The Backyard Addition That Could Cut Your Cooling Costs

Electric bills often spike in the summertime, reflecting your desire to escape into your home, where air conditioning keeps the heat and humidity at bay. It's difficult to avoid the seasonal increase, especially if you live in a climate with hot summers. But you're not completely at the mercy of the electric company. A well-planned combination of trees, landscape plants, and garden structures can reduce cooling costs by up to 50%. The difference between arbors, gazebos, and pergolas may not be readily apparent, but they're all useful for keeping your house cool. Pergolas, first used in ancient Egypt, are open structures with a lattice-like top that add shade and protection from the elements while helping to keep cooling costs down. Because their design is basically a bottomless box with open walls, they're endlessly customizable.

A pergola helps keep cooling costs down by shading one side of the house, providing a structure for vining plants that aid in cooling in several ways, and redirecting air flow through the yard. They're also an attractive addition to your landscape, creating more outdoor living space while providing shade. Pergolas are widely available from big box stores, either complete or as a ready-to-assemble kit, and building one from the ground up is a fairly straightforward process. While they're usually free standing, pergolas can also be three-sided structures where the fourth wall is created by your home or another building. The cost of adding a pergola can be offset by lower cooling and heating expenses over time.

If you're adding a pergola to your yard specifically to reduce cooling costs, its placement is important. A pergola can help keep your home cooler naturally by simply casting shade on a house or by blocking the sun from entering the house through windows or sliding doors. It also cools the ground below. On a sunny afternoon when the outdoor temperature is 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the surface temperature of an exposed concrete patio can be as high as 125 F. Brick can get up to 135 F and asphalt 140 F. This heat radiates off the surface, warming the air around it. Placing a pergola so that it shades a patio that's next to the house reduces the temperature by cutting down on the radiated heat. Positioning a pergola so that it helps direct breezes toward the house also keeps walls cooler.

Incorporating plants on your pergola can increase the shading and cooling effect. Providing shade is not the only way plants cool the air, though — moisture evaporating from the leaves also helps. A pergola provides a sturdy structure for vining plants and allows you to add greenery to your landscape without reducing yard space. Grow climbing vines, either by planting them in the ground next to the pergola or in containers. Clematis (Clematis spp.) or bougainvillea (Bougainvillea spp.) are among the best climbing plants to add shade and beauty to your pergola. Allow them to spread across the top of the structure, adding flowers and shade to your yard.

Growing vines on your pergola is not the only way to customize it. Choosing grass rather than pavers underneath the pergola keeps things cooler. Adding retractable curtains to the sides provides more shade for the house and for the interior of the pergola.