Cooling ideas and information

Is your home too hot? Spending too much on air conditioning? Here are 9 simple tips to help you keep your home cooler when the mercury's up.

Heating and cooling can be very expensive, and knowing what you're paying to use your heaters and air conditioners is a good way to rein in your usage. Here's how to calculate your costs.

Ever noticed that some houses are cooler or warmer than others without relying heavily on powered cooling or heating devices? This usually comes down to clever design...

Is your aircon dripping water? Not blowing cold air? Perhaps it's making funny noises or blowing out a bad smell? There are a few different things that can go wrong with an airconditioner. Find out how to deal with them.

Picking the right air conditioner for your home’s very important. The air conditioner you choose can either be an effective cooling solution, or a costly lesson in what not to do.

There are a surprising number of different types of airconditioners. Choosing the right one will make a big difference to how you cool your home.

If you need to artificially cool your home, it's well worth considering how much that'll cost, and what kinds of options you have. Air conditioners are effective, but they're also very energy hungry...

Heaters and air conditioners can easily account for most of your energy consumption if you allow them to. Find out what you can do to minimise the need for artificial heating and cooling, and to reduce your consumption.

Cooling technologies differ hugely in terms of their initial and running costs, environmental impact, and how effectively they actually cool the air in your home. What's right for your place?

Cooling your home doesn’t necessarily mean installing powered air conditioning units.

Simple but incredibly effective and available in all shapes and sizes. Fans have been in use in some form or another for as long as humans have appreciated a breeze.

Evaporative coolers work by blowing air across wet elements to create a chilled breeze. These types of coolers are best suited to less humid climates.

Air conditioners are refrigerative coolers. While these aren't the most efficient coolers available, they are incredibly effective and provide excellent cooling in any climate.

Roof sprinklers spray roof surfaces with water, in an effort to cool the roof and therefore lower the temperature inside the house.

Solar cooling uses the sun's heat in one of several ways in order to improve airflow and help to draw heat out of the house.

In conjunction with other home automation functions, your home can be set up so that cooling and shading are controlled automatically according to your needs.

Split system refrigerative air conditioners are popular because they are relatively quiet and are designed to effectively cool the sorts of areas you might find in homes.

Cassette air conditioners are ceiling mounted, and because of their considerable cooling capacity, are normally best suited to large living areas.

Ducted air conditioners are designed to cool entire houses. A cooling unit is typically mounted on the roof, and cool air is spread around the home through a network of ducts.

Geothermal heat pump systems are able to draw heat from the ground to use for cooling your home. Geothermal systems are expensive to install but very cheap to run.