With extreme heat hitting the area this weekend, rather than cranking down the air conditioning, there are some things you can do to save some money.
Marcelyn Love, Communications Executive for Ameren Illinois, has some low cost and less energy suggestions, such as keeping shades closed during the day to keep the heat out.
“The other thing we encourage people to do is change the direction of their ceiling fan. During the summer, ceiling fans should run in a counter clockwise direction, so it blows the air straight down,” Love said.
Another way to keep a house cool is to put a fan by an air vent, to move colder air around the room.
“What’s most important is making sure that if you are running an AC unit, that the air filters are clean,” Love said. “You’ve got to replace those periodically”.
Another tip that people may not thing of, according to Love, is changing the lightbulbs to LED’s.
“Old incandescent bulbs, they produce a lot of heat. So, just by replacing some of those bulbs with LED’s, which are just naturally cooler, that will help with the temperature level in your home as well,” Love said.
When it comes to running the air conditioning unit, Love said it is good to keep the temperatures consistent to save money.
“Let’s say you turn it way up when you’re leaving, and then turn it way down trying to cool off your home, that’s just pulling a lot of power and a lot of energy at one time,” Love said. “We do encourage people to increase the number of your thermostat to 78 when you are away from home and lower the thermostat to 72 when you’re home.”
Love also encourages homeowners to get a smart thermostat.
“The good thing about smart thermostats is that you can operate them remotely from a smart device,” Love said.
Love said with Illinois’ extreme winter and summers, it is good to have adequate insulation.
