I wouldn’t want to live without A/C in southern Ontario. While central is best, a window unit saved me in a few apartments.
When I bought my house I was all “I don’t need central air, I grew up without it…” which is true. We didn’t get it until I was in my late teens.
But then I lived one summer in my house (with no east/west windows), and even had a ceiling fan installed in my office and used my whole house fan…and it sucked. It sucked soooo bad. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t work. The dog was miserable (I actually ended up sending her to my folks for a couple of days when it was really hot)
I couldn’t figure out why it sucked so bad. After all, I grew up without it!
Then I realized that I work at home. I am at home, in the sweltering heat during the hottest parts of the day. I’m stuck here, I can’t leave. When I was a kid I was at school or outside or at the local pool. THAT is why I didn’t remember growing up hot.
I had my AC installed last May and just paid it off last month. Huuuuuge expense for me and a little crappy on the summer electric bill, but it was the best purchase I’ve ever made!
We never had AC except a window unit that was rarely used. After Dad died, we convinced Mom to get central air so that she would be more comfortable in her old age…but she won’t use it, or I should say, won’t use it properly. We live upstairs, where it is hotter. She is downstairs, and sits in her chair basically right over the floor vent, so she gets too cold. And when she goes to bed at night, she shuts it off and opens the windows (because “it’s cooled down outside” by maybe ten degrees) which lets in warm, humid air. Meanwhile, those of us upstairs don’t know she has shut it off, so we are sweltering with closed windows most of the night, until we can’t stand it anymore and open them. If we forget to close them in the morning, she won’t turn the air on at all, all day, because “she’s not paying to cool the outdoors”. But I try to tell her that since the thermostat is downstairs, with her, and there are closed doors between us and it, the open windows won’t make it run harder/longer…she can’t wrap her brain around that one. Meantime, the darn thing is never allowed to run long enough to cool the whole house down…just where she sits! I’ve tried to convince her it will run less once the house gets down to a lower humidity and temperature and stays there…she just won’t let it…she also has that Depression-baby mindset that suffering makes you more noble and better than other people.
I live in a one-bedroom apartment on the second floor (Savanna, GA). It has central air, but the unit is old and inefficient. Last July, my electric bill was $156! I never did use the heater during the winter (which was mild) and the bill was as low as $50.
I can handle the temperature up to about 80 degrees, so I’ll use it sparingly this summer. I just as soon use fans when possible.
<1000sqft house. I have a window unit in my bed room. Set to around 75. It is a “Real Mans” A/C, it has a remote control!
Put it in the window July 1st. The volume of air is less than I like so it is supplimented with a box fan. The humidity is what I hate.
Yes, it does, and the heat and humidity are incredible.
We have long stretches through the summer where the temp is in the 90s, with the humidity near 100%.
You know it’s going to be a bad day when the forecast calls for the day to be ‘hazy, hot and humid.’ You can break a sweat just walking outside at 8:00 a.m.
My SO doesn’t have central AC, or even a window unit, but his house is well-shielded by trees, and he has a whole-house fan. It keeps the house pretty cool. He even installed a ceiling fan in the bedroom, just for me, after I expressed shock that there was no AC in the house.
Iowa here. As soon as it hits about 80 our A/C is on. We both work on the assembly line in an unairconditioned building. I’m not sweating my ass off all day only to come home and sweat some more. Plus I can’t sleep when it’s hot-it’s just plain miserable.
I had migraines when I was a kid and have vivid memories of lying in bed with “the family fan" blowing warm air on me, trusty bucket at the ready. I made a “Gone With The Wind” pledge to never live without air conditioning again.
To this day I keep a spare window unit in the attic in case of emergency. I call her Scarlett.
Detroit here, most folks I know use at least a window unit when the humidity skyrockets.
Central air is non-negotiable for me, no matter how high the electric bill climbs. I work in a stifling factory, covered in multiple layers of protective clothing, the heat rash starts in July and doesn’t completely go away until October usually. Theres no way I’m going to cope with it at home, it takes everything I’ve got to deal with it at work.
Highs in las vegas reach 115, sometimes more. If your AC breaks, you will die unless you have somewhere else to stay.
I’m not joking, by the way. You will die if you have nowhere else to go and your AC breaks.
MD is south of the Mason-Dixon line.
It gets ridiculously hot & humid here, and it doesn’t cool down at night. We have central AC.
I grew up in Maine. . .yes. . .we’d get at least one stretch every summer where you wish you had AC, but it wasn’t worth installing a $10,000 system in your home, or even schlepping a window unit back and forth from storage for the two weeks it would help.
The OP is in NW Indiana. . .big deal if he doesn’t turn on his AC. It’s uncomfortable. It’s not unlivable.
Look at the weather information for Baltimore and Chicago.
It’s 4 degrees warmer on average in Baltimore in July & August with almost twice as many “extreme” days.
And, that’s just Baltimore. Something like Houston is insane. You don’t not use AC in places like that.
We don’t have AC in the house, just a couple of large fans (floor-standing ones) that we sometimes use in the bedroom at night. Other than that, if I want fresh air, I open windows.
Then again, this is England. We don’t do summer unless you mean constant rain and floods.
Summer here (in the Arabian/Persian Gulf) runs from late March to early November, with temperatures ranging from the low 90s (30C) up to about 120 (50C). During July and August, 90F is an overnight minimum, so if you don’t have AC, you’re toast!
I live on the arid high plains of eastern Colorado. It’s not Phoenix hot, but it’ll hit 105 for a week at a time. We use the AC only during the hottest part of the day becasue we have housepets, so we try to keep it comfortable for them, and because the house cools off faster in the evening. By sundown (9 p.m. or so) we can open the windows and there’s almost always a breeze to air out the house and keep it cool.
Howerver, there have been times when nighttime temperatures didn’t drop below 80 degrees and the fans and open windows just don’t do the job. We’ve left the A/C on overnight during those stretches (a few days, at most.)
Before getting the air conditioning, Razorette and I would endure the hot nights by wetting towels, putting them over our bodies and turning on a ceiling fan. By the time the towels would dry out, we’d be fast asleep and the house would be starting to cool down.
We have an old house that has no air conditioning. We use a window unit in the bedroom on those hot humid days we get here in Chicago, but so far haven’t missed having AC too much (we both grew up with it, but with old-school depression-baby frugal parents who never let us crank it up, anyway! 
)
Um. Yeah. Me, too. Definitely. (I keep it set on 80 in the daytime, when we’re not home, though.)
Ours runs pretty much constantly from June through mid-September. If I lived alone I wouldn’t turn it on nearly as much. My husband is always hot and I’m always cold.
I use it when things really heat up around here, which they tend to do from August to November, mostly. It helps having shutters, though.
Oh, hell yeah.
I hate air conditioning, yuck!
We don’t have a central unit though they are now very popular in Southern Ontario as others have mentioned.
When we bought our house it was, in part, to accommodate my bed ridden Mother In Law. She SOOO wanted have central installed for us, which we did not want and she could not understand. We brought her huge window unit from her old apt to our home for her window, so she was plenty cool. It finally gave out and was replaced with another window unit, much lighter and less noisy, thank goodness for progress!
She’s gone now but we still have the window unit which we install every summer and use about 6-10 times over the course of the summer.
I’ve spent a lot of time traveling in SE Asia and India and never stayed in a place with air con, and somehow lived to tell the tale! So we don’t have the delusion that we ‘need’ it, we know we don’t. We know we will acclimate to the temperature in a couple of days no matter how bad it is.
I hate the noise more than the stale air I think. When we do use the window unit it’s to just cool off a couple of the main rooms during the worst days. Once it’s cool I shut the thing off, the sound drives me crazy.
My neighbours have central and what I find is that they have all the windows shut up tight, and it’s just easier to turn on the a/c than go and open a window only to have to close it again. So on many wonderful and lovely evenings, they are running the a/c even though they need only to open a window and get some lovely, and cooler, night air. Often I am sitting out on my patio, with a cover up on, listening to their a/c running. I hate that so much.
I do own several fans. And during the hottest days, I close up the house tight during the day and open up the windows wide once the sun goes down and it cools off a bit. In the morning, repeat.
It works for us.
Count me as not a fan of air con, not a popular opinion, I am aware. And I generally hold my tongue unless specifically asked about it as everyone so badly wants to convince you to get it or that you must have it.