How to keep your home cool without AC

Hot summers have arrived. With rampant power outages many Pakistanis are suffering from severe wrath of sun. Air conditioning can help but it costs a lot in terms of electricity bills and installation expenditure. Furthermore when summers are its peak air conditioning efficiency falls to its lowest.

So you should find some other means to remain cool in face of severe electricity crisis. One of the best ways is to avoid your home and offices from heating up. Rather than consuming electricity for cooling the building after it gets warmed up by sun, you should be proactive and take some steps which can help you keeping your residence cool.  This can be done in many ways.

 Roof shading

About a third of the unwanted heat that builds up in your home comes in through the roof. By shading the roof you can save a lot on energy bills along with reduced emission of green house gases.

Shading your home can reduce indoor temperatures by as much as 20°F (11°C). Effective Shading can be done by growing trees strategically around your home or office.

Window coverage

Roughly 40% of the unwanted heat that builds up in your home comes in through windows. You can close windows in the day time in order to avoid heat gain. Alternatively you can use window awning for shading windows.

Window blinds, as well, horizontal or vertical, can help reduce heat gain in summer and heat loss in winter.

An awning is a secondary covering attached to the exterior wall of a building

Roof garden

Roof garden also helps you in keeping the building cool and is legally compulsory for all new buildings in many countries.

Roof garden also helps you keeping your roof cool. Photosynthesis, evaporation and shading are the ways in which plants keep your roof cool.

Roof gardens help reduce heat gain in buildings

Research published by the National Research Council of Canada found that an extensive green roof reduced the daily energy demand for air conditioning in the summer by over 75% (Liu 2003).

Other benefits of green roofs does include Increase in building’s marketability.

Moreover, roof with more trees can help reduce the temperature of your house, to protect your home against fire and noise reduction effectively.

Ground covering

A grass-covered lawn is usually 10°F (6°C) cooler than bare ground in the summer. So you can grow grass on ground rather than keeping it bare.