As I pointed out in my summer heat article last year (gee.. has it been that long???), the first thing to remember about summer cooling is HEAT RISES.

If you want to be cooler, you need to Let the Heat Rise -- and get it out of your house, or apartment.

In the closed city apartments most of my readers seem to live in, you can achieve this is several ways. The easiest is to direct the heat upwards with a ceiling fan, and then use a vent fan to push the heat up out of the apartment. If you can’t install a vent fan, then you can open the upper part of the windows, and put a conventional window fan up there to pull the hot air out of the room. This system is surprisingly effective. We lived two years in a desert in Western Oklahoma with no air conditioning using this system. While often it was over one hundred degrees and you really could fry an egg on the patio (yes… we tried) it never got over 86 degrees in the house. We simply facilitated the rise of heat upwards by opening the attic hatch, and vented the hot air out our attic with a fan.

Another thing in addition that would help is to prevent "solar gain" in the house. Solar again is the rise in temperature caused by the sun raising internal temperatures. IN the winter we call this "solar Heating." You do not want to solar heat your house in the summer! You can block the windows with reflecting window blinds, shut the drapes and line them with white cloth for the summer, or put some sort of reflective material in the windows. Walter Drake Sells a discount version of reflective drapes for a low price. Or even easier, you can just put up aluminum foil to reflect the light. We have an attic game room we keep cool this way. We simply turned the Heat Catchers around to reflect rather than absorb heat and light. It works great!

If you live in a sealed window setting with some sort of central air conditioning you can lower your costs by raising the thermostat and blocking solar gain… This should improve your costs over the summer.

Long term solutions to help lower summer cooling costs involve planting deciduous (leaf shedding) trees and vines to block solar gain in the southern exposures during the summer. In the winter, with no leaves they will not interfere with solar heating. In areas which are hot for much of the year, painting your house a light color to reflect heat will help lower costs as will light colored roofing materials. They reflect light away from you. When you replace glazing in windows use heat reflective materials in areas that are usually hot. Up here in New York State we wouldn’t want that, but in Florida or Arizona one would.

Here are some garden sites that feature cheap native plants!

DirectGardening.com

Native Seed Search --mostly hot and southern varieties, but not all.
http://www.nativeseeds.org/v1/default.php

Eastern Native Seed Conserve
http://www.berkshire.net/ensc/index.htm

So Stay COOL!

For more ideas Check out these Frugal Living Books!
Complete Tightwad Gazzette
The Complete Tightwad Gazzette

Declare Your Finanacial Independence
Declare Your Financial Independence

Complete Cheapskate
Mary Hunt's Complete Cheapskate

Miserly Moms
Miserly Moms

You Can Afford to Stay Home With your Kids
You can Afford to stay Home WIth your Kids