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The summer season presents a unique set of opportunities and challenges for people trying to reduce utility bills and energy consumption. Direct sunlight and higher temperatures combine to make interior temperatures uncomfortably warm. However, the abundance of light and longer days presents opportunities to light our homes without electricity. Here are a few tips for greening your home this summer by letting in more natural light while reducing home cooling costs.
Tap into Daylighting: Just as it sounds, daylighting means to let in the natural light of the sun during the day, which lowers the need and use for electric lighting. Numerous studies have shown that dayighting not only saves energy, but it's also healthier because natural light helps kill mold and germs; it exercises eye muscles; and it lowers numerous disease symptoms, especially in the elderly. Business owners will be glad to know that day-lighting has been found to increase worker productivity and increase retail sales up to 15 percent.
Overhangs and Shading: Allowing the sun's rays to shine directly onto windows and glass doors will add daylighting, but will also add heat into a building. Overhangs, awnings, or trellises will shade your window, and help keep your home cool. For a climate-specific road map of how to use and size shadings and overhangs to help with heating and cooling, visit our Green Roadmaps section.
Skylights: Skylights are another way to add natural light. Be sure to go with a dual glazed model with glass that's appropriate for your climate, so you won't lose too much valuable heat in winter, or overheat in summer. If you go with an operable skylight, you'll be able to naturally vent warm air in the summer by opening the skylight with cranks or a motor. Many buildings will have a dramatic improvement in comfort and energy use with the addition of just one small operable skylight close to the highest point in the roof.
Solar-tubes: Small round skylights with a metallic flexible tube that funnels natural sunlight to dark spaces inside a building. They're perfect for closets, baths, and hallways where a skylight would bring in too much light. And they can be snaked around obstacles without requiring extra framing. Some companies offer solar-tubes that include a light fixture, others come with integral vent fans for use in a bathroom. One fixture can offer all-in-one natural day-lighting, an electric light, and vent fan when you need it.
Light Shelves: A light shelf is a way to bounce indirect light deeper into a building. They are typically used in commercial buildings, but homes can take advantage of these as well. They are installed on the inside or outside of glass windows, on the side of the building that faces the equator (South for North America). The shelves can be polished metal or a reflective light color. They shade part of the glass below, which helps in cooling; and they direct light up to the ceiling where it bounces daylight inside the building without any direct glare.
While all of these are cheap, cool ways to light your house this summer – changing your habits doesn't require any tools, and won't cost you a penny.
Turn It Off if You Don't Need It: The simplest and most effective way to save energy is to get in the habit of turning off lights when you leave a room. If you remind yourself of the connection of electricity to power plants and the environmental impacts they have, you'll always remember.