Most of the time, we let our air conditioners cool down space (volumes of warm air) that we do not need to use. This is not only a waste of energy; it also reduces the cooling capability of our air conditioning units. One simple way to solve this problem is to install partitions within certain sections your rooms. This will allow you to selectively cutoff portions of the room that you are not using. This is especially true at night when you are sleeping and are in your beds through out the night.

Selection of the type of partition to use is critical for this to work. If you use blinds that allow air to easily flow through, the partition will not be effective in keeping the warm and cool air separated. The use of roller blinds to partition your rooms is very effective especially the ones that hang down from the ceiling. Choose materials such as vinyl or canvas. Cloth Roman blinds will work as well but do make sure the weave is tight enough to do the job.

The reason this works well is cool air sinks to the bottom of the room and hot air rises to the top. By cutting off the hot air from parts of the room that you do not use, the area that matters will remain cool. Thus the hot air is prevented from reaching the air conditioner and taxing it unnecessarily.

So make sure that when you install the blinds from the ceiling. Do not leave gaps from above for the air to flow through. The remaining gaps at the bottom of the blind or to the sides of the blind are acceptable since the cold air sinks and hot air rises.

Normally, when the air conditioner cools the room, the cold air sinks to the bottom and floats across the room. The displaced cold air causes the hot air in the room to move towards the air conditioner intake.

When a room partition is setup, as the room fills with cold air, the hot air behind the partition is trapped by the denser cold air. Thus this prevents the air conditioner from cooling that section of the air unnecessarily. This trapped warm air also prevents more cold air from filling up the rest of room through the gap below the blind partition. Effectively an invisible seal is created that traps all the cold air within the partition area making the room seem smaller to the air conditioner. Hence the air conditioner will not need to work as hard and maintaining the cold set point will be a lot easier.