May 25, 2005
How Long Do You Hold Out?
How Long Do You Hold Out?
Every Spring we wait as long as possible and sometimes a little beyond before we turn on the air conditioning. It is so pleasant to open all the windows in the house and air everything out after the winter. In the Fall we do the same thing, opening all the windows, enoying the fresh air and waiting until we can't feel our fingers before turning on the heat. Besides a love of fresh air, we are also cheapskates. We want to save as much on our cooling and heating bills as possible -- even when we do turn on the climate control, the house is pretty hot in the summer and like a meat locker in the winter.
This year we held out until the past weekend to turn on the air conditioning. Then it immediately turned cool again and we shut it off and opened up the windows. The heat and humidity are on their way, but it is easy to pretty today that they will never come.
Kristin just turned on the air conditioning in Alabama. I've lived in Alabama and I doubt I could have waited until the end of May to cool my house down there in the even hotter part of the South. So when do you turn on the coolth?
Like you, I turn it on when it gets too hot to leave it off. We have an attic fan that cools the house nicely until it gets too hot for the poor fan to handle. We are more likely to turn on the a/c for sleeping than for any other time. But NY gets mighty humid in the Summer and my wife can't abide that.
Posted by: RP at May 25, 2005 01:36 PMDown here in SC we usually have to crank it up early, but this year it's been pretty cool so we've only had to run it a little bit (almost like Sewanee). We open the windows a lot in the fall, but the best time during the spring is pollen season and I don't like having yellow furniture.
Our penny pinching comes in with the programable thermostat that turns on the heat/cool only when we need it.
We have programmable thermostats, so the A/C comes on if the temp gets up to around 77 or so (75 at night--can't stand to sweat) and the heat comes on when it dips to around 68. The A/C kicked in for the first time about the middle of last month.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 25, 2005 02:32 PMGeorge! What are you doing down here in the bowels of the blogosphere? I hope you and the lovely Susanna are well.
Posted by: Jordana at May 25, 2005 02:48 PMI followed a link from the llamas. Susanna and I are doing well. We'll be at Fall Party (I mean Alumni) Weekend this year (10 year).
Our garden is one of those reclamation projects were you can't afford to have it all bulldozed and start over, so you just keep working on small parts. We've been in the house 3 years now. Here are a few pictures.
Posted by: George at May 25, 2005 03:29 PMHere in New Hampshire we're beginning to wonder if we're going to have summer this year.
It's almost June and we still have the heat on.
Posted by: Dean at May 25, 2005 05:01 PMUnfortunately I can't have the windows open. The pollen is too much for me. So we have been sporatically running the AC. Last night I switched to heat because it got so cool the past couple of days.
Posted by: Sarah G. at May 25, 2005 06:35 PM
Jordana Adams, Chief Pontificator