In another thread the topic of how I (And some of my more adventurous friends, here in Southern Texas) live without Air Conditioning. Here is a better explanation... My fellow Texans question my sanity and sanitation. hahahahaha! Here is a website article that helps explain WHY I do it.... (Money) http://www.articlealley.com/article_28434_27.html Here is a snippet..... Here is a general look at the difference of running an air conditioner vs. running a Ceiling or oscillating fan, at medium speed. Running a central air conditioner that is three ton (and of average efficiency) for 8 hours per day for 15 days per month, with the average rate per kWh (kilowatt per hour) being 0.17, the average cost per month for the air conditioner alone will be $97.92. Amazing isn't it? This does not even include washer, dryer, lights, refrigerator, or stove, only the air conditioner. YOU could double that for us, because it would be on for 30 days, thank you! And NOT just 8 hours a day either, so that would be triple again, eh? On the other hand, running a ceiling fan or oscillating fan at medium speed, for 8 hours per day, for a full 30 days, at an average rate per kWh of 0.035 is only $1.43. With this comparison you could run 68 fans for a full month before you would reach the cost of the central air conditioning unit. Now, that covers the WHY. The bigger question I think was the HOW. With us, we are lucky in that we had a choice of homes. I chose one that would be hard to heat and easy to cool. It is a canyon style open two story. This allows for the free flow of air and air can freely flow from one side of the house to the other, unobstructed. Flooring. The flooring is hard surface with throw rugs. Feeling a little warm? Put your bare foot on the floor! Instant cool! haha! Food and drink. We live on ice water. But we also have a large selection of kool-aids, teas and lemon-aid drinks to choose from. I got those thin standing spout pitchers from walmart and one level of my fridge is nothing but this canisters full of flavored water. Food hasn't really changed. But we do fix bigger meals, then every other night is left over or "Grabs" night so that we do not have to cook every night. Clothing. My husband wears long shorts and sandals, with a white hanes undershirt (Full short sleve, not the muscle shirts). The boys wear the same. My DD (5) and I wear long flowing skirts with light weight material and bloomers underneath. The bloomers act as an air pocket that serves many purposes... Such as my legs don't stick together as they did while wearing shorts. And my DD says they make her feel like she is "Powdery" while wearing it, instead of sweaty in shorts. I think because they absorb sweat. Fans. We LOVE our fans! I have two standing oscillating fans downstairs, ceiling fans in nearly every room and box fans in the bedrooms. Even with that many fans, it is PENNIES a day for electric verses fighting the Texas heat with AC. And as long as your skin has air moving over it, you feel cooler. Humidity: Therein lies the problem. There are days when the humidity is just too much, especially in August and September. UGH! Those are the days that you make it work FOR you.... Many people spend money on those "Mister Fans" because the added water lightly on your body with a fan blowing on you makes you cooler... well, so does humidity with a fan blowing on you.... only the water is FREE... hahahaa! I bake and cook mostly at night and dry clothes at night. We have a gas dryer and dry some in the sun and some in the machine. Sanitation. We wash hands a lot, we shower every day. Not sure what to add to that question. Ok, I think that is all I can think of without a direct question. :wink:
So, do you have A/C and don't use it or was the house built without it? I know they build them in the NE (Maine, etc) without A/C at all....but I would assume that most Texan builders would automatically install them as "standard". Wow.....I like the article info (shhh!!!! don't tell hubby he'll be out buying more fans :lol::lol.
Well here in NM we have no humidity. Our a/c's are mostly evaporative coolers... I wonder if they are as bad as an a/c to run?
We have one ceiling fan in our house. :| I wish we had more. As of now our AC is running, off and on, 24/7. It would be too uncomfortable without it, especially at night since we do not sleep with windows open. Most people around here use a combination of fans and an AC. They really do help bring down the temperature of the house. When we are having scorchers, fans do not seem to make much of a difference. This is usually when people are advised not to wash or use major appliances during the day.
I never thought of sanitation being an issue. Two summers ago I worked in an unairconditioned camp store for 7 weeks. We had 2 ceiling fans (one kept on low or the money would blow away ) and 2 box fans. We also had 2 slush machines, a freezer, a fridge, and an ice machine that put out LOTS of heat. We survived. We'd sweat from 8:30am to 10:00pm. Then we went home and took a shower. Now, I did look forward to the AC in my cabin, but there were only a few times that it was so hot we were miserable. I think we are just so used to AC that we don't think we can do without it. I am not ready to give up AC yet, so I just raise mine higher than most people. I heard on the news last night that if you average a $300 electric bill (mine wasn't quite that high!!) you can save approximately $12 every degree you go up. I upped mine about 3 degrees after the last bill. I've also been hanging clothes out to dry. I'm hoping to see at least a $40 difference. I've switched to cold water for washing, except for white clothes. DH likes lots of deodorant, and it will not come out of his tees unless I use hot water.
I will sleep with my upstairs windows open, but not the downstairs windows. I don't hear feel safe with the downstairs windows up while we are sleeping. I will use AC during the day and turn it off during cooler nights. The nights haven't been so cool lately! We also have ceiling fans in every bedroom, the family room, and the living room. They are on all the time.
The house was built with an ac. In fact it is only 5 years old and has one ac for the upstairs and one for the down stairs. Central Ac and heat. I am from Houston and I never saw a house without central ac and heat, until I moved to San Jose California.. the coldest place I have EVER lived! hahaha! It was 98 in september when I got on the plane.... it was 56 in San Fransisco when I got off th eplane! Berrrrrr!
The same goes for Handsome. He sweats a lot during the day since he works outdoors so he goes heavy on the deodorant.
We were up north, San Francisco area, in '97. It was so strange to actually wake up to fog in the morning.:lol: We get fog on the pass but I have never seen it up the hill. I was surprised how much rain they received. I guess I figured since it is in California that it would have been like the southern areas but it is very different. I have never had such frizzy hair as I had when we were up north.LOL
I am "kind of wierd" I guess. I wait until the days are about 94 for a whole week, then I turn our A/C on. Then the only reason we do turn the A/C on is because the kids don't sleep well at night. Except when i am pregnant. I can't handle the heat at all!!!! I get sick hanging out the laundry. I wish our house was built to encourage air flow but it is just a box with ill placed windows. But we are lucky and do have large oak trees to provide some shade. But I agree we use ceiling fans, and such to stay cool. And when we do use the A/C we keep it above 80 degrees. But that still adds $100 a month to the bill. Without the A/C or dryer our electric bill (with an electric water heater) is only $50-75 and 25 of that is the monthly fee. We don't use the oven at all during the summer months. If it needs "baking" either it doesn't get cooked or I cook it on the grill. I have baked cookies, bread, and pizzas on the grill. We eat lots of salads, sandwiches, cool soups and other cool meals. We also grill everything. We loose weight during the summer and I think it is because when you are warmer you don't feel like eating as much. We also play outside more when the A/C is not on, because it is cooler outside then in the house. I hang out all our laundry except the socks and underware. Dh has issues with everybody in the neighboorhood seeing his whitie tighties! One thing I have noticed, and I watched it with my kids first. Is that people who spend time outside, and are used to the heat don't get hot so fast, and can stand it longer. My kids will play outside all day and not hardly break a sweat (in the shade, and not like playing ball etc) my SIL kids who go from A.C building to to A/c building sweat walking to the car from the front door. My mom is the same way she has no heat tolerance. If you notice guys who work outside as well will get hot but they handle it a whole lot better then some guy who spends 8-5 in a/c then on the weekend tries to spend it outside working. Last year was wonderful. I only ran the a/c like a week because it was so cool all summer. This year I am pregnant and I have already ran it all the month of June. AHHHH Another thing that I do is run the dryer during the winter with the vent into the house ( electric again) to heat the house. It cost the same as the heater running, but it does two jobs for me. I have to run the heater at night but that is it. I have to stratigicly plan my washing so I will have a load when the heat will be needed. I also plan to bake bread and such when the laundry isn't running so that is another source of heat. WE are thinking of buying a window a/c unit to put in one of the bedrooms. Then just using that at night and we wouldn't run the whole house a/c for longer into the summer. But then we could sleep cool. One last note, I do believe that swamp coolers are much cheaper to run. I wish we had nice dry heat. I used to live in Phoniex and in several places in NM. A nice mister system on the porch does wonders to cool down a hot day there.
We are fortunate our house doesn't require an a/c. It was 87 yesterday and it was 71 in my house. I threw on some sockies and a sweat shirt because it is a bit cool for m. We have ceiling fans but I have not used them yet this summer.
I get sick from the sun/heat easily also. Yesterday we went to the nursery, it was about 85 degrees, direct sunlight. I started feeling really sick and got a horrible migraine. We had to stop by Taco Bell so I could get something to drink, I felt parched!
We haven't used the central A/C much this year. When we have it's mostly been at night. I don't feel comfortable leaving the windows open at night & it gets too hot & humid to sleep. The humidity is the main reason we run the air. We have a window A/C upstairs because the central A/C doesn't really work up there. We usually keep that just set to fan and only turn it to A/C if it gets above 85 up there (the kids' rooms are upstairs).
For those of you who aren't comfortable leaving the windows open at night...............When I lived in the city we would have them open but we had these little lock things that would not allow the window to go open any further than where the lock was placed. We could crack it about 4" for a cross breeze but not enough for someone to get in.
I grew up in a home without A/C. My Dad had what they called Water Coolers in the bedrooms. They were attached to the window outside. We used them mostly at night. Dh can't live without the A/C here in our Apt. He is from Indiana and used to the cold weather. I try and limit the use of ours.
We didn't have A/C until I was in high school. That was when my parents bought me a window unit for my room. I was diagnosed with asthma & have some other sinus/respiratory issues. Extreme temps (especially humid heat) make it almost impossible for me to breathe. So, they bought me the A/C for medical reasons. Otherwise, I wouldn't have had one till I moved out & was on my own.
Well we're in ME and we've been living without ac since we moved in here. We're used to having central air down in VA and having the thermostat set around 72 during during the summer months. We were told there's no need for ac up here. HA! Well we had a heat spell the 2nd week we were in the house. Went to bed at night and it was in the low 80's upstairs. Dd couldn't sleep, I let her stay up so long as she was quiet. The girl was up till 3am one night reading and playing quiet games in her bedroom. I slept, but I'm pregnant and could sleep anywhere at any time but it wasn't a restful sleep because I was sweating to death. A neighbor loaned me a window fan for our bedroom. That helped a great deal along with the ceiling fans upstairs, but does NO good when you have thunderstorms every evening and the humidity shoots up. You know what happens then? Your papers curl, everything is damp, and everything including the pipes start sweating- meaning damage to cupboards under sinks. Finally talked dh into a window unit for upstairs yesterday. Apparently how most people do it here is they run the ac's from whenever the house starts getting warm- around 11ish, shut them off at night and use the window fans through the night depending on the humidity. So we're going to give that a go. I'd rather live comfortably and not sweat to death then not lol. And it's not even nearly as hot here as it is in VA. NO way would I live there without AC. I need COOOL air blowing on me, not hot air blowing around the house. Blech!
It was actually pretty cool here last night, so I turned off the AC and put the windows up upstairs. It started to get warm again (84 inside) about 10:30, so we truned the AC back on. I do that lots in the fall and spring. Our electric company raised rates 3.5 percent last month, so we've got to do whatever we can!
In the fall and spring I keep the air off and windows open and ceiling fans on as much as the weather will allow. I love that fresh air! Now I am spoiled beyond belief in summer and keep the air on all the time. My dad owned his own ac company for 40 years and we were never once without air. I crank in down at night too. We love to sleep with it cold. During the day I turn it back up and keep the fans on.
Today is pretty hot. There is no wind, which makes it hotter. So we have the fans on full and the windows open of course. We leave the heavy housework for later. Right now we are doing schoolwork. Later we will eat a light lunch and the babies will run out to the back yard to play. (We have a huge yard with a pop up pool and a slip and slide that they love, of course). Near 4pm, we are heading off to the local farmer's market for some great food! MMMmm! Byt he time we return home, it will be cooler and we will finish up some housework and a few loadsof laundry, while heating up some left overs in the microwave.
