Naturally Cool Your Home

While warm weather can be nice, when it starts to get too hot it can quickly become miserable in most homes. Most people would simply turn on the air conditioning, and not worry about it. However, air conditioning tends to be more than a tad expensive. Here are a few methods that you can use to naturally cool your home, and thus reduce the overall cost of your energy bills.

• Check your insulation. Perhaps the single greatest method for "naturally" cooling your home is to ensure you have the proper insulation. By having the proper insulation rating on your home for your area you will be able to ensure that your home stays cool inside while it is hot outside, and hot inside while it is cool outside. Granted this particular method can be fairly expensive to fix if it is necessary, but it is also the most cost effective.
• Plant more trees. Another method that you can use to naturally cool your home is to plant some shade trees around your property. Typically the best places to plant these trees are along the southern and western edges of your property. This will help protect the home from the sun while it is in the hottest positions during the day.
• Open windows. Simply opening your windows night, leaving them open during the night, and only closing them (mostly) in the morning can do wonders for cooling your home. This simple action allows air circulation throughout the home, while also allowing the cooler night air to come into the home. Closing the windows during the day will help keep the cooler air inside, and help make the home act like a refrigerator while it is slowly getting hotter.
• Go white. White colored drapes and paint can help to dramatically reduce the radiant heat absorption of your home. Slap some white paint on your roof, or even go with lighter colored roofing material will help reduce the amount of heat that is absorbed by your home during the day. This same trick can be mimicked with your windows by having the portions of your drapes which will be against the window be a white color.

There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of other methods that a homeowner can use to cool their home. That being said there are only a couple of limits to being able to naturally cool your home. The first is your imagination, if you can think of it you can do it. The second is that if you are looking to naturally cool your home you will need to avoid using any kind of mechanics or machines directly. After all, you are trying to limit or lowering your energy bill—not add to it.