Keeping Cool in the Summer

It's a beautiful day in Las Vegas today (see photo above).  Actually it is a beautiful HOT day as the temps got to 107 degrees this afternoon!  In order to stay cool and save money, here are some things we do:

• We keep the air conditioning on 79 when we are home, 78 at night, and 85 when we aren't home.  I know some people like the temperature to be around 70 degrees in their home but after you are acclimated to the hot weather, 70 degrees is freezing!
• We are gone all day (and usually in air conditioned casinos).  So basically we let someone else pay to keep us cool.  In fact, most casinos are so cold inside that you need to wear a jacket!
• We keep the blinds pulled on the "hot" side of the house (the east side in the morning, the west side in the evening).
• Some people use sun shades and sun screens on their windows but we haven't done that (I'm not sure it would save that much money).
• We do maintenance on our air conditioning system before and after each hot season to hopefully extend the life of the system.
• We pay our electricity bill in full each month so we expect higher bills in the summer however people can opt to even out their bills for the year and pay an average amount each month (basically the power company adds up how much your house should need to pay for electricity each month for a year and divides the amount by 12 to help people not have to pay massively high bills during the summer).
• We water very early in the morning or late in the evening to save water and money--watering during the day isn't a good idea as the water evaporates basically before it hits the ground!
• Our house is fairly new so the seals around the doors and windows are still good.  Older houses will leak cool air in the summer and heated air in the winter which costs a lot of money.
• Each room has a ceiling fan which helps circulate the air (they should run counter-clockwise in the summer, clockwise in the winter).
• We tend to eat "cool" meals in the summer and/or cook outside on the barbecue instead of using the oven which adds heat to the house.
• Fortunately we have whole home air conditioning but in our house in Seattle we didn't have an AC system so on the rare days when it got really hot, we would hang out and sleep in the lowest level of our house where is was much cooler than the top floor of the house.