Your HVAC system is responsible for at least 12 percent of your yearly energy costs, and a great deal of that expense is incurred during the summer months. As the temperatures rise, the time you spend running your air conditioning will steadily increase, and by mid- to late summer, you may find yourself running it continuously. On hot days, this is critical for the safety and comfort of your home and those who live there, but you may not feel particularly comfortable when you see your energy bill.

Fortunately, you can do a lot to reduce your energy consumption and bring your monthly costs down. The key is to take steps to ensure that your home cooling system is properly tuned for maximum energy efficiency. In the following article, we’ll discuss how to optimize your summer HVAC settings to keep your home comfortable without overloading your energy bill.

Why Does Air Conditioning Use So Much Power?

While it can be costly to keep your home heated during the winter, cooling tends to be a far greater expense. This is because, by nature, it’s more difficult to remove heat from an area than to generate it in the first place. The laws of thermodynamics cause heat energy to always attempt to transfer from warmer spaces to cooler ones; so, while it’s relatively simple to transfer heat into a space, complex and expensive machinery is required to keep heat out.

This is done through the use of a pressurized refrigerant liquid; thanks to a quirk in the laws of physics, these refrigerants absorb heat energy from air that is passed over them. This has the effect of cooling the air and allowing the excess heat to be vented outside of the building. However, for this process to be effective, the refrigerant must be continuously pressurized inside of a coil. The process of maintaining that pressure and circulating the cooled air requires a great deal of electrical power.

Insulation Is Key

Due to the laws of thermodynamics, whenever your home is cooled, it will continuously attempt to return to an equilibrium with the outside temperature. This means that you’ll have to continue using energy to keep the home cool. A key goal for homeowners attempting to save on energy costs should, therefore, be to improve the home’s energy efficiency.

The first step in improving your home’s energy efficiency is to repair and upgrade the insulation. Doing so slows the transfer of energy from the outside of a home to the inside, and vice versa. Certain materials, such as the fiberglass used in attic insulation, can aid with this. Sealing cracks and gaps around windows and doors is also important to ensuring the cooled air stays inside and the warm air outside.

Find Your Ideal Temperature Range

One reason many homeowners overpay for their electricity costs is that they set their thermostats too low, forcing the system to expend greater amounts of energy. While you may be tempted to leave your air conditioner at the same brisk temperature at all times, this is an inefficient way of cooling. It’s better to keep your thermostat programmed within a certain range calculated to balance comfort with cost savings.

To achieve the proper balance, most experts recommend a temperature of around 78 degrees Fahrenheit when you are at home and awake, although this will vary depending on personal preferences and the layout of your home. You should then turn the thermostat up a little when it’s hotter outside to alleviate some of the strain on the system.

The temperature should also be increased when you are not home. By turning it up to around 85 or 86 when you leave, you’ll be able to easily bring the building back to a comfortable temperature when you return. This is more efficient than shutting the system off completely and turning it back on again, forcing your system to work harder to restore your home to your preferred temperature.

The temperature can also be adjusted at night. You may be able to turn the thermostat up a few degrees without impacting your ability to sleep comfortably. Since each degree of cooling translates to higher energy costs, even turning your thermostat up one or two degrees can help save you money. You may not feel the difference between 78 and 79 degrees, but you will certainly notice the difference on your bill.

Invest in a Programmable Thermostat

Of course, continuously flipping switches on a thermostat isn’t really the most effective way to achieve the ideal temperatures for your home. You may forget to do so, or you might simply not wish to manually change your settings multiple times per day. You can avoid this and improve the energy efficiency in your home by investing in a programmable thermostat.

A programmable thermostat can help cut back on energy consumption by automatically making adjustments based on your preset preferences. You can enter your expected schedule into the system, such as the times you leave for work or school and your normal sleeping hours, and your thermostat will adjust the temperature accordingly. One key benefit of this, other than cost savings, is that you can program your thermostat to switch to your preferred temperature a few minutes before you arrive at home (or wake up) so that you don’t have to sit in the heat waiting for the system to catch up.

Many programmable smart thermostats have other features you can take advantage of as well. Some of them can learn to anticipate your preferences and adjust accordingly. They may also allow you to change the settings with your smartphone should you need to do so. For instance, if you forget to adjust the thermostat before leaving on a vacation, you can simply open an app and make the adjustment from wherever.

Get Regular Maintenance

Saving on energy costs is a matter of both investing in the proper hardware and adopting best practices to avoid needlessly wasting electricity. One of the most important habits you can adopt to conserve power is to regularly ensure your HVAC system receives necessary maintenance and care. Over the course of the year, as the system works to keep your home at an ideal temperature, it will accumulate wear and tear and build up dust, dirt, and other particles. This can reduce the efficiency of the system and force it to work harder than necessary.

To eliminate excessive energy usage, it’s important to invest in regular maintenance from a professional, licensed contractor. At All Weather Heating & Cooling, we provide this and many other services. Call us today, and our technicians will ensure your HVAC system is working optimally for the summer and beyond.