Air conditioning is one of the biggest energy uses in the home. I'm Chuck Booten, and I'm
going to be talking to you today about five simple things that you can do as a homeowner
to make your air conditioner more energy efficient, which will save you energy, make your house
more comfortable and save you money. Roughly one out of every eight dollars that
Americans spend on their utility bills goes into cooling their homes... that's a lot of
money in and of itself but also, air conditioning is one of the big drivers of what we call
peak energy, which is the strain on the grid on a hot summer day. I'm hoping that homeowners
will see this and take the 15 or 20 minutes it actually takes to do this installation
to save themselves a lot of energy, a lot of money.
What you see here is an example of a standard window air condition installation. This is
what you might see if you use just the materials supplied by the manufacturer. This isn't bad
but there are definitely things you can do to improve it. If light comes in, air can
come in too and that reduces the performance quite a bit and can really affect your comfort.
And... this happens all the way around your installation.
So, on the side here you see these accordion panels and these are made out of plastic typically
-- but there's no insulating value there. So, when your window is closed -- your window
is actually a pretty good insulator. This (pointing to accordion) eliminates a lot of
that... but we can fix that too. Here we have all of the supplies that you'll
need to get started. These are all available at your local home improvement warehouse.
There are a variety of different styles of foam. Some have different thicknesses some
have coatings that are more weather durable and it's all up to you and your personal preference.
If you choose a foam that has a color that you don't like that much, you can also add
some tape onto the outside." Then you have your tape and this is actually fairly important...
if you have windows that have paint or stain on them, tape could leave residue or it could
peel some of that paint. So you want to be careful. If you have a window that has paint,
you should consider using a tape that has a little less adhesion -- it might save you
some trouble later on. If you're going to install a diverter, you'll need a piece of
semi-rigid board, medium density fiber board usually works well -- you can get it faced
or unfaced and usually around 1/8th to a ¼-of an inch will fit most air conditioners. And
be sure that whatever tools that you're using, you are comfortable with and always make sure
that you have the proper safety equipment. So, step one is to remove the accordion panels
and there's a little keeper on the side here...you can see I have my finger on the bottom and
there's a little hole to push that up and you slide it out. No tools required. And then,
this slides... you can set those pieces aside. And then, on the unit itself there's another
little sliding piece and you can slide that off as well.
After you remove the accordion panels, you want to replace this. So, Ed and I are going
to move this... you want to make sure that it's set correctly. You don't want this falling
out of your window. So, we have that correct. Step two is measuring and then, cutting and
installing foam. So, you'll need to find out how wide... that's about ten-inches and about
how tall -- and that's about 15 and a half. You want to make sure the foam is nice and
tight because if you have large gaps, that will make it harder to air seal and tape up
later. Here are a couple of foam panels that I've
already cut to size for this particular window... and you can see that it's fairly tight in
there. You can see it's nice and even up against the window frame... and that's good. So, now
we'll go on to the other panel. Step three is to seal between the windows.
This is an example of an open-cell foam that's typically supplied by the manufacturer and
it does a reasonable job. This is an example of closed-cell foam, which does a much better
job at air sealing, so we're going to use this.
Step four is to use backer rod -- oftentimes, smaller... they're sold in different diameters,
so you'll have to match it to your window -- to seal up the side channels. This is an
easy thing to forget -- but it's also an easy thing to fix.
Step five is to tape around all of the joints and all of the foam. You want to make sure
to seal up all of the air gaps to prevent leakage.
The blower door test is a fairly standard test that's done with many home audits or
energy assessments. The total air leakage reduction that came from the difference between
the manufacturer's accessories and our recommended method was roughly equivalent to a hole that
was five-square inches in diameter. That is actually about 10% of the whole home's leakage.
It's pretty substantial when you think about the fact that many homes that have a window
air conditioner probably have several, so by applying this method of better installation,
you can really seal up a number of holes, which are about five-square inches each.
For best performance, you can install a diverter and what this does is prevent the air that
you just spent money and energy cooling from getting sucked back into the air conditioner.
You're going to be more comfortable because you're getting the cooling effect that you're
paying for. You're also going to be helping to reduce the strain on our nation's power
grid, so you're improving our energy security... and lastly, you're helping the environment
by helping to reduce carbon emissions that come from the power that you're using.
So, this is it. It's that easy... now, for our purposes today, we used this particular
tape and foam, but you can customize this however you want and if you do, you too can
save money, energy and make your house more comfortable.