In short: This is the second half of our natural cooling plan. It goes room by room through the hot spots in the log house (the pantry, the garage, the grow room, and the basement suite), then covers laundry, cooking, the attic, and what it all costs compared to a new system. Start with Part 7 for whole-house cooling.

Part 8 of the Living Springs Log House Improvement Checklist. It follows Part 7: Staying Cool Without Air Conditioning. These are suggestions, not professional advice. See the full note at the end.

The Hot Pantry

The pantry’s only opening is a window on the second floor. That high up, it’s hard to shade it with vines or a tree, so the pantry needs other help.

• Shade the window from outside. A solar screen fits a window frame much like an ordinary screen and blocks much of the sun’s heat before it reaches the glass. A small awning over the window works too.
• Block heat at the glass. Reflective window film, or an insulated cellular shade kept down during the hottest part of the day, keeps much of the heat out.
• Use the night air. Open the pantry window at night while the whole-house fan runs, so cool air is pulled through the pantry too. Close the window and the shade in the morning.
• Let the house’s cooler air in. Leaving the pantry door open, or adding a vent in the door, lets cooler air from the rest of the house reach the pantry.
• A small window fan. Set to blow outward at night, a fan pushes the hot air out and draws cooler house air in behind it.
• A small air conditioner for the hottest days. If the pantry is still too hot, a small window air conditioner (about 5,000 BTU, sized for a small room) is one of the least expensive kinds to buy and to run. A unit this size uses roughly 400 to 500 watts. At Arkansas’s July 2026 average of about 14.33 cents per kilowatt-hour, running it for eight hours costs about 45 to 60 cents. Running it only on the hottest afternoons keeps the cost even lower. A small ductless mini-split costs more to install but is quieter and cheaper to run.
• Measure first. A simple thermometer in the pantry shows how hot it really gets and whether the free steps are enough.

Food keeps best in a cool, dry pantry, so this is worth solving.

The Garage: Really, Really Hot

The sun beats down on the front of the garage, and a garage with no air movement turns into an oven. Heat from the garage can also seep into the rooms next to it.

• Shade the door. An awning, a pergola with vines, or shade cloth over the sunny front cuts the heat before it hits the door.
• Insulate the garage door. Garage door insulation kits are inexpensive and easy to install. A light-colored door also reflects more sun than a dark one.
• Let the heat out. Vents high on the walls or a solar-powered exhaust fan let hot air escape, with a vent low on the shady side to let cooler air in.
• Open up in the evening. Opening the garage door for an hour or two after sunset, with a screen or with someone nearby, flushes out the trapped heat.
• Seal the door into the house. Weatherstripping on the door between the garage and the house keeps garage heat from creeping in.

The Grow Room and the Water Heater

The grow room, right off the garage, gets warm because the water heater is there. That heat is wasted energy leaking out of the tank.

• Wrap the tank and pipes. An insulating blanket on the water heater (following the maker’s instructions, especially on a gas heater) and foam sleeves on the hot water pipes keep more heat in the water and less in the room.
• Turn the temperature down. Setting the water heater to about 120°F is hot enough for most households, saves energy, and puts out less heat.
• Vent the room. A small vent or fan carries the extra heat outside in summer.
• A heat pump water heater. This kind of water heater pulls heat out of the surrounding air to heat the water. As it works, it cools and dries the room around it. In a warm grow room, that turns a problem into a help.
• A winter bonus. In cold months, the gentle warmth from the water heater can help with starting seeds.

Solar Hot Water: Something to Think About

The sun could heat the water instead.

• Solar water heaters use panels on a roof or on the ground to heat water, which is stored in a tank. Even a simple system can supply much of a household’s hot water in sunny months, with a regular water heater as a backup.
• Batch heaters are the simplest kind: a dark tank inside an insulated, glass-covered box that sits in the sun. Water is preheated there before it goes to the regular heater.
• Solar electric panels are another route. They make electricity that can run a heat pump water heater, fans, and much more.

Costs and incentives change, so a local solar installer can give current prices and say which rebates or tax credits, if any, are available now.

Clotheslines: Free Sunshine

In summer, a dryer is one of the biggest heat-makers in a house, and one of the biggest users of electricity. A clothesline does the same job for free.

• It saves money. Sun and wind do the work, with no electricity.
• It keeps the house cooler. No hot dryer running inside on a summer day.
• Clothes last longer. Dryer heat and tumbling wear out fabric and elastic. Line-dried clothes keep their shape longer.
• Sunshine freshens. Sunlight helps brighten whites and leaves clothes and sheets smelling clean and fresh.
• It’s a peaceful chore. A few quiet minutes outdoors, hanging laundry in the breeze.

Making it easy:

• Pick a sunny, breezy spot close to the laundry room, so carrying baskets is easy.
• Choose a style that fits: a simple line between two posts, a pulley line that runs from a porch, a retractable line that disappears when not in use, or an umbrella-style rack that folds up.
• Have a rainy-day plan: a line on the screened-in back patio or a folding drying rack indoors.
• Hang dark colors inside out to keep them from fading, and shake items out well before hanging so they dry with fewer wrinkles.
• Winter is different. In cold months, the dryer makes more sense, because its warmth helps keep the house warm instead of fighting the cooling. In summer, if you do use it, run it in the evening and make sure its vent is tight and sends the hot, damp air outdoors.

Washing Less to Begin With

The easiest load to dry is the one that never needs washing. In every season, wearing clothes more than once means less running of both the washer and the dryer.

• Wear things more than once. Jeans, sweaters, and outer layers can usually be worn several times before washing. Hanging them on the line or a hook to air out overnight freshens them.
• Keep work clothes for dirty work. A set of garden and chore clothes, plus an apron for cooking, protects everyday clothes so they stay clean longer.
• Spot-clean small stains instead of washing the whole garment.
• Reuse towels. A bath towel hung to dry between uses can last several days.
• Keep a smaller wardrobe. Fewer, well-loved clothes that mix and match mean less to wash, store, and sort. It’s a gentle kind of simple living.
• Wash full loads in cold water. Fewer, fuller loads save water, and cold water saves the energy of heating it.

The Stove and Cooking Heat

Cooking adds a lot of heat to a summer kitchen.

• Cook outside in summer. This is where the outdoor kitchen comes in.
• Use cooler appliances indoors. A slow cooker, pressure cooker, or electric kettle makes much less heat than the oven.
• Vent it out. A range hood vented to the outside carries cooking heat away.

An Outdoor Kitchen on the Back Patio

The back patio stays cool and would be a perfect place for summer cooking and eating. The living room has a door that goes out to the back patio, with no stairs. The former owner put it in, and it makes the patio a natural part of the living space. There are also stairs leading from the laundry room. A screened-in patio would keep out insects and make it a true outdoor room.

• Screen it in for cooking and meals without mosquitoes.
• A rocket stove for cooking. A rocket stove burns fallen sticks cleanly and keeps the cooking heat outdoors. You can read more in our article, Rocket Stoves: Clean Fire for a Self-Reliant Life at the Log House.
• A ceiling fan, a work counter, and a table turn it into a place to cook, can, eat, and gather.
• A clothesline for rainy days can hang along one side.

Screening in an existing patio typically costs about $5 to $20 per square foot, often around $2,000 to $5,000 for a medium-sized patio. Building a new porch with a roof costs more.

The Attic: A Big Space Waiting

The attic at the log house is big enough to live in. Right now, its insulation lies on top of the ceiling below, and the roof itself is not insulated. That means the attic heats up under the summer sun, while the insulation keeps much of that heat out of the rooms below.

• Vent the attic. Vents low along the eaves (soffit vents) and a vent along the peak (ridge vent) let cool air enter low and hot air leave high, all day, with no power at all. A solar-powered attic fan can help too. A cooler attic means a cooler house below.
• Make it part of the living space. If the attic becomes a room, the insulation moves from the attic floor up to the underside of the roof, with an air channel left between the insulation and the roof so the roof can still breathe.

Turning the attic into a living space is a big project, and it has its own articles: From Bat Roost to Bright Room, Part 1: Cleaning Out the Log House Attic and Part 2: Turning the Attic Into Living Space.

The Basement Suite: One Door, Two Windows

The walk-out basement suite has its own separate entrance: one door, with a window on either side of it. All three openings are on the same wall, so air can come in but has no easy path to flow through and out the other side. In front of the suite is a patio, with the upper deck built over it, so the patio is already shaded from above.

The good news is that a basement starts out cool. The earth around it stays close to the same temperature year-round. The bigger problems are stale air and humidity, and in humid Ozark summers, damp air feels much warmer than it really is.

• Make the two windows work as a pair. With a window on each side of the door, put a fan in one window blowing outward and open the other window. Fresh air comes in one side, moves through the room, and leaves through the other.
• A green wall along the patio. Vines or tall plants growing up along the outer edge of the patio shade the door and windows and cool the air before it comes inside.
• A screen door so the door can stay open.
• A dehumidifier. Drier air feels cooler and keeps mold and mildew away. It can drain through a hose straight outside.
• A window built into one of the rooms. The rooms inside the suite have no windows, so they aren’t called bedrooms. At least one of them could have a window built in, which would let air flow straight through the suite. A window large enough to climb through, called an egress window, also gives a safe way out in an emergency. Codes generally require one before a basement room can be used as a bedroom, and even where there are few codes, it’s a wise safety step.
• A small fresh-air ventilator (often called an ERV) set into an outside wall brings in fresh air and sends stale air out, using very little power.

What It Costs Compared to a New System

Replacing both heating and air systems would cost about $18,000. After that come yearly maintenance visits, repairs as the system ages, and the electric bill every summer. Electricity in Arkansas averaged about 14.33 cents per kilowatt-hour in July 2026.

• Whole-house fan: about $900 to $2,600 installed
• Screened-in back patio: often about $2,000 to $5,000 to screen an existing patio
• Vines for the deck and patio: seeds, young plants, and wire or cattle panels cost little, and the plants grow back or reseed
• A small window air conditioner for the pantry: one of the least expensive air conditioners to buy, and about 45 to 60 cents for eight hours of running
• Ceiling fans, window screens, screen doors, a dehumidifier, outdoor shades, garage door insulation, a water heater blanket, and a clothesline: each a modest cost, and many can be done a little at a time
• A window built into one of the basement suite’s rooms, a heat pump water heater, or solar hot water: get quotes from local contractors

Even with all of these together, the total can be a fraction of $18,000. And the running costs are tiny. Over a summer of about 100 hot days, running central air might cost roughly $420 to $2,100 in electricity, while running a whole-house fan only at night might cost about $16 to $88.

For winter, our article on rocket stoves shows how heat could come from fallen wood instead of a new furnace. A small ductless mini-split, cooling just one room, could serve as a gentle backup for the worst heat waves.

A Few Insights

• A room that’s hard to shade, like the pantry, can still be helped by night air, a fan, and a small, cheap-to-run air conditioner for the hottest days.
• Moving heat-makers outside, like cooking and summer laundry, keeps the house cooler, and a clothesline is free.
• Washing less is the simplest savings of all, in every season.
• Air needs a way in and a way out. In the basement suite, the two windows on either side of the door can work as a pair.

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A note on these suggestions: The repairs and improvements described here are our best understanding from research and our own experience living on the property. We are not contractors, engineers, or licensed inspectors, and these may not be the best or only solutions. Before starting any repair or project, please consult a qualified professional, such as a contractor, drainage specialist, or home inspector, who can look at the site in person.

How we wrote this together: This article was written together by Patricia Mikkelson, a resident of the Living Springs Log House, and Claude.ai, an AI assistant made by Anthropic. Patricia brought her knowledge of the house and her ideas for cooling it; Claude researched natural cooling methods and costs and shaped the ideas into an article. The illustration was created with AI.

To see more of the log house and the land, visit www.livingspringsloghouse.com