Keep Cool This Summer & Lower Utility Costs

Save On Your Utility Bills

Unless you have installed solar for your home in the last few years, you have seen your utility bill continue to rise. We know that utility bills impact everyone and thought it would be good to share some great hints we have incorporated into our homes over the last few years as energy savings solutions.  We like to think of solutions for our clients, so we share with you today some easy and inexpensive ways to keep your cool this summer and lower your utility costs at the same time!

Stop Heat Before It Enters Your Home

A good idea to keep your home cooler this summer is to keep heat from getting into your home in the beginning. We will discuss how to cool your home from the outside first and then share some indoor cooling ideas for this summer. For each of these ideas, we have made sure they were inexpensive, cost-effective, and simple to accomplish. Most of these home cooling ideas are quick fixes, but we also share a couple of long-term solutions also for keeping your home cooler during the summer months also.

Outdoor Blinds Help Cool Your Home

Outdoor blinds can help keep heat and sun from entering your home, which helps so much in keeping your home cooler during the summer months. You can choose inexpensive bamboo blinds which can last a couple of seasons or you can invest in roller shades that are more expensive.  We are in our fifth year of wear on our roller shades and we have south-facing windows that get blasted with heat, great in the winter, but horrid in the summer without window protection. Blackout roller shades are one of the most complete solutions to keeping the sun out of your home. Blackout roller shades provide insulation between the sun and your window and allow no sun to enter your home. Our blackout roller shades for three windows were about $250, but they have lasted four years and still going strong, prices have come down dramatically, and they are now available on Amazon and other online retailers.

Shade Your Skylights with Covers

Outdoor skylight covers have been one of the best purchases we’ve ever made. Five years ago, we bought outdoor insulated elasticized skylight covers for our four-foot skylights that are over our kitchen. These are great skylights, they provide a lot of light during the winter and spring, but during the summer they literally bake our house. We bought a pair of elasticized skylight covers that are so easy to install on our skylights and then store for the rest of the year in the garage. This will be their sixth year and they are still going strong for about a $200 investment, even if they just made it through this year cost would be $33 a year, and a much cooler home during the summer months.

Indoor Skylight Covers for Hard-to-Reach Skylights

If your skylights are hard to access by roof access because you have a very steep roof, indoor skylight covers are a great solution. Two years ago, we found thermally insulated skylight covers on Amazon that are held in place with suction cups. We have a 10/12 roof, very steep, so these are applied on the inside of the skylight and we can install them on four skylights in about 10 minutes. What a difference this has made to my upstairs office during the summer, it’s dropped the temperature dramatically and lowered our utility costs!

Window Film to Block the Sun

Indoor room darkening window film has been a game-changer in our home. We have beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows that don’t lend themselves to shades and indoor room darkening window film has kept our living room cool during the summer. Our living room faces the southwest and gets a lot of sun, which is great in cooler months, but in the summer it bakes our living room and it heats up our house. We use dark gray window film, but if you want to really reflect the heat you can buy outdoor one-way sun-blocking UV-effective window film to do the job.

Blackout Curtains to Keep Your Home Cool

If you don’t stop heat from the outside you can still effectively cool your home down by using thermal-insulated blackout curtains on your windows. The prices have come down so much making these an attractive way to reduce summer heat in any room in your home. Thermal Insulated curtains also help keep heat in during the winter, so they are a great year-round solution to lower your utility bills. They are available at many online retailers at amazingly low prices. I have an open-air loft office that opens to a stairwell. I used indoor blackout curtains to seal off the room from the stairwell causing cooled air to escape, it has been a game-changer during the summer in keeping my office cool during the heat of the day.

Save Money With Portable Air Conditioners

Many people have whole-house air conditioning systems to cool their homes. Cooling your entire home when you live mainly in one or two rooms most of the day is costly. We invested in a portable air conditioner and then bought two more portable air conditioners with heat exhaust through the window. We have these in our living room, bedroom, and office and they make a huge difference in the temperature of the whole house, but especially these rooms at a cost that is very reasonable for how long they last. We bought the first one 6 years ago and with yearly cleaning of the unit, it is still going strong.

Awnings Add Style & Help Cool Your Home

Awnings add style to your home and also provide heat reduction by shading windows from the sun. Window awnings come in both stationary and retractable. Stationary awnings sometimes need to be taken down after the summer if you live in a high-wind area, whereas retractable awnings can stay installed year-round. Retractable awnings pricing has greatly reduced over the years, making them an affordable way to protect your windows from the sun and lower the heat retained by your home while helping to reduce utility bills.

Gable Vents & Attic Fans Cool Your Home

Most homes have gable vents and access to the crawl space above their home, so installing an attic fan is pretty simple. A whole house attic fan or a solar attic fan can be a great year-round solution to keeping your home cooler during the summer and warmer during the winter. Traditional attic fans cost under $100 and solar attic fans cost in the $300 range. This solution takes a bit more work but you are rewarded with year-round savings on your utility bill and a more comfortable home year-round.

Many of the home finishing products we sell through our sister company Home Design Extras. From columns to gable vents, window shutters to gable brackets, we provide the finishing extras that can help transform a home remodel or add that special extra touch when you are building a new home. We are wishing you a wonderful summer from all of us at Shed Windows and More, stay cool and we hope these cooling tips help your lower your utility bills.