Although it seems obvious, the best way to avoid overheating your car in the sun is not to park it in the sun. Parking in the shade avoids the thermal radiation that makes the interior of your car reach temperatures of up to 70ºC when the sun hits hard. The use of a sunshade under the windscreen will also help reduce the rise in temperature inside the vehicle, but not significantly. Of course, it will prevent us from burning our hands in contact with the steering wheel, the gear lever, the seat and even the seat belt.
Remember that an element as simple as a sun visor helps the car better cope with the summer heat. Place it on the windshield when parking so that the internal temperature drops up to 10 degrees. When you access again you will notice a more friendly temperature, you will avoid spending fuel by forcing the air conditioning and also premature wear of adjustments, plastics and on-board coatings.
If we have had no choice but to park in the sun and we are forced to get going immediately, the experts at Alquiber offer us various solutions that will help reduce the interior temperature of your vehicle even before the air conditioning takes care of it. .
On the hottest days, before connecting the air conditioning, lower the car windows so that the temperature of the passenger compartment is not so high, since if you connect the air conditioning as soon as you get in and without ventilating the car, you will make it work at maximum performance and deteriorate plus. Driving by car, the optimum temperature in the passenger compartment is between 20ºC and 26ºC. In fact, and although the vehicle may be cold when starting, 21ºC is an ideal mark to go to within a few minutes of starting the march. Activating the air conditioning supposes a small loss of power of about 6 CV. It happens because the compressor takes power from the motor for its activation. It is estimated that more or less 6% more fuel is spent. Also, the higher the mechanical rotational speed, the better the air conditioning will work; just the opposite when the engine is idling.
Although every year it jumps onto our screens as the innovative discovery of an ingenious Chinese professor, ventilating the car by fanning it with its doors is a classic solution that manages to significantly reduce the temperature inside the car – up to eight degrees according to the most optimistic estimates. The mechanics of this system, which seeks to dislodge the hot air accumulated in the interior and replace it with that from the outside through convection, consists of opening and closing a door with determination five times while keeping the window of the opposite door completely open. And to suck in air from the outside, colder than that of the cabin, and reduce the temperature more effectively, we can always request the help of another person and duplicate the process in another door and another window.
Opening the windows while driving and coping with the noise and increased fuel consumption associated with the loss of vehicle aerodynamics has found an original alternative that is only slightly less noisy. It is a simple trick consisting of fitting a plastic bottle cut in half with its mouth inside the car into the slightly open windows. In this way, once in motion, the force of the wind causes the air to compress as it passes through the bottleneck and decompress, losing a few degrees in the process, as it enters the interior of the car.
The window tinting also ensures that the interior temperature of the car is not so high, so we can resort to the installation of solar sheets. These are basically installed as a security measure since it keeps the crystals glued in the event of a collision, as explained by Cristalbox. But they also serve to protect the little ones from the sun’s rays (blocks more than 99% of UV rays). And a third reason, and the one that concerns us now, is to save on the use of air conditioning, since some sheets, such as Energysa, are capable of repelling 70% of the heat. The difference between wearing tinted windows and not wearing it is huge. Thanks to window tinting, a cooler temperature can be maintained with less air conditioning operating time.
In addition, there are other homemade solutions, such as leaving the windows down half an inch while the car is parked, or placing rags or towels in the interior ventilation grilles of the car and keeping them permanently moist, and even leaving waterproof ice packs on the floor of the car. passenger compartment, which will help to cool down a bit, especially on short journeys.