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Cooling Your Home with Geothermal Energy

By Anna Williams

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 15Jul2009 Word count: 481 Viewed: 245 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

One form of alternative energy you can use in cooling your home is geothermal energy. This might sound surprising, but you can use the energy found in your own backyard by utilizing geothermal heat pumps. You can save up to 70% on cooling bills.

The bad news is that professionally installed geothermal systems are too expensive. The good news is that there are ways in which you can harness geothermal energy, to partially cool your house, without shelling out a fortune for it.

You might already be utilizing geothermal energy without realizing it. Northern state homeowners often use this renewable energy without their direct knowledge.

This article will teach you how to maximize the cool air that's stored within your basement.

You need to have a basement, or at least some crawl space beneath your house, for this cooling method to work. You must be able to access the space from within the confines of your home. If the space has a small window or vent, this will help with the air flow. You'll also need a small portable fan for this one.

The principle of geothermal cooling works this way. During hot summer days, the basement is cooler than most parts of the house. The basement's exterior walls are controlled by the constant heat trapped a few feet underground, right next to the house's foundation. The temperature penetrates the basement walls and cools the air trapped inside. You must then distribute the cool from this musty and damp air, throughout the rest of home.

The most efficient way of doing so is to cover your windows with shades or curtains during sunrise, to minimize the natural heating by the sun. During nighttime when the outside temperature falls below 75 degrees, open your upstairs windows while leaving your fan on, to suck in the cool air.

But, once the temperature get higher than 75 degrees, you can turn on your geothermal cooling system by opening one of the windows in the basement. You don't need to fully open it. A small opening is enough just to let some air through. Be sure to close all other windows in your house except for one. That way, air flows through the open windows. The open window should be the highest one in your house. This will vent out the most hot air.

Your small fan should be turned on and pointed toward the window. This should make the air from the basement move up to the open window, and let the hot air go out. It usually takes between thirty minutes to one hour to circulate the cool air from the basement to the rest of the house.

This method of utilizing geothermal energy might seem to involve lots of work, but your family will benefit from it in the long run. You'll see your dependency on your air conditioner decrease, resulting in lower energy bills.

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