LOL, seriously. :: points to location::
I’m in north Alabama, and I’m surprised we haven’t had to turn ours on yet this year. Any day now, though.
Lucky you.
I’m the same…except she wants it 65 in the summer and 75 in the winter. I’ve tried talking about the illogic of this…but you know how that goes 
Do you use the AC in your house?
Well yah. I don’t use it to cool the outside.
I grew up in different parts of the South, (mostly Virginia) and never had central AC.
The difference wasn’t the temperature, it still got hot as hell back then.
However, houses back then were specifically designed to deal with hot weather.
You had breezeways, you had shade trees, you had high ceilings.
Now, many homes in the south aren’t built with any regard to natural cooling, so if you don’t use the central air you are going to be way hotter than anyone is supposed to be.
It’s why many people die in France when there are heat waves. They are living in a traditionally mild climate area, so homes haven’t been traditionally built to naturally cool, and since the climate has been traditionally mild, people have never felt the need to buy air conditioners. So when the temperature jumps up really fast, older people get roasted.
You are right, and I was coming back in here to make that point. Our house is about 115 years old, and it stays pretty cool, especially on the first floor, even when it’s really hot out. One neat feature is that it’s designed so there is uninterrupted air flow between the front door and the back door, so if you open both doors, you get a great cross breeze down the whole length of the house. That, combined with the high ceilings and strategically placed windows are pretty darn effectve, to the point where when you walk in on a hot day, you breathe a sigh of relief to get out of the heat.
I use mine when it starts getting above 80 in the house, it’s humid here in Virginia starting June or so. However this year my AC is b0rken, I’m not sure I’m gonna fix it since I have half a dozen things I need to put big money into. I’m gonna give fans and strategically opened/closed shades and windows a try, hold out as long as possible.
Of course I use it. That’s why I bought it in the first place.
Another Arizonan. I really can’t live without it. The AC was busted for a couple weeks in May a few years ago, and despite everything we still suffered badly from the heat.
I think even here, though, lack of air circulation counts for more than raw heat. The last couple places I’ve lived in not only have had poor circulation, but the largest windows are always facing east or west. Next house I buy, I’m determined to find a place that faces north/south.
I use mine six months out of the year - April through early October, usually. I don’t have it set super low, about 70 degrees, usually. It keeps me comfortable, but boy, do I pay for it in the months I use it! It usually increases my electric bill by about $100 extra a month, on average. But my gas increases in the winter, so year-round, they pretty much balance each other out.
Nope! It’s usually cold here actually, but we don’t use the heater either (a crappy external heater we’ve since blocked with stuff). We save money by absorbing heat from the other apartments. wom, wom, wom
I live in Houston and actually very rarely use the AC. This is mainly because I’m a (poor) student and also very cheap. It’s worth some discomfort to have a July electric bill of less than $20.
This is only made possible by 2 factors though. First, as a graduate student I spend most of my time at school. Second, I live alone so clothing at home is optional.
Um, check my location.
The better question would be “When do we NOT use the AC in our house?”
We sort of have air conditioning. We have a heat pump and an oil furnace. The second summer we lived here, the neighbour had to tell us that the heat pump worked as AC in the summertime. My husband loves it. I, on the other hand, view warm summer evenings as an excuse to sit out at the back, drink a bit of wine or beer, and enjoy a quiet summer evening. Unfortunately, the back patio is just steps away from the heat pump, and my husband will be in side, watching TV. He’s not so much a fan of the outdoors as I am.
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.
Ditto. The bloody thing is noisy, and completely detracts from the quiet of listening to the sound of evening birdsong and the thrum of hummingbirds. When the heat pump shuts off, it’s so quiet I can hear the fwap-fwap sound of birdwings overhead. I love that quiet, enough to hear the small sounds. I guess I’m a fan of bird noises in general!
We’re west-east facing, with most of the windows facing west into the afternoon and evening sun, and it’s a doublewide, which tends to heat up like a motherbanger, but there are lots of trees around, and one in the front yard is getting bigger every year. Natural shade means natural cooling.
Darned husband also cranks up the heat in the winter, instead of putting on a sweater. He seriously has a very limited range of temperature that he’s comfortable in, and doesn’t like either adding or removing clothes to adjust.
I’m dancing in front of it right now, doing a hard nipple dance. (Gulf coast of Florida)
I’m in Tucson, with last summer being my first one here. You’d think that means AC almost year round.
The house I rent doesn’t have AC. I have evaporative cooling - and it’s past time for me to turn it off for the evening as I’m chilled. Even during the Tucson monsoon season last year it wasn’t horrible. Was I uncomfortable? Yeah, but I’ve been through worse without AC.
I wouldn’t want to not have anything, though.
I don’t have air-conditioning or heating in my house.
I just moved into a south facing place so it looks like I will be getting a portable one. I wish I could get a window unit (at about 1/4 the price) but the windows here open horizontally so in order to get it in securely I’d have to build some sort of frame-in contraption for the rest of the window. That would just make it too easy to break into the window (and I live in the B&E capital of the inner solar system :mad: ) I’ve never had A/C before-just parked big-ass fans in front of windows and took a lot of cold showers. I really hate the heat. Reeealy hate it.
The window unit is off and on. Warm weather here (eastern Missouri) gets stifling; you know it’s bad when kids don’t come out to play, they come out to sit in the shade.
The window unit also has a fan-only function, so I can leave the door closed, in consideration of the developing avian life there.
Friggin’ river valley
My mother detested AC. We sweltered in the summers “and we were grateful.” :rolleyes:
As a young adult, I spent my time in older computer rooms where it was 68 degrees / 50% relative humidity. I enjoyed being on the cold side of cool. Maybe that is what created the work-a-holic in me - especially in those lean years in southern Ohio when we lived in a house without AC, too, and would sit in front of fans to survive August.
Now, I have central air. I love it. You can have it when you pry my 68 degree fingers off of the thermostat. (OK - so it’s not 68 degrees in the house, but you catch my drift).