- Turn on your ceiling fan and make sure it is rotating counterclockwise. Your ceiling fan can make a room 6 – 8 degrees cooler.
- Close all windows and curtains in rooms that receive direct sun light during the heat of the day.
- Open windows and interior doors in the cooler evening hours to allow cooler air to circulate through your apartment. You can help get rid of unwanted heat through ventilation if the temperature of the outside air is 77 degrees fahrenheit or lower. (This strategy works best at night and/or on cooler days.)
- Invest in room darkening curtains to further block out the heat of the sun plus, these go with you when you move.
- Turn off incandescent lights, which produce a lot of heat and/or replace those heat producing incandescents with cooler, more energy efficient bulbs.
- Run your dishwasher when it is cooler – in the early morning or later evening hours – dishwashers produce a lot of heat.
- Place a bucket of ice in front of a fan – this is an easy hack that will cool you and your apartment down significantly.
- Purchase a window air conditioning unit with an Energy Efficiency Ratio (EER) of 10 or better.
- Seal/insulate around your window air conditioning unit.
- Turn off your window air conditioning unit if you are going to be gone from your apartment for more then an hour.
