Denver residents K.K. DuVivier and her husband, Lance Wright, live in a carbon-neutral home Wright designed to be as green as possible.
DuVivier, director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law program at the University of Denver, sees conserving energy as “almost a moral imperative.”
She just didn’t expect the cooling benefits her home delivers this time of the year.
Keeping the blazing Colorado sun at bay doesn’t demand energy-gulping air conditioners.
Wright, an energy-efficiency consultant by trade, said Colorado weather is ideal for making do without such systems.
“In Denver’s climate we can make a house very comfortable without having to use air conditioning. And it’s cheaper,” said Wright, who grew up in Alabama, where high humidity was the norm. “You have to look at what sort of tricks you can play on Mother Nature.”
A key strategy is to limit the sun’s access to the house.
“Close all blinds and curtains in the morning when it starts heating up, and don’t open (them) until the evening,” he said. “When it cools off at night, let the night air in.”
Another strategy he recommends involves planting shrubbery around the home in strategic places to keep the sun at bay.
Homeowners can also buy window film sheets that cut down on light entering the home, but this method is expensive and leaves the home darker than some might like.
A more-expensive home addition involves extensive earth-tube heat exchangers that are buried in the ground and draw air through them in summer and winter.
Paul Torcellini, group manager for commercial buildings research at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, said keeping your house cool can mean tiny adjustments to your life style — and menu.
“You don’t want to be roasting a turkey on that (hot) day. Maybe a better way to go is to grill hamburgers, or even making use of the outdoor patio area instead of being inside the house,” Torcellini said.
Simply reducing the energy load can indirectly impact a home’s bills, especially with Xcel encouraging homeowners to cut back on their cooling services.
Homeowners can agree to adding a switch to a home’s air conditioning unit that will make it switch off briefly during peak hours.
Other tips Torcellini recommends are swapping out incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescent ones, buying Energy Star-rated appliances and keeping computer monitors on “sleep” mode when not in use. All of those actions will reduce the amount of heat being generated in the home and give the air conditioning system — or a greener alternative — less heat to process.
“Every decision we make has some energy and environmental consequences,” he said.
Another way to beat back the summer heat is to install a Solar Star attic fan, said Brad Bushlack, sales and marketing manager for residential business with Solargreen Technologies in Denver.
The unit sits on a home’s roof and draws air out of the attic. The device, which costs $500 plus installation fees, can move 800 cubic feet of air a minute and operates via solar power.
Attic air can rise to 140 degrees in severe cases, Bushlack said, so replacing that air with 90- degree air can help reduce a home’s overall temperature.
The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers advises homeowners to use existing ventilation fans in the kitchen and bathroom.
And if a homeowner wants to perform duct work to plug up any leaks, use tape with the Underwriter’s Lab logo so it won’t degrade or lose its bond over time, the group said.
