3 Things You Can Do To Keep Your Home Cooler During A Heat Wave
If your area has experienced heat waves in the last few years, there’s a good chance that you’ll have another heat wave at some point this summer as well. But if the place in which you live doesn’t have the infrastructure to deal with these kinds of heat waves, like most homes don’t have air conditioning or don’t have strong enough air conditioning to really cool your entire home, it’s vital to know how to keep yourself and your home cool enough to be safe during these times.
To help you learn how this can be done, here are three things you can do to keep your home cooler during a heat wave.
Don’t Let The Sunlight Inside
When you know that a heat wave is coming, the measures that you take before it gets to be the hottest part of the day are what’s going to make the biggest difference for you.
One of the best things that you can do to keep your home cool during a heat wave is to not allow your home to get too hot in the first place. This can best be done by not allowing any sunlight into your home.
When direct sunlight comes into your home through your windows, it’s going to start heating up the inside of your house very quickly. Then, you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle to get things cool again. Rather than going this route, make sure you keep the blinds and shades pulled down over your windows so that the direct sunlight is blocked from coming in and keeps everything cooler and shadier.
Avoid Turning On Appliances
It’s not only the sun that can cause your home to heat up during a heat wave. Anything that you do inside of your home to add heat can also make it much harder to keep your home cool.
Knowing this, you should try to avoid turning on your appliances inside during the hottest parts of the day. This means not using your clothes dryer, not running your dishwasher, and not using your stove or oven if you can help it. There are lots of other ways to cook that doesn’t create heat, or you can cook outside so that the heat isn’t coming into the living space.
Use Fans Effectively
Whether you have an air conditioner or not, you can use fans to help keep you and your home cooler during a heat wave. But to get the maximum benefit here, you have to know how to most effectively use your fans.
For ceiling fans, you’ll want to have the fan moving in a counterclockwise motion. This way, you’re moving around the cooler air rather that pushing the hot air back down to you. And if other fans, you’ll want to use them to create cross breezes from the lower levels of the home into the upper levels of the home to get that cooler air moving.
If you know a heat wave is coming to your area and you want to be able to keep your home cool during this time, consider implementing the tips mentioned above to help you learn how this can best be done.
