00:00With summer temperatures running high over much of the country, your air conditioner is working
00:04over time. But is it working smart? Well, we're going to find out. Consumer Reports Senior Tech
00:09reporter Nicholas de Leon joins us with tips to stay cool and save money. Thanks for joining us
00:18here this morning on AccuWeather Early. Thank you for having me. All right, the locator is important.
00:24Tucson, Arizona. Yes. That's somewhere you need your air conditioning working well.
00:28How can I tell if my air conditioning is working efficiently and what should I even be checking?
00:35Yeah, well, there's a couple of things to keep in mind when using your air conditioner. The first
00:39tip we give folks is to make sure it's in the right place. Usually you want to put it in a
00:43north-facing window or otherwise shady window because direct sunlight will just make it a lot
00:49harder to cool a room effectively. Another tip that we give folks is if you've installed that
00:53kind of spray foam around there to keep the seal in. When you put the air conditioner in for the
00:58season, make sure that the foam is still intact because the UV from the sun can kind of break
01:03down the foam. You can also just use caulk to kind of clean up all the cracks or whatever.
01:09Another easy tip that we have for folks is to clean the filter regularly. You know, when you're
01:13putting the AC for the first time this season, just take the filter out. It's usually just in the
01:17front, running under some warm water, some soap, clean it. You should do that maybe every two months.
01:22If you have a central AC system, that's when you would want a licensed HVAC guy to come and do that.
01:28One thing we do advise folks to not use is the portable AC units. Those are the ones where the
01:34unit's on the floor and it kind of like accordions up to the window. Those are pretty noisy. They're not
01:40very efficient and they just use a lot of energy. So if you can, use the traditional AC window,
01:46AC air conditioner. The other thing is to, you know, use curtains, blackout, you know, I'm in
01:52Tucson, Arizona. It'll be about a hundred degrees today. It was about 115 last week, pretty much
01:57every day. So I've got blackout curtains here in this office to make sure it doesn't get too warm
02:01in here. But yeah, those are some general tips for folks. Obviously we test air conditioners all
02:07the time. Last I checked, we have like 75 different models in our ratings at consumerreports.org from all
02:13the big brands, LG, Black and Decker, Bridger, you name it, we've got it. So we've got all the
02:18information there. If you don't, if you want to get really in depth with this. And you mentioned
02:22some tips about some mistakes people make that hurt their AC's performance. People, a lot of folks
02:29will just kind of crank the AC all the way up to the max of the maximum cold. That's, that can be bad
02:34because all that's telling your AC to do is to try to hit an extraordinarily low number. And depending
02:39upon the outside temperature, it's just going to keep running and running and running until it hits
02:43that almost impossibly low number to hit. So what you want to do is really try to make,
02:48get a balance between the outside temperature and what you're comfortable inside. We find that around
02:5278 degrees, that's what I keep it in my house during the day, 78 degrees. That's, that's not as warm as
03:00it may sound, but it is, it's cool enough. We would also recommend to use ceiling fans. I think the
03:05department of energy has said that a ceiling fan can reduce the feel of a temperature by like four
03:10degrees. So maybe set your thermostat to 76 or whatever, and then let the ceiling fan take it
03:17from there. One thing I did forget to mention is to make sure that you've got an up-to-date
03:21thermostat. You know, nowadays I've got smart thermostats that that'll learn your patterns,
03:25learn when you're home, learn when you're not home, just to make sure that you're not wasting
03:29money cooling your house when it doesn't need to be cooled. Excellent. You answered a lot of our
03:34questions. All right. This one I think is a good one. Is it better to constantly run your AC,
03:38or if you spend a lot of time out of your house, is it better to turn it off and then, you know,
03:42turn it back on when you get home? What's your advice? The advice would be to get a smart thermostat,
03:47which will take all that guesswork out of it actually, just because it'll know, you know,
03:51if you're not home, it doesn't really make a ton of sense to cool the house to 70 degrees. So
03:56that's, that's smart thermostats is a smart investment nowadays. And when should I replace my AC
04:02or how long should a unit last? Let's talk about the indoor unit, the unit that you put in the
04:09window. Of course. Yeah. We generally recommend every eight to 10 years. So if it's been a while
04:14since you've got your last air conditioner, you may want to replace, but eight to 10 years is kind of
04:19what we recommend folks. All right. Consumer Reports senior tech reporter, Nicholas DeLeon. Thank
04:25you so much for joining us here on AccuEther Early and stay cool out there in Tucson.
04:29Thank you. Stay cool.
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