Reading the “When I was a boy…” thread, many people mentioned that they didn’t have AC (mostly in a gentle spirit)…
I’m thinking “We still don’t use AC…”
I am only 31 years old, so it’s not as if I’m from the greatest generation. We did not use it as kids, and still don’t now. We have a nice, new central air unit in our house installed by the former owners. We have a window unit in the living room, which has been used maybe twice a year since we’ve lived there. We do, however, have some nice dual window fans we run in the bedrooms, and a couple box fans we use everywhere else.
I hate shutting the windows in the spring/summer. Nothing is better than a summer breeze (makes me feel fine…), and I hate a stuffy house. And a giant utility bill - ours is only about $90 in the summer (vs. $300 in the winter).
Do youse guys always have the air on in your house?
We had A/C installed along with our new furnace about three years ago – because we were getting a new furnace. I could get along fine without it, and if I lived alone I probably would turn it on about 5 days a year. Maybe a couple more if my dogs appeared to be suffering.
My husband grew up in south Texas and became accustomed to hyperchilled interiors, so he wants to turn it on if the temperature outside goes above 80. I can deal with 10 degrees higher than that, easily.
No way in Las Vegas I’m afraid. I grew up in a house with a swamp cooler and when the temperature gets high, or it gets humid, it isn’t very comfortable. on the other hand, I was a kid so I never bitched.
Yes. I love having the windows open if the weather’s nice…but when it gets over 80 here, it’s almost always accompanied by high humidity (and that’s the part that makes me uncomfortable).
In a normal summer, we might have the AC on for 5 or 6 stretches of a couple of days each, during hot spells. Last summer, I think it was on for twice that amount.
Wiki on Houston… *Prevailing winds are from the south and southwest during most of the year, bringing heat across the continent from the deserts of Mexico and moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.
During the summer months, it is common for the temperature to reach over 90 °F (32 °C), with an average of 99 days per year above 90 °F (32 °C).[40][41] However, the humidity results in a heat index higher than the actual temperature. Summer mornings average over 90 percent relative humidity and approximately 60 percent in the afternoon.[42] Winds are often light in the summer and offer little relief, except near the immediate coast.[43] To cope with the heat, people use air conditioning in nearly every vehicle and building in the city; in fact, in 1980 Houston was described as the “most air-conditioned place on earth”.*
October thru May we’ve the windows open as much as possible, but in the summers, we just say YES to AC.
Most of the houses around here don’t even have air conditioning due to the mild weather. I don’t have it. It does hit a 100°F on very rare occasions (and increasingly more often) so I’m considering putting in a wall unit for my office in case I ever need to telecommute. It’ll be my “safe room” and will be the only room I keep cool. It’s usually around 60°F to 80°F highs year round, so I try not to turn on the heat either. Yeah, I love this town.
My office is on the 3rd floor of my house. It’s still “fan” weather, but you better believe that another 10 degrees warmer and the AC will be kicked on.
I’m way up here in western Maryland; I’ll grant you it’s 5-10 degrees cooler than the Baltimore area, but it still gets buggardly hot/humid in July and August!
We don’t have central air, but we have a large window unit in the living room that cools the LR/DR (we keep the kitchen door closed when it’s really hot) and a window unit it in the MBR. Not only can’t I sleep when it gets too hot, but sex is out of the question (“Don’t touch me! I’m sweating!”)
We don’t have AC in either of the kids’ rooms, but it’s understood that if it gets uncomfortably hot in there, they can pull out the sofa bed and crash in the LR.
That happens around 10 times a summer.
We do, just in case you were wondering, have fans in their rooms.
We’re fortunate to live in a very windy location, so there is almost always a brisk breeze. With hot water heat, we have no central air, and trying to run ducts through our 110-year-old walls is way more trouble than its worth. We do have a large wall AC unit in the downstairs that gets turned on maybe twice a summer, when it gets to 95 and humid, but the rest of the time we just let the wind do its thing.
When I was growing up, there was no air conditioning except in movie theaters, but we never noticed it. If it was too hot, we slept on the porch and spent the daylight hours in the lake.
I’m in NW Indiana, at the south end of Lake County. The average temp in summer time is 80-85 degrees, usually with a nice stretch of 90+ days in July and August.
It gets very hot and super humid here in the Hoosier state. (Thanks Lake Michigan!)
Actually, it’s not the lake that’s to blame for the humid stretches…it’s primarily due to moist air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico.
So, you’re not too far from me. Hey, if you can tolerate the heat+humidity, go for it (it keeps your electric bill lower, and makes you feel all environmentally happy :D). Me, I get positively cranky when the dewpoint gets above 60 or so, and hot weather makes the second floor of our house (a dormered-out Chicago-style bungalow, with pretty much no attic space above the second-floor ceiling) just about uninhabitable without the AC.
In southern Oregon, we actually didn’t have AC until a year or two ago (well, it came with the house, we didn’t turn it on for two or three years out of pride and/or cheapness, then tried to turn it on and found it was broken. So we didn’t get it fixed for another four or five years) but now that we do, we us it during August and July and only on the hottest days then.
I never lived in a place that had central air in southern Ontario. Mind, most of the places I lived there didn’t have forced-air heating, so central air conditioning was out of the question. Still, window air conditioners helped battle the warm, humid air flowing up from the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the moisture picked up from the Great Lakes, that made summers in southern Ontario extremely hot and humid. Some places did have central air however; and those of us without central air got by with window air conditioners.
Here in Alberta, few homes have air conditioners, though many businesses do. Summers are hot, but nowhere near as humid as southern Ontario. Still, that didn’t stop the guy at Home Depot from trying to interest me in adding a central air conditioner to our house.
I live in a ground floor apartment. I am a single female in my early 30’s.
These two facts combine to make me probably slightly paranoid about having windows open when I am not able to keep an eye on them. Not that I feel like I need to defend my use of the AC, but, . . .it makes a more interesting poll if people do.
I don’t mind opening a window for ventilation–like the other day when my kitchen was oddly stinky. But I don’t like leaving windows open if I leave, or if I go to sleep, so I shut the windows at those times. And since frequent opening and shutting of windows is a pain–and the cost of AC is generally not that high-- I use the AC in my apartment.