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how is your home cooled?

how is your home primarily cooled?

  • central air

  • window units

  • fans

  • other

  • none

Results are only viewable after voting.
N

nageov3t

Lifer
I live in an old 2-family house... window units for me.

I've got small units in my bedroom and office (ie: converted second bedroom) and a large unit in my living room/dining room... if necessary, the kitchen can be made comfortable via the AC in my office, but I generally just suck it up.

if I'm in the kitchen during the summer, I'm probably cooking, in which case turning up the AC doesn't do much good when I've got the oven up to 450 and the burners on high. I do have a ceiling fan and a giant window in my kitchen, though.

I've gotten into the habit of leaving them in all year-round, screwed into the window frame so as not to invite burglars. the draft is kinda nice in the winter, since my apartment gets ridiculously hot... the biggest concern is not inviting birds to nest under them, but I live on the first floor so it's easy enough to keep the outside clean and free of debris.

central air seems relatively rare around here, other than in houses built in the past 10-15 years... I'm assuming people reason that it's not worth the expense to retrofit a 50+ year-old house just for the 3-4 months in which AC is needed.
 
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A window unit in our bedroom, the rest of the house stays warm. There are ceiling fans and standalone fans around, but they just move warm air.
 
Most houses here don't have air conditioners. Everyone uses fans, spend more time in the basement, and be outside more. People in apartments and condos usually do have window-mounted or window-vented AC


Fans and air flow are generally not too bad as long a house has good air flow. My parents house has a clear path through the house going between the north and south sides, and it works pretty good as long as nobody closes the doors. My gf's house has horrendously bad airflow, there are no straight paths through the house, so it feels like an oven.
 
Just a note, fans don't technically cool a space. They cool individuals by blowing the heated air immediately adjacent to the skin, away from the body.

We have an central air unit up here in Canada. We'll get about 15-20 days a year around 85-90˚F.
 
One 8k in my parents bedroom, one 8k in my room, one 5k in my sister's room, a 12k in the family room, a 12k in the dining room (which handles most of the first floor). So all window units.
 
Just fans for now. It gets hot and muggy in the summers though, sometimes I'm tempted to pick up a cheap AC unit.
 
As a Floridian, a place without central air would be odd. Mine has it even though it was built in 1952.
 
Primarily, window fans in the evening/overnight to exhaust warm air and pull in cooler air. On a decent day that works well enough, the inside doesn't get too warm over the course of the day.

But when it gets mid-80s and higher outside and the sun out, it can get way too hot inside. So I have a window AC unit for days like that, such as today.
 
ISAslot said:
As a Floridian, a place without central air would be odd. Mine has it even though it was built in 1952.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Even really old homes here have central air. If they didn't originally it was added decades ago.

You can't even sell a house here without AC.
 
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None. However contrary to popular belief Canada can get very hot in the summer. Vancouver is much better but our house does often get intolerably hot some months. We face south and our attic doesn't cool well.
 
House was built in the early 20th century. No A/C, home owners (daddy...) has been too cheap to install A/C, but he's smart enough to screw windows shut. Oh, and in his infinite wisdom, he puts pieces of plastic (thick, not air-tight) over windows to "insulate" the house better during the winter.

So, I more or less write the day off whenever it's over 27 C. Air from windows become disgustingly humid, fans are loud and barely effective, I spend my day shirtless and praying for night.
 
Locut0s said:
None. However contrary to popular belief Canada can get very hot in the summer. Vancouver is much better but our house does often get intolerably hot some months. We face south and our attic doesn't cool well.
Click to expand...

Lies! We all know it is a frozen barren wasteland.
 
Living in Southern CA I have Central Air. House was built in 1979 and it came installed.

I also have a ceiling fan in about every room. I also have whole house fans and a attic fan. We live backing up against a busy street. I used to run the AC more until I installed the whole house fans. The wife and I like to keep the house between 74-72. Right now I can run the whole house fans all night and cool the house down in the high 60's. I open up the downstairs windows so we can sleep without being bothered by the traffic noise from the street. I then button up the house in the morning and it will stay usually under 74 all day with no AC. Then in the evening I will open up the windows again when the temperature outside gets below 72. Growing up my parents used to never use the AC. So I told myself when I got my own house and paid my own bills I would use the AC. So now that I have a house I use the AC. 🙂 However since I got the whole house fans installed I don't need to use the AC as much. So far it is almost June and I have barely used the AC by just managing the temperature with the whole house fans.
 
Two large window units, both framed into the wall. One is in the downstairs dining room (between the kitchen, two bed rooms, and living room), and the other is in the master bedroom on the second floor. A third window unit is in an actual window in the old master bedroom, which is the most isolated room in the house.

Overall, it works quite well. I wish the downstairs "master" bedroom didn't need it's own AC, but it gets ridiculously hot in there, even with the other AC units running full tilt. It's funny, too - something about the way that room is designed makes it so hot. With the door shut and the windows open, virtually no air flows in unless you get a gust of wind. As soon as you open the door to the room, you get a decent pressure blast of air coming in from the windows. *shrug*
 
My house has central air, but we have a window unit in the kitchen that we use during the hottest months of the summer, and when we are cooking in the kitchen.

During July and August, the central air runs most of the time. The window unit helps keep the kitchen and dining area cool.
 
Central Air, 25ish year old 3 ton unit, it doesn't work great, but it works enough for now. I can't get the house down to like 70 when it's 95 and humid outside, but it still keeps it under 80 and the air dry.

The basement stays nice and cool though, usually never see higher than low 70s down there... and I've got a dehumidifier there in case I'm just using windows + fans for when it's below about 82 or 83 outside (which is when usually I crank the AC)
 
Window units.
10000 BTU downstairs, 8000 BTU upstairs. (Yes, warm air rises, but there's less space upstairs, therefore it gets the smaller AC.)
 
I run a duct from the basement to the second floor with fans blowing out from it at the first and second floors. Free A/C 🙂
 
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