The 5 Most Frequently Told Myths About Cooling Your Home
When it comes to your Oak Park home’s A/C system, there are a lot of myths about cooling your home during the hot days of summer. While some of these myths purport to save you money, they can actually be costing you. To prevent you from wasting energy and throwing money in the trash, here are our top five debunked myths about cooling your home:
- Cranking the thermostat down will cool the house faster. Most often not true. Some companies do make great variable speed air handlers that can adjust output to meet demand. However, most Farmington Hills homes have units with a single fan speed: on. Cranking the thermostat to 60 to get to 70 faster won’t make a difference, your hot air will move at the same speed rate.
- Turn the A/C off while you’re gone. While this can be a money-saving option in less torrid temperatures, you probably don’t want to turn the unit off completely during a heat waves. However, it’s also wasteful to keep the A/C on at full blast. The best option is to either install a programmable thermostat or manually adjust the thermostat to 7-10 degrees higher while you’re gone.
- Ceiling fans keep empty rooms cool. Ceiling fans generate a wind chill effect that makes us feel cooler, but that does not lower the temperature of a room. Like your household lights, you should turn off ceiling fans when you leave.
- Closing air vents will boost efficiency. This myth can wind up costing you a lot. If you have a modern central air system, randomly closing a register won’t stop your system from cooling air. Instead, the cool air will just expensively circulate throughout your ductwork.
- A/C is the only way to keep cool. A/Cs are not a worldwide norm. If you find yourself with a system shortage, you can hunker down in the basement to keep cool. Or use those handy wind-chill effect ceiling fans.
For more debunking of myths about cooling your home, contact Southeast Michigan experts at Aladdin Heating & Cooling.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Warren, Michigan about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about home cooling myths and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
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