The heating and air conditioning guys are here bright and early for the second day of the installation of our new central air/heat pump. Yesterday they spent about eight hours ripping out what seems like the guts of our house and installing vent/duct work (new veins?) in the two rooms created by the renovation we did to the house over Christmas. Today apparently they’re finally actually installing all the new guts and finishing off the vent/duct work.
The latter will make me very happy because since yesterday afternoon we’ve had two more or less open holes leading into the crawl space and that made me wake up in the middle of night on the sudden thought, Oh, my god, there are brown recluse crawling up from the bowels of house! Heh. This is brown recluse country, but I have ample reason to believe we are brown recluse free. That was just middle of the night paranoia.
The sad part is that we probably won’t even use the air conditioning all that much for a while. I told my husband last night, “Yeah, but I looked at the weather and it’s only going to be 90 tomorrow!” His face looked like this: :- / I’m more of an environmentalist than he is. We got through all of last summer with no air conditioning. I only turn on the air if it’s really, really HOT and 90 is not really, really HOT to me because I have sure fire strategies of keeping the house much cooler than that during the day (it helps that we have lots of trees shading our house). If the heat index gets up into the mid to high 90s, then I relent.
See, every time I turn on the air conditioning I think of all the polar bears who don’t have any ice to stand on and that’s pretty much enough of an image for me to suffer a little bit of heat. I tend to drive as little as possible too. It’s not the gas prices deterring me, (though they definitely help). I’ve always kept my driving to a minimum by avoiding unnecessary trips and planning out my errand running in the most effective way possible.
This weekend, Renaissance Festival! Yay! I love me some Ren Fest.
We don’t have air in our house. It was 105 last week. 😐
I love this old house and I can take the heat as long as I don’t go anywhere near air conditioned places. My body begins to crave the blessed coolness.
by Annmarie June 12th, 2008 at 7:47 amYou do get used to the heat after a while.
Honestly, last year when it was around 100 or so here and our central air had konked out, we survived with little hardship.
Round about August, though, when it hits hundred on the heat index again, I’ll be happy to have it.
by Anya Bast June 12th, 2008 at 8:42 amI would die without air in AZ… blah! Way too hot…
by Colleen June 12th, 2008 at 9:41 amI love the Renaissance Festival, but I missed ours this year… look forward to it next year… HUZZAH!!! 😀
I wish we had central air. We were in the middle of a heat wave on the east coast and some neighborhoods were affected by power outages. Luckily we weren’t affected.
by Jane June 12th, 2008 at 11:24 amWe have to turn the air on around here when it hits 80 or there’s no sleeping for me.
If you want to teach me some of your tips, I’m all ears. I love the house all open and a soft breeze running through it… reminding me to deal with all those things that had been lying around before the breeze stirred them up…
by Susan Helene Gottfried June 12th, 2008 at 3:26 pmHi Susan — We use the tried and true method. We open up the house after the sun goes goes down and use fans to draw in the cool air from outside. Then at around noon, or whenever it starts to get hot, we close up the house and draw the shades. It stays pretty cool! But we have a lot of trees shading our house. That’s also a factor.
by Anya Bast June 17th, 2008 at 4:14 am