We live in the Central Valley of California. It gets pretty hot here, although I feel terrible saying that since I've been to the south during the summer. We don't have the high humidity to deal with at least. Still, as I look at the weather prediction for this so far beautiful day in May, I'm already dreading the late afternoon. Should be getting into the 90's. Sigh.
Not fun for a house with no air conditioning!
This will be our third summer with no central air conditioning. We have a small wall unit, but it just can't cool down our three bedroom house.
Well recently we signed up for a weatherization program through PG&E, and I am so glad we did! A man came to our house and counted how many doors and windows we have. He also took inventory of how many large appliances we have, and what year they were manufactured. Before leaving he gave me a breakdown of all commonly used appliances in a house and how much they cost per minute/hour to run. It was extremely helpful.
Then the workers came out a week later. They checked every major appliance to make sure they were energy efficient. I've heard from friends that if you have outdated appliances, they will sometimes replace them, including your refrigerator, furnace and/or water heater. The woman who sold us our house had just recently upgraded most of ours, so we were okay in that area.
They moved on to making sure our filters were clean (we do have a furnace fan). One man went throughout the house and replaced every light bulb with an energy efficient one. He also replaced both of our shower heads.
I left them with my husband for a while and by the time I came home they had replaced our laundry room door from a sliding door to a nice white one with slats (matches our trim perfectly!). They applied caulking around the windows and installed weather strips in each doorway.
Pretty awesome for a free program. If you can meet the low income requirements, then DO THIS!
Since then I've continued to research ways to keep our house cool during the summer. Here is a link I found today:
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