Green Your Cooling Routine
Living in a semi-tropical climate requires daily adaptation to heat. You want to minimize sun exposure and cool off in the most economical, healthful and environmentally-friendly ways. Unfortunately, many of the technologies and products we have been using to cool ourselves can pollute our atmosphere and waterways, overtax the energy grid, and actually contribute to higher outside air temperature.
In the City of Fort Lauderdale, we are taking action to cool our neighborhoods safely and efficiently and to help you do the same. Projects like increasing our Urban Canopy to 23.6% by 2018, expanding green space, retrofitting streetlights with LED lighting, painting City lots with reflective coatings, and carefully permitting HVAC system installations, are just a few of our efforts to deal sustainably with the heat.
You can help. Because we are so reliant on air conditioning, it is important that we all do what we can to maximize its efficiency and minimize the energy it consumes. Start by learning to treat interior cooling as a systemic process, one where each component affects the other. Windows, fans, lighting, roofs, and more all affect how cool your room feels. Minor steps, often free, can make big differences, and minor adjustments by a lot of us can make huge differences. The steps that you take to cool your surroundings more efficiently, can even begin to mitigate the urban heat island effect and help to cool us all. Explore these pages from our Sustainable Building section to green your cooling routine.
Ventilation, Air Flow, and Fans
THE CITY OF FORT LAUDERDALE REMINDS YOU NEVER TO OPEN A FIRE HYDRANT TO KEEP COOL. PLEASE CONTACT OUR 24-HOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE CENTER AT (954) 828-8000 IMMEDIATELY UPON NOTICING AN OPEN HYDRANT.