New ideas for your old Air Conditioner

These ideas will help your old air conditioner keep you cool

Air conditioning used to be a luxury. Now, it's a necessity. When it's summer and the power fails -- the air conditioning goes off. If it stays off for more than a few days, people and animals can get sick and even die.

Unfortunately even though most of us have central air conditioning, we're still not really comfortable. The air often feels muggy and some rooms never get cool. The main reason for this is that most air conditioners were improperly sized and do not process the air correctly.

Air conditioners cool and dehumidify air. If the contractor oversized the condenser, it cools air too quickly, and there is not proper time for dehumidification. Adding to this problem, because the ducts in most homes leak like a sieve, it's possible that up to 40 percent of the cool air doesn't get where it is needed. The only ways to rectify these conditions are to replace the air conditioner and seal the ducts. The Department of Energy (DOE) recommends replacing air conditioners that are more than 10 years old.

If replacement is an option, be sure that your contractor does a heat gain study and replaces your old unit with a properly sized, two-stage Energy Star-rated air conditioner. The new unit will make you more comfortable and save you money on your electric bill.

Sealing the ducts can easily save you 3 percent on your heating and cooling bills.

If you have to live with your old air conditioner, here are 12 tips for keeping cool.

1. Be realistic. Central air conditioning is only designed to make the inside temperature 15 degrees cooler than the outside temperature. If it's 90 degrees outside, the air conditioner can only lower the inside temperature to 75 degrees.

Don't expect a room air conditioner to cool an entire house. It was made to cool a limited number of cubic feet. Window air conditioning units operate most efficiently when you close the door of the room in which they are located.

2. Don't open the windows. When you open the windows, humid air rushes in and even a properly sized air conditioner gets overwhelmed.

3. Pull down the shades during the heat of the day and turn off unnecessary lights. Unnecessary lights not only create heat, but they cost money.

4. Keep the temperature constant unless you will be going away for a long period of time. It takes hours of operation to lower the temperature in a house from 85 to 72 degrees. Pick a temperature you can live with and leave it.

5. Turn on fans. Cold air sinks to the floor. Hot air rises, making heads hot and second-story rooms uninhabitable. A breeze circulates the air and makes air conditioning more efficient.

6. Buy an hygrometer and check the humidity. If the air conditioner doesn't lower the humidity below 50 percent, buy an Energy Star-rated dehumidifier. The lower you get the humidity, the cooler you will feel.

7. Remember that it is the furnace fan that distributes the cooled air. Cold air is heavy so the fan dumps it as soon as possible. Rooms closest to the furnace get cooled, while second-story rooms don't. Take off the return air vents in the coolest rooms and seal them with plastic wrap. This forces the furnace to draw hot air from warm rooms replacing it with cooler air.

8. Change furnace filters. Clogged filters can burn out the motor.

9. Add attic insulation and soffit vents. If you cool the attic with proper ventilation and isolate it from the rest of the house with R-49 insulation, the whole house will be cooler, and you will save money on heating and cooling.

10. Hot air seeps in all around the house. Caulk and install weather stripping around windows and doors, especially the attic access door.

11. Appliances create heat. Use the oven, dishwasher, washing machine and dryer in the evening when the electric rates are lower and the temperature is cooler.

12. If one or two rooms are always hot, consider installing a ductless air conditioner dedicated to those rooms. Prices start at about $2,500.

Follow these rules and keep your cool.