Cooking on Thanksgiving? 5 Tips to Keep Your House Cool

If you’ve ever hosted a Thanksgiving dinner, you know your house can get really hot from all the cooking and additional guests in your home.

Plus, here in Florida, you’re also competing with warmer outside temperatures, which can make keeping your house comfortable on Turkey Day seem like an impossible task.

Not to worry—we'll share 5 easy tips to keep your house cool this Thanksgiving:

1. Limit how often you open your oven

2. Turn on your kitchen exhaust fan

3. Use your ceiling fans

4. Lower your thermostat 3–5° F

5. Make sure your AC has been maintained

The hardest part of Thanksgiving is preparing all that delicious food... then having to wait to eat it.

As tempting as it may be to frequently check your turkey and baked foods to see if they’re ready to eat, constantly opening your oven actually means it will take longer to bake your dinner.

One baking expert estimates that opening the oven even just for 30 seconds can drop the oven temperature by 150°F, which means it will take longer to bake your food.

Plus, all that heat will enter your kitchen space, easily raising your room temperature 2° to 6° F.    

Bottom line? Limit how often you open the oven door.

If you need to check on your food, just look through the oven window. And whatever you do, don’t leave the oven open to bake your food (contrary to what some recipes or traditions suggest).

Most Thanksgiving dinners involve side dishes that are prepared over a stove. And like an oven, a stove adds a lot of heat to your kitchen area.

Luckily, most stoves have a range hood with an exhaust fan. While you cook, make sure you turn on this exhaust fan so that the fan can carry some of the heat outside.

And speaking of fans…

One easy way to help guests stay cool is to turn on your ceiling fans. Ceiling fans circulate air throughout your room, but they also help humans stay cool because they create a wind chill effect.

(If you’re interested in learning more about the wind chill effect, read our article, “This Ceiling Fan Myth Costs You $138 a Year.”)

You’ll also want to lower your thermostat a few degrees from where you normally keep it.

We’re not saying you need to freeze your family and friends while they’re trying to relax and watch the game, but lowering your thermostat a bit will help balance out the heat from all the cooking and extra bodies.

And feel free to adjust as the day goes on; when all the cooking stops and people settle down, you can raise the thermostat again to maintain a comfortable temperature.

The last thing you want is for your AC to stop working on Thanksgiving.

If your AC hasn’t been maintained in a while (over a year), the chances of it giving out are higher because important parts within your AC are likely very dirty.

Dirty parts are more likely to break down or not run as smoothly, which can cause extra wear and tear on other AC components.

During an annual maintenance visit, a tech will clean and lubricate all important AC components and make sure everything is working in tip-top shape.

We’ll send one of our trusted techs to your home and make sure your AC is ready to keep your home cool this Thanksgiving.

Learn about the benefits of joining our CoolClub maintenance plan.