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Air conditioning, do you have it???

Air Conditioning??????? In your home

  • Whole house central air type unit

    Votes: 45 69.2%

  • Room air conditioner in more than one room

    Votes: 4 6.2%

  • Room air conditioner in only one room

    Votes: 7 10.8%

  • No air conditioner, just open windows and fans

    Votes: 9 13.8%
  • Total voters
    65
I just replaced my heat pump. The old one (a freebie) just could not handle the 100 degree humid days in SC. I remember getting our first window AC unit when I was a kid. Before then, we just used fans.

I have gotten soft, I guess...cannot imagine trying to sleep without the cool.
 
Steve Southwood said:
Yes have central and I hate it. Love the cool air, hate the $400 bill that comes with it. With the present heat wave, it's on. Soon as it cools back off, it's off.
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I know I do not have your southern heat and humidity but I am on the budget plan for electricity and it is was $72 per month last year and I did not have a bill for the last month of the physical year as I had over paid:) That also includes the shop:thumb: Worth every penny:D
 
Tom Niemi said:
I know I do not have your southern heat and humidity but I am on the budget plan for electricity and it is was $72 per month last year and I did not have a bill for the last month of the physical year as I had over paid:) That also includes the shop:thumb: Worth every penny:D
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When Larry was down we discussed electric rates, I think, we discussed a lot and some of it is still hazy:D. Our rates down here are, shall we say, on the high side. Plus I don't have a lot of shade, remember my father in law bought that new chain saw while back. Plus the house is a dark color brick. Winter is great, summer, no so.
 
Hey, I live in Texas. Can't survive with out A/C.
I got an email funny just this weekend about the Texas heat. Starts out with a guy moving to Texas in June thinking it's hot, but no big deal. Ends up at the end in jail because one more guy asked him if it was hot enough. :rofl: I'd copy and paste it here, but it would take too long to make it CoC compliant. :rolleyes: Jim.
 
Grew up with swamp coolers in NM. My first house in LA didn't have anything for the first few years. After a few 90º+ nights in the house, I finally added a small window unit to the bedroom. My next house here had a house-sized swamp cooler mounted to a kitchen window. It was sufficient for all but about one or two weeks a year, when the humidity would get high enough to render the evaporative cooling useless. In our current house, we have central air, and it's been nice (but expensive). Most of the summer, it cools off enough at night to open up the house and just use fans to keep things cool.

The temperature difference between where we live (the Crescenta Valley) compared to where Mohammad lives (the coastal area) is sometimes 10 to 15 degrees (F). He's in the cool part of town. ;) We're nestled in the foothills, so our little valley is usually a bit cooler than the San Fernando or San Gabriel Valleys.
 
When we lived in the bay area, we got much hotter temps there than we do here in the desert.

The best thing we ever did was to install a whole house fan. The area is famous for the 'delta breeze' and at nights it would cool down nicely. But the house would be so hot from all the heating during the day. Open up a couple of windows and fire up the whole house fan and it would suck all of that heat out in a matter of minutes...
 
What Brent said about swamp coolers. I don't think we even have to use it more than 3 weeks total out of the year, the breeze keeps us in check.

It's the middle of July and I'm wearing a sweatshirt every morning because it's cold in the house (I guess that's the side effect of living in the high desert).

The swamp cooler effect is the same after we get out of the pool...a breeze evaporating the water off the skin and you start shivering...no humidity here :eek:
 
We live in the mountains. Hardly would ever have a use for it. It gets below 70 every night. We ope the windows at night to cool off then close them in the morning. At about dusk we open them up again. The highest we have had in the house is 75 one day.
 
Mark Rice said:
We live in the mountains. Hardly would ever have a use for it. It gets below 70 every night. We ope the windows at night to cool off then close them in the morning. At about dusk we open them up again. The highest we have had in the house is 75 one day.
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Wow, we get into the 50's almost religiously every night. Even last night we hit the 40's. No wonder we only have a 90 day growing season :)
 
Wow thanks Brent. Never heard of that whole house fan before. Looked it up and thats what i want for more than one reason. That should be mandatory in my view.

Am i right in thinking it can be fitted to any house in North America given the houses have soffits and roof vents.

I guess for us in winter we need to have it where we can get to the other side of it to insulate it or is there a winter type version available?
 
Hmmm, I think they generally work for most houses. The one I installed sat on top of 3 joists, basically. You cut a nice big hole in the ceiling and put in a louvered grate.

Not sure if they have winterized versions, but I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to make some kind of insulated box to go over it in the attic. twice a year you would have to go up and mess with the thing.

You do have to make sure there are enough 'outlets' in the attic.

For a 2 story house it really did a great job of pulling the cool air in.
 
My daughter's bedroom has a room unit built into the wall. The house came that way, so I just tossed the old unit and replaced it with a newer one we owned. We have one other room unit that usually just stays in the attic. Because we live surrounded by green, it cools off here pretty well, rarely above 70 at night. Our home is shaded, so it usually stays pretty comfortable. The down side is that we get no passive solar gain in the winter.
 
Rob Keeble said:
Wow thanks Brent. Never heard of that whole house fan before. Looked it up and thats what i want for more than one reason. That should be mandatory in my view.

Am i right in thinking it can be fitted to any house in North America given the houses have soffits and roof vents.
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Rob, I think these are more in southern climates. I have never heard of these being in any house in Canada.




(I take it back. Next time, I'll google first...)
 
I clicked on the poll before I read your post... I thought you were asking about the shops, so I clicked open windows/no AC... it was a mere 90 deg in the shop this afternoon... outside a balmy 87 deg.... opened the door of the shop, both windows and all three fans on high...

In the house, we have a whole house unit... LOML doesn't like to be overly warm, so it's cranking 24/7.....
 
I remember years back, they showed a fan on TOH that had doors with insulation on them. I don't know how they operated (either automatic via the switch or a secondary switch to open them), but I remember because a passed neighbor, wanted to build a cover in that style, and have it hooked to a pulley that a rope came down next to the electrical switch, in a dummy box. He passed before he got to do it.

Now a machinist friend, who didn't have a/c (radiant heat in the house), had hooked up a series of squirrel cage fans towards the vents in his roof. He had them on a series of switches so he could adjust the amount of air movement. An attic fan works, but getting the air out of the attic seemed to me to work better. (compared to my parents just having an attic fan)
 
The fan we had, the vents operated automatically based on the fact they didn't have much choice cause of all the breeze being sucked through them...

Like I said, they didn't have any insulation, but we didn't need much in the bay area...
 
I'll add another vouch for the whole house fan...Dad had one centered in the ceiling at the top of the stairwell...first time he turned it on, he had all the windows open on the first floor...hit it on 'high' and letters, the newspaper and the napkins on the dining room table all took flight :rofl:... and first winter with it, he thought it would vent some of the excessive heat {caused} from his wood stove when it was crankin...don't try this with the damper closed :rofl: smoke so thick you couldn't see, detector blaring at him almost as loud as my stepmom was :rofl:
 
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