Keeping A/C On During A Hot Day Is More Efficient Than Turning It Off & On

It might sound surprising, but turning your air conditioner off periodically isn't going to help you save any money or energy. How could that be? It would make sense that if the power's not running you won't be using any energy. That's not the case, as I found out just last week.

Bruce from AireServ shared a message to people that there's a few ways you can save on your cooling costs. First, if the air conditioner is too cool and you want to let it warm up a little, don't turn the air conditioner off on a hot day. You should just bump the thermostat up a couple degrees and let it run continuously. Here's why.

Air conditioners do a couple of things. They dry out a humid room and expel the hot air from the building. You can really get into the specifics of how the machines actually work, but for this explanation it really isn't necessary.

As Bruce, our local expert, explains the reason it's not efficient to turn off your A/C is because each time you turn it back on the system needs to run longer to dry out the air and suck the warmer air out of the home. It's much better to keep it running so that it's doing just a little bit of work all day, instead of a tremendous load when you turn it back on. Think of it as cruise control in your car. It takes more gas (or electric) to get up to speed than it does to maintain that same speed.

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Another helpful tip that has to do with A/C in forced air systems is to check that filter. If it's dirty you'll have worse performance and you can even damage the system or cause it to fail.