Air Conditioning

[stfoskey12]

Today is a hot and humid summer day where I am, but I am enjoying a cool, air-conditioned house. It made me wonder what proportion of people on CFC have air conditioning systems where they live. Where I have lived in North Carolina and Oklahoma, A/C has always been near-universal, but when I have traveled to the northern US or abroad, A/C has been less common. Where I live it is usually hot enough to regularly need it from May-September, plus an occasional day from late March thru mid-October. I usually keep the thermostat at 75F/24C during the day and 73F/23C at night, but a lot of people like to keep it colder.

So I have a few general questions, plus this thread is open to any other discussion of the topic.

• Do you have A/C, and if so, what kind?
• If so, what do you set the thermostat to?
• For how much of the year do you run your A/C?
• How common is A/C in your area?

Just for fun, here is the last thread on air conditioning, from back in 2003: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/air-conditioning.56847/.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I live in the UK and don't have it, and don't know anyone who does. Typically it's not needed, but there's usually one week in the summer each year where the heat and humidity is borderline intolerable. I don't know how frequently it would need to be like that in order to prompt people to have A/C, but 1/52nd of the time is obviously below that threshold. Similarly we don't have any infrastructure or procedures to deal with heavy snow in urban areas as it just doesn't happen often enough. So we're kind of crap at dealing with either extreme.

I've used it in the car a few times, but it seems to just dry out my sinuses and I don't really like it. I also don't like watching the fuel efficiency take a tumble when it's on.

 

[Arwon]

The majority of Australian homes have reverse cycle air conditioning, which both heats and cools as needed. I think in Europe and North America people call them "heat pumps".

We use our AC for heating much more than for cooling. Canberra has that mountain climate.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I live in the UK and don't have it, and don't know anyone who does. Typically it's not needed, but there's usually one week in the summer each year where the heat and humidity is borderline intolerable. I don't know how frequently it would need to be like that in order to prompt people to have A/C, but 1/52nd of the time is obviously below that threshold. Similarly we don't have any infrastructure or procedures to deal with heavy snow in urban areas as it just doesn't happen often enough. So we're kind of crap at dealing with either extreme.

I've used it in the car a few times, but it seems to just dry out my sinuses and I don't really like it. I also don't like watching the fuel efficiency take a tumble when it's on.

What the UK considers 'a heat wave' is just another day here June through August.

I got central air, 71 degrees. Typically don't use air in car, window rolled down good enough.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

What the UK considers 'a heat wave' is just another day here June through August.

I got central air, 71 degrees. Typically don't use air in car, window rolled down good enough.

Trust me we hear this a lot. The difference being you don't live in solid brick houses designed to trap heat with no A/C. Where I live the upstairs bedrooms tend to be the hottest place, and also seem to be hottest at night, with fairly high humidity. They easily get to 10 degrees hotter than the outside temperature (or 20 degrees in US money) even with the windows wide open and they just stay like that until early morning.

 

[Birdjaguar]

In high desert NM AC is getting more common and replacing the long traditional evaporative coolers (swamp coolers). In the high desert, high elevation (1 mile elevation), 4 seasons, dry environment of Albuquerque, the climate has been changing. Unlike low desert places like Phoenix, southern NM, las Vegas, etc. which are mostly hot all year, ABQ has just a hot summer (which has been getting longer). Until about 8 years ago we used ceiling fans and windows to keep the house cool. That became less effective so we added AC to the heating duct system that reached 2/3 of the house. A few years later we added a split system (heat pump) to cool/heat the rest. In the desert the nights usually get cool so we open all the windows and let the night air cool the whole house. In June, July and August when the temp gets into the 90s and over 100 we use the AC set to 82 until the outside temp drops to under 80. A big old Thunderstorm will cool things off nicely too. We are also fortunate to have a huge fruitless mulberry tree (planted over 50 years ago) growing on the west side of the house that keeps the house shaded all summer. It firmly established its roots in the street sewer and has all the water it needs to stay huge and healthy long past it normal lifespan in the desert. Our 20 year drought has killed many of those early planted trees all over the city.

Humidity here runs under 20% mostly unless it is actually raining.

 

[stfoskey12]

The majority of Australian homes have reverse cycle air conditioning, which both heats and cools as needed. I think in Europe and North America people call them "heat pumps".

We use our AC for heating much more than for cooling. Canberra has that mountain climate.

Yeah my dad has a heat pump in his house in North Carolina. And I think a lot of apartments have them too. But the house I'm renting currently has a gas furnace.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

I think in Europe and North America people call them "heat pumps".

This is what we have. We bought one last year and used the green energy tax credits passed under Biden to get 300 bucks back on the 1000 dollar purchase. Our monthly utility bills are definitely smaller now too. This is, of course, unfortunately woke.

 

[amadeus]

Oh yeah. It’s going to be 100F / 38C here today. My electric meter will spin so fast I bet if you touched it you’d go back in time.

 

[Cutlass]

I have 2 window AC. If I leave them on long enough, they'll cool the house pretty well. Fans to spread it around. I don't use them all that often. But the summers here have just gotten too hot to do without. And sometimes it not so much the heat as humidity, and the AC is more for drying the place out than cooling it.

 

[Snerk]

No there's too few days of the year when it's needed. Our houses are built to trap in heat so I can get too warm on hot days but at my latitude opening a couple of windows will usually do the trick.

However heat pumps are becoming increasingly popular as a more efficient way of heating indoor climate, and they can reverse their function and cool the air as well.

 

[danjuno]

Yep. Wish we had vents on the floor instead of the ceiling.

 

[Snowygerry]

Here at the office yes, not at home.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Yes and it's wonderful because I sweat like a hooker in church. And summertime in the US Mid Atlantic is a total swamp in terms of humidity most years...

 

[Akka]

When I was young, air conditionning was the sort of things I rolled my eyes at, the kind of useless display of wealth and exagerrated, well, conditionning of everything.
Since then, a normal summer day has gone from something in the 24-26°C to something in the 30-32°C, with warm nights rather than fresh ones, plus heatwaves happening several times a year rather than once every several years, and lasting weeks while shotting up to 35-40°C. Suddenly, air conditionning stopped being ridiculous.
So last year I paid to have the house fitted with it. Lifechanger, I can live through summer without wanting to die now.

 

[SemiLazyGamer]

SE Texas here and every one (except for the unlucky few) has some sort of HVAC system in their homes, either a few house system, wall units, window units, floor units.

I personally live in a small two room place that's not the best at keep temp, but a single wall unit with a single ceiling fan and a tower fan usually keeps air moving enough for my place to keep cool. I usually keep my unit on it's "energy saver" mode where it shuts off when the unit detects the air being cold enough, but that doesn't means its still running all day unless it rains.

 

[lymond]

DC is a swamp...can't survive without muh AC

 

[IglooDame]

The half-duplex I moved into early last year is the first place I've ever lived with "central air" (whole-home) AC, everything previously has been window unit AC as needed. And having lived in NY, Maryland (well that was USNA and no AC in Bancroft Hall), SoCal, Hawaii, Alaska, Vermont, Florida, and now NH, some places AC was essential and some not at all - Hawaii being surprisingly one of the latter.

Winter thermostat is 68F (20C), and in this current place summer thermostat is 72F (22C) though I tend to be fairly tactical about both.

My cars have usually been equipped with AC, and I ride car AC pretty hard - don't like keeping windows open, especially since I'm usually driving 70mph-ish (120kph) plus. But moonroofs are great for expediting that initial get-in-the-hot-car cooldown. And with my latest car (2yrs now) I've become absolutely enamored of heated seats and steering wheel, it's now a luxury that I would very sorely miss in the winter.

 

[Darsnan]

We got central air in 2012, as I got tired of dragging the window AC units up from the basement to the second story every summer. We set our thermostat to 74F (23C), and use it about 3 months out of the year, with July the only month we use it close to continually. AC is becoming more prevalent in central NY as summers keep getting warmer and longer.

 

[really]

The average Irish summer's day is 16C/61F (average temperature over 24hrs).
My house is heavily insulated to keep heat in and there are days I would like Air Con but we don't need it.
If parts of the house overheat on a sunny day, it can be usually be cooled overnight.

Today is Lúnasa, traditional first day of Autumn in the Celtic calendar. Temperatures ranged from 13C overnight to a high of 19C with overcast skies. Entirely typical. I still got some sunburn over the past few days out and about on holiday here.