Cheap Trick Thursday: beating the heat, part II
(photo: Amy Davis/Baltimore Sun)
Finding a cool place to hang out is one thing, but you're gonna have to go home sometime.
Room-darkening curtains or shades are a good option for preventing sunlight from turning your home into an oven. Or, you could tack up some aluminum foil, shiny side out, to your windows, to keep the rays inside to a minimum.
This blogger used foil-like emergency blankets and white sheets to fashion window treatments that keep things from heating up indoors.
Here are some tips from the folks at Angie's List for keeping your home cool more efficiently:
1. Lower your air conditioner thermostat! Every degree below 78 increases energy consumption 8 percent, they say. Also! Don't think that setting your AC colder than you'd like will help cool your house any faster ...
2. Use a programmable thermostat to keep your home warmer when you're not there and cooler when you are. And set your water heater temps lower, too ... you'll get just as comfy a shower at 120 degrees, according to Angie's List.
3. Open up your windows at night if the outside temperature is cooler than inside your home.
4. Plant trees around your home to shade it from the sun --- and around your central air conditioning unit as well, so it's pulling in cooler air.
5. Use heat-producing appliances like ovens, clothes dryers and dishwashers at night or in the early morning, when things are cooler ... and keep heat-producing appliances like televisions and lamps away from ACs, which can throw off their thermostats.
As for ceiling fans, Consumer Reports recommends that you use them in conjunction with an air conditioner --- rotating clockwise --- to cool anyone in the room.
And here is Mark Bittman's famous list of 101 quick summer meals, most of which do not require firing up the oven.
A native of Vietnam, 