So I decided this spring I would try and make it through the year with no AC, the idea being I would try and be a responsible citizen and not use energy I don’t really need to be using. I lived my entire life without AC until I moved to Saratoga Springs some years ago and the place I lived in came with it, and somehow I made it through super muggy summers in OH and NY when I was younger without too much trouble.
I’d made it through several hot spells already this spring without too much trouble, simply by sealing down the house in the mornings and then opening the windows after sundown and using fans to draw in the cooler air. All was well until now. We hit 98 and humid Tuesday and A) I discovered my computer couldn’t handle the heat – even regular web browsing was causing heat warnings, and forget about games – they would kick off the heat protection and dump me out of the games. I also got no sleep Tuesday night, Soolin and I both tossing and turning my my muggy bedroom, leaving me grouchy and dull witted at work on Wednesday.
So…so much for that experiment. A little work on the PC and an AC unit in the window above it with a cardboard duct to bring the cool air to the PC and I can use it again, and an AC set to low in my bedroom and I can sleep again.
I don’t know how to explain how I handled this so much better when I was younger but certainly I can’t handle it now. I could sleep in the basement but my basement is dirt floored and disgusting so that’s out. I could sleep outside under a mosquito net but I live on a busy and noisy road so that’s out too. Instead I’ll live on a lightly used AC system and remain a bit of a hypocrite.
Dave's Place/Metamusing 
I’m actually spending a little too much money on getting my basement professionally finished. One of my justifications is that it’s nice and cool down there in the hot summer, so we can spend time down there and put a bed down there also to prevent running up our bills and wasting energy on AC. We have 2 window units and we end up using the too much when it gets crazy hot, a trend I don’t see going away any time soon. Also, it’s been crazy expensive trying to heat my basement office with a space heater, so this will help with that too. This is the system we are going with: http://www.owenscorning.com/around/bfs/
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I find the humidity to be worse than the heat. Humid weather just drains me. I have a forced air heating system that I will be adding central AC to. The HVAC guy tells me that with todays SERE 13+ units they aren’t too bad to run energy wise, and you get a uniform temp throughout the house and avoid having window units running hard to beat the heat back if you leave a door open. And, it helps with the value of the house, something I keep in mind as I know this is not the last house I will live in. I will say that I managed to avoid putting in my monster window unit until this latest heat wave. I was hoping to go the summer only using the one in the bedroom for sleeping, but this last blast was just too much.
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