Lower your summer AC bills with Lowe’s Home Improvement....

Today's post: Wednesday, 7-13-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects.

And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Lower your summer AC bills with Lowe’s Home Improvement....

(See our post: Slash summer air conditioning costs two ways….Wednesday, 6-22-2010 for why to do the things listed and more details.)

The summary:

1. You can dramatically cut the heat going into your house so that you have to pay far less to pump it out.

a) You can add regular insulation &/or buy radiant barrier insulation with styrofoam backing as little as one fourth inch thick at Lowes.

(Doing it both ways to also reflect heat back in the winter can be just a bit over a half inch thick and save on your heating bills too.) This does a good job of preventing the radiant heat from the sun from getting into your house.

b) You can add several well screened new ways to get air to the underside of your roof between it and your ceiling AND add convection powered roof turbines.

That way you stop having the space between your roof and ceiling as a solar heater with air between 160 & over 200 degree still air.

Instead, that air is just a few degrees warmer than the outside air because the extra heat leaves out of the spinning roof turbines. The air between your roof and ceiling can be 100 degrees when it’s 95 and sunny instead of 185! Even better, when the day gets later and when the sun goes down it can be 70 degrees there when it’s 70 outside instead of 170!

c) You can install ceiling fans in the rooms you spend the most time in. And, if mounted in the ceiling instead of hanging down, they don’t wobble all over as the hanging ones do.

Even on a moderately low and quiet setting, they cut the perceived temperature by about 5 degrees. You can set your AC for 75 degrees and with the ceiling fans it feels like 70. And if your utility wants you to set your AC to 78 on the hottest days, it will still feel like 73 with ceiling fans.

I just checked. Lowes sells the sheets of styrofoam backed radiant heat barrier insulation and the roof turbines.

But Lowes does NOT arrange installation of the roof turbines that leaves your roof watertight nor do they arrange for a contractor to add several well screened new ways to get air to the underside of your roof between it and your ceiling.

With the interior ceiling fans they provide both the ceiling fans and a local installer. (That local installer is prohibited though by contract from doing other work for you. So the other work has to be from a different contractor or two.)

d) You can also install more regular insulation if you have little or none now. And, you can install all double pane windows if you don’t already have them. Pella, Anderson, and Marvin all make good double pane windows. Marvin I think is the only one that offers wood both inside and out if you prefer that.

Once you have this heat proofing in place, you may well be able to cut 70 to 100 % on your AC bill. And, in most places hot nights after hot days will be a memory!

(We only had gotten to the added entry ports and roof fans plus ceiling fans. We hadn’t gotten yet to the double pane windows and radiant barrier insulation and more regular insulation.

On a day that was 95 degrees outside before, it would be about 85 degrees inside from 3 PM to 3 AM inside.

But after just adding the roof turbine system and the ceiling fans it was 75 degrees inside and felt fine with the ceiling fans. Then at night it dropped to below 70 inside.

If we had had AC, our bill would have dropped to zero since we would never have turned it on.)

In locations that get hotter than 95 and stay above 75 degrees at night, AC would still have been needed. But you begin to get the idea from our experience how much less you’d need to run it and pay the bill for.

2. You can also add solar panels to make extra electricity at your home. If you heat proof first, you may find your summer AC bill drops to zero since the solar panels provide enough for what you use in hot, sunny weather.

It’s not rolled out to all the Lowe’s stores yet. But you can work from your local store once it is to get accurate solar bids from your location and the satellite view of it AND a lease so you don’t need a lot of money upfront to have solar panels added.

In some cases the lease payment will be less than the savings on your AC bill!

Sungevity is the company that is partnering with Lowe’s to provide this.

3. If on days you do need AC, if you lower your inside temperature to 68 degrees in the morning and you have done this heat proofing, you get several benefits.

The outside air at that hour of the morning is coolest. So the AC is most efficient and produces cooler temperatures using less electricity. Even better, the rates at that time of day are lowest due to low demand.

It will stay cool inside your house so it will be comfortable to be in during the day and it will be cool at night so you can sleep in cool temperatures.

If after doing this you then set the AC to 75, it will only go on AT ALL on the very hottest days.

By combining these steps you can drop a several hundred dollar month bill for electricity to run your AC to less than $50 or even zero!