The heat in the Philippines can be very unbearable, that’s why preparing your home to be climate responsive, especially during the summertime can go a long way. In this article, we are listing down 10 ways on how to prepare your home for the summer season.
The summer season is always an exciting time in the country because of all the fun activities and family getaways that you’ve been planning for months. Summertime is an eventful time so for everything to run smooth and well-run, everything should be organized. Even though the summer season has a lot of exciting things that we are all looking forward to, the preparations shouldn’t only be for summer vacations. One of the things you should start doing is getting your house ready for summer.
The summer season in the Philippines also marks the start of the dry season in the country. This means that during this time, the country will experience the hottest weather of the year, and of course, the obvious way to do is to find ways on how to make everything cooler.
10 Tips to Make your Home Ready for the Summer
Getting your home ready for the summer should be one of your priorities before even summer starts, the heat can get too uncomfortable and doing some modifications to your house can help alleviate the heat. As a homeowner, you have the power to cool your house and enjoy the entirety of your summer vacations.
Here are 10 tips on how you can make your home summer ready.
1. Check your air conditioning units and other appliances
One of the solutions that a lot of people do to survive the heat of the summer at home is by installing air conditioning units. Aircons help cool the air inside your house or a specific room to adjustable temperatures and periods of time.
Before summer even starts, it is best to have your air conditioning units checked by a professional in order to see if your unit needs repairing, cleaning, or replacing if it’s an old model. Some aircons need their filters cleaned regularly and what’s good about this is you can do it on your own.
Some cooling appliances include electric fans, air coolers, and more. Making sure that these appliances are in condition makes your summer uninterrupted by untimely repairs.
In buying appliances, it is best to look for inverter appliances especially in aircons as they help reduce your electricity bill during summer, when these appliances are used almost every day.
2. Invest on good quality ceiling fans
Ceiling fans differ from stand fans and wall fans because of the range or area that they can provide cool air to. Good quality ceiling fans are a great investment because they are a big help in cooling areas which is good in getting your home ready for summer.
Ceiling fans come in different shapes and brands but their advantage from other types of fans is that they help circulate the air inside your house greater than stand fans. The circulation of air in your house is important in keeping the spaces cool because it prevents the warm air to stay stagnant.
In choosing ceiling fans, it is best to look for heavy duty ones that can stay operational for hours. You can choose whether you like wooden ceiling fans or those with metal blades, just make sure that your ceiling fan is light enough to be carried by your ceiling.
Read Also: 10 Ways to Beat the Summer Heat
3. Find decent curtains
You can reduce heat and light coming from your home by covering the openings in your house structure. These openings are your doors and windows. The obvious solution in covering your windows is by installing curtains.
But the type of curtain that you would use would also affect the temperature inside your house.
Make sure that in choosing curtains for the summer, you would pick those that does not have flashy colours that would be an eye sore since the sun would be hitting your windows brighter than ever.
Pick curtains with fabric that wind can pass through so you’d have the option to open your windows during the day and still keep the dust and insects that cause damages from going inside your house.
4. Install door and window screens
Just like with hanging curtains to cover your windows, installing protective screens also helps with letting the air inside your home and still keeping the unwanted particles outside.
Aluminium screens can be installed to your windows as well as your doors. You can choose the design that you want to make it more appealing to look at. By installing screens, you can now let your windows open for the entire day letting the cool and natural air in.
Having the natural air circulate your home also helps with saving electricity during summer and lowering your electrical bill at the end of the month. That’s a win-win situation!
Screens on windows and doors can also be an additional safety features as you can install additional locks to it making it impossible for outsiders to enter your homes with ease.
5. Placing Water Features and Plants
As we all know, nature provides as with everything that we need to survive. That is why it is not surprising to know that nature also offers cooling elements that you can integrate to your homes to battle the summer heat.
Having plants around helps with having proper circulation of clean around your home or property. Not to mention, they also add a cosy feel and peaceful ambiance to the areas of your home. Having indoor plants provide a lot of benefits to you as a homeowner and one of them is cooling the spaces that they are in.
Planting trees in your yard also helps with shading a large portion of your property from the hot rays of the sun making your home cooler and protected. Water features such as fountains also helps with cooling the breeze so if you have the option to install one, do consider placing it on the areas that the natural wind blows from.
6. Declutter your home
Anything that is unnecessary and cluttered around your house actually adds up to the heat. Making sure that your home is always clean during the summer allows the air to move freely around the areas of your home.
Organizing your home has its own perks and benefits and one of them is reducing the heat and stress that you would feel during the summer time. For more home organizational tips, we made an in-depth guide that you can read this.
In organizing your stuff for the summer, it is best to have a minimalist mindset so that everything is easier to see and your home will feel less cluttered and cooler. Start by putting things that are not for everyday use in storage and keep your shelves always clean from dust as they add up to the heat inside your house.
7. Finding cooling paint colours
You can always have the option to repaint your house to the colour of your liking. But it is best to plan the colours of each room in your house beforehand to reduce the heat during summer. Yes, you read that right! The colours of your walls actually have a huge effect to the temperature. This means that by studying which colours have the ability to cool your rooms, you can control the general temperature of each space.
Even just by adding a cooling paint colour to an accent wall can help manipulate the warmth of any room. Here are some colours that you can choose from and their other effects. Take note that the lightness and saturation of the colour plays an important role so be careful in choosing the right shades.
Here are four tips on choosing a cool pain color for your home when preparing for the summer.
1. White
White paint colour is your best choice as it reflects 100% of the heat. White also gives a clean and bright ambiance which makes your home feel livelier and more organized. White also makes your rooms look larger.
2. Grey
If white isn’t your cup of tea, then consider looking at shades of grey paint colours. Just like white, grey reflects most of the heat, and it gives off a raw and modern look that will surely be noticed by your visitors. You can put grey colours to busy areas of your home like the living room and hallways.
3. Green
Green in lighter shades also helps with cooling the areas of your home. Green produces a calming aura that is beneficial to put strategically in your home.
4. Blue
Blue is probably the first colour you would think when you hear the word “cool” and rightfully so. Blue in lighter shades help with reducing the heat in a room. Psychologically, blue helps with making humans feel sleepy and cosy so it is best to use this paint colour in bedrooms.
The interior of your home shouldn’t be your only priority, finding cooling paint colours to your home exterior also helps with cooling your property during summer. Avoid using dark shades of colours as it absorbs the heat and thus creating a warmer temperature inside your home.
Now the colour of your walls greatly affects the temperature of your home but also does the colour of your things. Find bedsheets, carpets, floor tiles, and curtains in colling colours to maximize the cooling effect to prepare your home for the summer.
8. Installing louvers
Louvers are a sun protective detail that you can integrate to your windows. The type of louvers that you would choose will depend on the orientation of the windows. Louver windows blocks enough sun rays to pass through your windows but still let a controllable amount of light in.
You can have vertical or horizontal louvers to install on your windows. Louvers can be manual or mechanical. In manual louvers, you can adjust where or how many of the louver panels is facing a specific direction on your own. In mechanical louvers, you can control the panels through a control panel or remote so the they would move at the same time as the sun moves during the day.
Window louvers can be made from wood panels or aluminium blades and you have the liberty to have them customized.
9. Cross ventilation
Cross ventilation is an important thing that a property owner should consider when building a home. The good thing about this solution is that you don’t need to spend anything on additional equipment to cool the areas of your home.
All you need to do is to plan where your windows and doors are placed to make sure that the air the passes through your home has a clear and direct passage. This means that any natural air that goes inside your house should also have an exit.
The passage of the natural air in your home depends on the placement of the openings. A good passage of natural air is called passive cooling.
Read Also: 10 Ways to Keep Your House Cool without Air-conditioning
10. Avoiding adding too much concrete
Concrete is one of the leading construction materials in building residential houses in the Philippines. Although concrete has its advantages, it also has the characteristics of absorbing and storing heat during the day and the slowly releasing it during the night, which makes your home warmer, especially during the summer.
Concrete has some alternatives that you can choose from and there are recent innovations that are being introduced in the construction industry to help lessen the heat absorbed by concrete.
In interior walls, you can use cement fibre boards mounted on aluminium frames, which are lighter and cheaper alternative to concrete. Using less concrete also reduces your property’s carbon footprint.
These are our ten tips to prepare your home for the summer heat. Nothing should get in the way for you and your family to enjoy your summer at home. So, what are you waiting for, go ahead and try them out!
Bria Homes provides a wide variety of house and lot properties throughout the Philippines. As a leading real estate developer in the Philippines, Bria Homes makes sure that the properties offered are designed to withstand the heat of the summer to ensure that you and your family are protected and comfortable. The Bria Homes website showcases all the properties available that you can browse by type or by location.
Written by Rashid M.
