A DIY 'Cool Room' May Be The Key To Getting Through A Heat Wave (& Keep Energy Bills Low)

Heat waves are becoming increasingly common — and increasingly intense. Along with the obvious discomfort of sticky skin and sweaty clothes, soaring temperatures can bring a host of unpleasant side effects, including headaches, fatigue, irritability, and high energy bills from keeping the AC on all day. Prolonged exposure to extreme heat can have even more dangerous implications, leading to dehydration, heat exhaustion, or life-threatening heat stroke. As temperatures continue to rise and result in increasingly frequent and severe heat waves, it's more important than ever to find affordable ways to stay cool. One idea is to create your own DIY cool room, a solution that can help reduce heat in your home without blasting the AC.

To create a cool room, identify one room in your home where you can go for a reprieve when temperatures soar. The idea is to keep this one room cool rather than trying to cool down your entire house, which can be expensive. An ideal cool room is one that is naturally shaded from the sun. If this doesn't exist in your home — or you want to enhance the shade further — consider planting trees or tall shrubs outside the windows. This creates a barrier that blocks the sun from streaming in, helping to keep the heat out. Once you've chosen a space, you can use some creative ways to cool the room aside from air conditioning. These strategies include darkening the space, timing when to open doors and windows, setting up fans to circulate airflow, and turning off heat-producing electronic devices.

One way to keep the temperature down in your cool room is the "caveman method".  As the name implies, the idea behind this method is to make the room feel like a cave — keep it dark during the day by blocking out the sun, turn off the lights, and reduce the flow of air from outside during peak daylight hours. In addition to creating natural shade through planting trees, insulated cellular blinds or window film are also effective ways to block sunlight. 

The "wind tunnel method" is another strategy to use to help cool your space. This entails opening windows or doors at opposite sides of a room during cooler times of day — early morning and late evening — to create a cross breeze that lets cool air in and warm air out. Setting up fans while windows and doors are open can also encourage the cross breeze. 

Turning off electronic devices in your cool room will also help keep the temperature down. Devices such as televisions, computers, and gaming systems emit heat, so turning them off will provide instant relief. If you have air conditioning but it's too expensive to run nonstop, pre-cooling is an affordable alternative to running the AC all day. The gist is to use air conditioning strategically: Turn on the AC during off-peak hours to cool off the space. As it heats up outside, turn the AC off while blocking the sun and close all doors and windows to trap the cool air inside. This will allow you to keep your space cool while keeping your energy bills low.