I grew up in Louisiana and it was mandatory there. People lived there before air conditioning of course but the housing design was different. Modern houses there have to have functioning air conditioning, almost always central air, in the summer to be habitable. We never had air conditioning in school however because the buildings were old and the area was so poor. We couldn’t wear shorts either or revealing shirts. Even growing up there, that was brutal and all of the textbooks were ruined by sweat stains. We had mandatory water breaks every 30 minutes for a while because too many students kept getting dehydrated and passing out in class.
I live in Massachusetts now and I don’t have air conditioning. It does get plenty hot enough for it sometimes though. It is 87F as a write this and it was over 100F a week ago. It doesn’t last long enough for me to worry about much. I just channel my inner Louisiana boy and enjoy the sweat. You have to go into New Hampshire or Maine before air conditioning isn’t much of a concern at all. They have heat waves but it cools down at night a lot so the buildings tend to stay cool even during the day.
I live in Tennessee, and grew up without it, but now can’t imagine going without. Well, that’s not entirely true. I went without for about six weeks at the beginning of this summer and it was miserable.
Even right now, I have a fan on me with the central AC going as well. For what it’s worth, the heat index is 97°F (36°C) right now.
I’ve lived in Canada (Saskatchewan and Ontario) for 36 years, and I’ve only lived in places with AC for the last 5. It’s nice on the few hottest days of the year, but most of the time it goes unused.
When I was young, the only place you could get AC was the movie theater and the supermarket. Now it’s everywhere, but I don’t see how life changed that much that it became necessary. As far as I can tell, the only difference is that AC became cheaper.
I’ve heard a lot of people claim “no one” has air conditioning in the Seattle area, but that’s definitely not true. It’s not ubiquitous, but it’s not really that rare either. I’d say probably about half of our friends and family around here have it. We just had air conditioning installed in our house over the winter because we were getting a new furnace anyway and figured it would be nice to have.
We actually love hot weather – you’re not going to hear us complaining like a lot of people here when it gets to the 80s or 90s (80-85 is my personal ideal temperature). But it’s nice to be cooler when we’re sleeping, and even when the outside temp is 75 the house can get over 80 without AC. We don’t usually sleep with the windows open, both because of allergies and because our bedroom is on the first floor and we don’t want any unwanted visitors (we get a lot of raccoons and such in our back yard). Besides, on a truly hot day, it takes until the wee hours of the morning for the bedroom to cool down even with the windows open.
My wife was home recovering from gallbladder surgery this week, and I’m sure she was glad to have a way to keep the house a little cooler as she lay in bed all day. Despite our love of hot weather, I’d say it’s one of my favorite improvements we’ve ever made to our house.
It depends on where you live. Newer homes in the Deep South are designed so that they are mostly sealed and it is a real problem when the air conditioner goes out. There weren’t designed to exist without it. The older homes also get hot but they are very leaky and they have features like high ceilings and huge porches that make it bearable. People can do just fine when the temperature is in the 90’s outside (we are a tropical species after all) but it is a problem when it is hotter inside than out and the air isn’t moving at all plus mildew and other problems are growing.
South central Idaho, up in the mountains, and central AC is pretty uncommon. You’d really only need it for a few days of the year, and even then if you can open your windows at night it gets down to somewhere around 50F.
I don’t have it and really don’t need it. Today is the warmest day we’ve had this year, I think, and it got up to about 87F. It does not get what I call hot here, except for a few days. Right now the house is warmer than I’d like for sleeping, though it’s not too bad, but once the sun goes down I’ll open up. Ahhhhh.
My car AC doesn’t really work anymore but I don’t worry about it. It does get warm in there but it’s not awful.
I live in the Mid-Atlantic/Mid-South where A/C is mandatory. The hubby and I were visiting a family friend in Denver in July a few years back and noticed she had no air conditioning. We panicked, knowing how goddawful summer nights can be without air. She laughed and said just to wait. Sure enough sometime after dark the temperatures dipped into the low 50’s. In the middle of July. It was paradise with the windows open…
I live in Washington, DC. Summers are completely unbearable without A/C because of the heat and high humidity. You generally need it running more or less constantly from early June-mid September. I would not move into an apartment that didn’t have it. There’s a brief period in the fall and spring where no climate control is needed, but then it’s time to turn on the heat. We get 4 very distinct seasons here.
Here in West L.A. we’re close enough to the ocean that we probably only use our A.C. about one week a year. I wouldn’t want to try living in the valley without it though.
Here in Calgary, AC in homes is not the norm (although people do have it, and I suppose it is becoming more common), AC in malls and grocery stores is normal, AC in office buildings is normal*, and AC in later model cars has become the standard. My 2005 Corolla has AC, and it’s my first car with it (I bought used - I wouldn’t have bothered ordering it for myself).
*Not that climate-controlled office buildings actually do a good job of it - I don’t think I’ve ever worked in an office building that was warm in winter and cool in summer.
My parents’ second home, on a lake, has no a/c and doesn’t need it. Some ceilings fans are used, but we’ve never even had a day when even I asked for air conditioning - and I’m usually the first to pine for it.
In the city, thought, I’m always surprised to see things on the local news such as “senior citizen center open all day to cool residents”. I’ve worked as a canvasser in very poor neighborhoods, and I’ve never encountered an occupied house that didn’t have at LEAST one window unit running on 80+ degree days.
The county I live in, back when air conditioning was only in theaters, not homes, was called “Air Conditioned Vacationland,” because so many people came from Chicago and St. Louis to beat the heat. The county is a peninsula and Lake Michigan & Green Bay keep it cool in the summer.
New houses are built with air conditioning, but many older ones on the coast don’t have it. There are 2 or 3 days in August I wish I did, but it’s only for a few hours in the afternoon. On rare days when the temp reaches an “oppressive” 85 degrees F, an afternoon thunderstorm typically comes up and cools everything off.
In contrast, when I lived in L.A., the minute the temp rose above 70, the air conditioning was turned on without question. Guess it’s an ambience concept.
Everywhere I’ve lived in the United States air conditioning has been very common, and quite necessary (South Florida, Atlanta and Sacramento).
In my hometown of Cape Town, South Africa is is uncommon to have residential air conditioning, although common for larger commercial buildings (offices, shopping malls, restaurants, etc). The house I grew up in had no air conditioning, but with two layers of brick and a middle insulation layer it stayed pleasantly cool even on the hottest of days.
I live in Denver. Houses here do have AC/central air, but I’ve never lived in one that did. Or needed it. My old houses (1889, 1904) had high ceilings, big porches, one had no windows on the south side, and they got cool at night and stayed that way if you closed the windows early enough in the morning. My current house has a swamp cooler but I’ve never used it, nor needed to. My house is pretty much shaded during the day by two huge trees and at night it gets very cool. (Funny–I just went online to check the temp. My thermometer says it’s 69, but the online thing, which must not have been updated, says 85!).
ETA: Okay, I refreshed, and it gave me 68.5. That’s cool!
Don’t pay attention to the Aussies- they don’t heat their homes in the winter either. I spent a miserable month in Broken Hill NSW in July (winter), where the temperature is below freezing at night. I discovered that where an Irish person would have lit a fire or turned on a radiator, an Aussie just goes “cold isn’t it!” and puts on 3 jumpers and a hat, because central heating doesn’t exist.
That was my experience in the Bay Area. As a convenience, new construction included central AC, but most existing domiciles did not have it. As long as you had cross ventilation, there really was not much of a need outside of a week or two a year.
