The direct sunlight heating of the air inside the house was a big cause of the overwhelming HVAC cooling costs.
It didn’t take but a few months living down south to fully understand the impact of the heat and humidity of summer. And man, did we ever have the lesson. My wife and I moved to the south from the north. Both of us have dealt with the opposite of summer where we are from. The cold back home was the HVAC concern for sure. We had air conditioning in the summer. But it didn’t quite get the use that it probably could have. No, our HVAC concerns were all about the gas furnace and heating the house. So when we moved south, our biggest HVAC joy was no longer dealing with that sort of cold weather. However, we got a real lesson on just how much HVAC cooling can get out of hand without realizing it. Our home is perched on a nice bit of property smack in the middle of a natural setting. There aren’t any neighbors so my wife and I chose to go without window dressing. We loved being able to see everything all around us all the time. And then, I got the first utility bill of the summer. The HVAC cooling costs were overwhelming. We figured out right quick that the windows couldn’t be left uncovered at all. The direct sunlight heating of the air inside the house was a big cause of the overwhelming HVAC cooling costs. So we got solar drapes and a smart thermostat installed. The HVAC cooling costs were cut by nearly 40 percent. So that was our first HVAC cooling in the south lesson. And lesson learned!