For people who hail from warmer areas, keeping home cooling costs in check can seem like a losing battle. With utility bills eating up so much of people’s monthly income, it’s easy to see why so many of us have simply resigned ourselves to paying an arm and leg for comfortably cool homes. Additionally, unbeknownst to a sizable number of homeowners, there are a plethora of ways they’re inadvertently making their home cooling costs even more unmanageable. So, in the interest of keeping your monthly cooling bills in check, make an effort to avoid the following missteps.

Failure to Put Your Ceiling Fans to Proper Use

Dependable ceiling fans can do wonders for your home cooling efforts. For starters, they can be used to complement the efforts of your central A/C system. By evenly distributing the cool air it creates throughout your home, ceiling fans can effectively work in tandem with your A/C and relieve it of some of its burden. As such, running your air conditioning without also running your ceiling fans is pure folly. Furthermore, for best results, take care to install high-quality ceiling fans in every area of your residence.

If you’re interested in using ceiling fans as independent cooling aids, simply adjust their blades to turn counterclockwise, as this will enable them to produce downward-flowing cool breezes. Despite being a highly effective home cooling hack, surprisingly few people seem to be aware of this handy tidbit.

Whether your home is currently bereft of ceiling fans or you’re looking to upgrade your existing fans, you should have no trouble finding fans that are perfectly suited to your cooling needs. If you’re not keen on manual adjustments, for instance, simply seek out ceiling fans with remotes.

Rarely Having Your A/C System Serviced

Given how many of us are consistently plagued by economic insecurity, it’s only natural that we’d seek to avoid spending money outside of instances in which doing is absolutely necessary. So, as long as there are no noteworthy problems with our A/C systems, we tend to let maintenance fall by the wayside. The way we figure it, there’s no sense in calling in the pros unless a problem is readily apparent.

While this type of budget-conscious mindset is certainly understandable, it’s always incredibly misguided. Having your central air conditioning system serviced on an annual basis can stamp out small issues before they have a chance to become costlier problems. So, while you’ll spend a little in the short term, you stand to save a fortune in the long run.

In addition to having your A/C system serviced at least once a year, don’t drag your feet when it comes to having problems professionally addressed. After all, the longer you allow problems to linger, the more pressing they’re likely to become – and the pricier fixing them is liable to prove. Furthermore, ignoring A/C issues can significantly reduce the lifespan of even the most resilient system.

Letting In Too Much Sunlight

Unbeknownst to many of us, sunlight can be a major contributor to uncomfortably warm indoor temps. So, if you let a fair amount of sunlight into your home during periods of warm weather, you may want to rethink this. Keeping your curtains closed during the sun’s peak hours can prove tremendously helpful at preserving cool indoor temperatures.

You can take this a step further by investing in blackout curtains, which serve to keep the amount of sunlight that finds its way inside to the barest possible minimum. Additionally, because blackout curtains are composed of much thicker materials than standard window dressings, they’re highly adept at keeping cool air inside and warm air outside.

Home cooling costs are a consistent headache for countless Americans. Cooling expenses can be particularly brutal for people who reside in parts of the country that receive summer-like weather all year long. Furthermore, the larger the residence, the more expensive cooling it is likely to be. To make matters worse, many of us are making our cooling costs even higher without even realizing it. Fortunately, identifying such behaviors is the first step in correcting them. Anyone looking for effective ways to make monthly cooling costs more manageable should steer clear of the previously discussed blunders.