Greent Tip – Air Condition your Home GREEN

It’s summer in Kaohsiung - hard to avoid that fact. You feel it, I feel it, and the whole friggin’ city is sitting under a constant cloud of HOT.

Here at the KHH Enviros we’d love to tell you to just tough it out and shut off your A/C completely - if the whole city did it who knows how much Green House Gas we’d save – but we’re not stupid, no one would listen. Heck, there’s days when I thank the heavens I work at an air conditioned school so I can escape the heat of my unaircon’d house.

So instead of trying to get you to trash your A/C, here are some tips to help you use the least amount of energy keeping yourself cool this summer.

Curtains: Simply closing the curtains reduces dramatically how much heat gets into your house. Darker curtains work much better than lighter ones. The more heat is in your house, the harder your A/C has to work to get it out and thus the less energy you consume.

Fans: Simply having a fan blowing at you can reduce how hot it feels by up to 4 degrees Celsius. Fans also use considerably less energy for the amount of cooling effect they give. Thus, if you set your A/C a bit lower and use a fan, you’ll be using less energy.

Holes…Big ones and small ones: Check around the edges of doors and windows to make sure there are no holes where heat can come in. Even a small hole the size of a ping pong ball can cost you considerably on your energy bill as well as making your A/C unit work harder. To fix these holes there are plenty of cheap, easy solutions at BNQ in Kaohsiung. Also, hiring a handyman hear is A LOT cheaper than anywhere in the western world. It’ll save you money and peace of mind in the long run.

A/C Filters…have you ever cleaned yours? In a normal climate, you should check and probably clean your air conditioner’s filter once a month. We all know what Kaohsiung’s air is like, so here you might want to do it more often than that. If a filter is dirty it puts terrible strain on the unit’s motor to push air through harder. This can cost on wear and tear as well as on your energy bill. Plus, it means the air you breathe inside your home is much dirtier than it needs to be. Do yourself a favour and check your filter, you’re smart enough to know it’s a good idea. So give it a go ;-)

Returning Home and letting the air Floooooowwww: When you return home after a long day’s work, you just want to sit in your A/C and chill (pardon the pun). But what does your A/C want? During the day your home actually can become hotter than the outside without a breeze flowing through. So when you turn on your A/C it has to work harder to get it up to the desired temperature. An easy fix is open all the windows for about 10 minutes to let out the hot air and then close it all up for the air con to take over. Your air conditioner will thank you.

What NOT to do:  There have been reports that in some Chinese factories they have begun to use FREON  (also called CFCs) in air conditioners again. This was the chemical largely responsible for the hole in our Ozone layer, which is now beginning to repair itself. It has been banned internationally. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do NOT buy an A/C unit with FREON in it. The Chinese name is (氟利昂 fú lì áng). It only takes a second to ask.

And finally, buying DOs: If you’re thinking of buying an air conditioner make sure it has some sort of energy efficient labelling on it. This will save you boat loads of money in the long run, so spring for a couple hundred extra NT. PLEASE make sure it’s installed properly. Bad installation (usually how it’s sealed into place…or not as the problem goes) is the number one money and energy waster when it comes to A/C.  Get quality for your money and help fix the problem one household at a time.

If you save energy, you save money…can you say “win-win?”