text: Posted on: 8 March 2016
  Air conditioning works by extracting heat from the air in your house then forcing it outside. While every home in a hot climate should have an AC unit, you should install one with the full knowledge that it will be one of the biggest bills that you have to contend with as a homeowner. To ease the strain on your budget, you should consider installing a secondary cooling system such as a house fan. This will increase your installation costs, but you will save money in the long run.
  Getting the Most from Your AC System
  In order to keep your system working properly, you need to make sure that every component of your system is working properly. Leaky ducts, for example, can reduce your AC efficiency by up to 40%. Thus, you want to inspect your ducts and all other components of your AC system to make sure that they are working properly. As much as you have to pay to run your AC system, you should make sure that there is no reason for you to pay extra. This includes relying on your AC unit even when you don't have to.
  How Can a House Fan Help?
  A house fan doesn't extract heat from the air in your house. Instead, it vents hot air out of your house through the attic. A properly sized house fan can vent all the hot air from your house 30–60 times an hour, which means it can vent hot air out of your home within a couple of minutes. If you open your windows once the outside temperature starts to fall, this means you can tap into a nearly endless supply of cool air to replace the hot air in your home. Furthermore, a house fan uses 90% less electricity than an AC unit. Thus, you can save money by allowing a house fan to keep your home cool through the night, knowing that you are saving money by running it instead of your AC unit. As a last benefit, a house fan will cool not only the air in your home, but it will also cool the walls of your home so that they can act as reserves of cool air into the next morning.
  As you can see, relying only on one cooling system exposes you to needless costs. If you can't afford to install both a house fan and an AC unit at the same time, install the air conditioning unit first, then install the house fan down the road when you have the ability to do so.Share