Are You Wasting Air-Conditioning Dollars?

There is a lot of heat energy in the processes of evaporating and condensing water. This is the energy that drives hurricanes and thunderstorms, some of the most powerful forces we can observe here on our planet.

Have you ever noticed that a cold beverage stays cold much longer in cold weather? That’s because the air is naturally much drier in the winter, even inside your home. In warmer and more humid times of the year, the condensation on the outside of a glass causes your beverage to warm rapidly, even inside your comfortable home. The higher the humidity, the faster the water condenses, and the faster your beverage warms up.

On a more personal level, when you are warm and perspiration evaporates, it cools the surface of your skin. You know that, but you may not have thought about the opposite situation: when water condenses on a surface, the surface warms up and a lot of energy is transferred to the warming surface. What does this mean, as it applies to heating and cooling?

It takes substantially more electricity to wring the moisture out of the air than it does to cool the air. Often, little actual cooling takes place until the moisture is removed. Depending upon the circumstances, the A/C equipment could run for an hour or more before the temperature drops significantly. As the air becomes less humid, it will FEEL cooler, however.

So for those people who think they are saving money by opening up the home in the morning and/or in the evening, then turning on the air conditioning to make the home more comfortable as the home warms up, you might want to reconsider. Often, letting in cooler but moist air will increase total run time and cost you money!