An AC unit is a great way to cool a home, but if you try to cool your home with nothing more than an AC unit, you can be faced with high cooling costs. In order to get the most cooling for your money, you should consider using alternate methods to cool your home. While nothing beats an AC unit for cooling your home during the hottest parts of the day, a good house fan can help you to achieve higher efficiency than you could with an AC unit alone. 

An Analysis of an AC Unit

An AC unit will kick on to cool your home down after it starts to heat up. The more your home heats up, the more your AC unit has to run. Even as outside temperatures start to fall, the insulation in your home can retain heat in your home that your AC unit then has to cycle through. Thus, it can take a couple of hours to cool your home down even when the outside air is pleasantly cool. Cooling your home with an AC unit alone can be costly. 

An Analysis of a House Fan

With a house fan installed in your ceiling, you can open your windows and vent air out of your home. When the outside air is colder than the air inside your home, you can vent the heat out of your through your attic even as you pump pleasantly cool air into your home. In this way, a house fan can cool your home in a matter of minutes. On the other hand,  during the hottest parts of the day, venting outside air into you home will do little to nothing to cool your home down. Furthermore, if you have allergies, then opening the windows can allow allergens to flood your home. 

If you use your house fan during the evening, nighttime, and morning hours, you can save money on cooling costs because a house fan will use a fraction of the energy that an AC unit does. By running your AC unit during the hottest parts of the day, you can keep your home cool even when a house fan would struggle. As you can see, using an AC unit alone to cool your home is not always the best option. You can get efficient cooling and savings by using a house fan and AC unit to provide cooling for your home.