditional to LEDs.
Light bulbs discharge heat, actually, all electronic equipment does. This builds up the heat content of your room. However, LED lights do not add to this heat production. Also, to add a cherry, these are very energy-efficient light sources which help you considerably cut down on your power bills.
Go for cooling linen like a mattress and pillows.
Mattress science is also advancing to make you feel cold-ish the entire night. Some have moisture-absorbing top covers while some have breathable foam insides, you can get several options of cooling mattresses in the market to keep you cold and free of sweat and heat at night.
Resort to the Egyptian ploy.
This is nothing but a DIY Swamp Cooler, where you put damp linen over yourself to stay cool. If you decide to go for it, maintain your fan speed at low because this can cool your body to an extent where you feel difficult.
Consume a lot of cool water.
The majority of our body comprises water. Drinking a lot of cold water, chilled actually (not iced), can help cool down the system from within bringing down body temperature and also keeping you healthy at the same time.
Enjoy a cool or contrast shower.
Contrast showers are when you go for hot and cold water alternately during your washing up routine. This helps the body to adjust more rapidly to temperature changes. However, if you do not like contrast showers, a shower in lukewarm to cool water can also bring down body temperature.
Lower the temperature at the pulse points.
For extremely hot situations, you could use gel packs or wet linen by placing them on your pulse points which include your ankles, wrists, the crooks of your elbows, and the backside of your knees. So as to stop from becoming excessively chilled, cover the area with a thick piece of cloth.
These tips truly work, but only to an extent. For example, if you need to cool down in a car, they are a bit impractical and you might be better off with a portable AC for car and RV instead. If you’re looking for a more technological solution, let’s see what devices are out there.
Why Don’t Just Order an AC?
It is obvious for some of us — gosh! I’d rather not invest in air conditioning for a small room I cannot even call mine!
It holds true: Even when you decide to buy the cheapest available AC unit, it is still expensive and will raise your electric bill. Furthermore, many landlords do not allow for it so we cannot use it as tenants. Sometimes, you require to cool your office space but the decision-maker regarding this is someone else.
Or perhaps you live somewhere where the very little number of hot weeks can be counted on fingers — great luck by the way — and AC is uncommon and cannot be sourced easily. You’re not the only one! In fact, people from many countries do not use AC either in offices or in homes.
If you look more detailed into how an AC unit works, you’ll grab a lot of negatives. For example, did you know that AC causes a stark difference in the inside and outside temperature, and using it may cause a stuffy nose even in the summers? Dry air is another problem area with using AC. Also, you will have to clean the AC filter from time to time, else it can germinate many respiratory problems and allergies.
Air conditioners are also a source of noise pollution, like most other electrical appliances. Most likely you won’t know that tinnitus does not need a loud sound at all, it is the unstopped humming that is emitted from such devices that leads to it and does not let you focus at all.
What Are the Alternatives?
Okay, so you’ve decided installing an AC is not your cup of tea, because it’s unaffordable, or for some other reason, are there any other effective means to cool down a not so large area? Of course, you cannot put a bucket of ice in your office or when you can’t sleep under wet linen.
Here comes the great news! Air conditioning has alternatives too for cooling your place if you are looking for something else other than DIY-ing tricks or electric fans. The best swamp coolers are:
Evaporative Cooler can lower the air temperature and it is not like a simple fan that accomplishes only air circulation.
Multi-purpose. Besides cooling, it also cleanses and adds water particles to the air content. Although not a complete replacement of purifiers and humidifiers, it works a little extra than just cool air, opposite to an AC that takes off all water content from the air.
Environment-friendly. It doesn’t need Freon as AC technology deploys, which is considered not very safe for you or the ecosystem.
Power-efficient. Contrary to using an AC, this will keep your electric bills under control, which— in combination with an affordable price tag — makes it a great substitute to air conditioners.
Conclusion
Unless you are too lucky to be living in a moderate temperature zone, you’ll need something to cool your space. More and more people are resorting to natural ways and DIY tricks to cool down their homes to cut down on AC’s and their inherent drawbacks, but you can also do that with a personal air conditioner. Evaporative coolers offer a promising solution in this regard while acting as energy-efficient, hydrating, and air cleansing mechanisms.
