Like the Florida weather? I challenge you to go without air condition! (Miami: homes)

[Ladywithafan]

I have to laugh because I'm originally from Detroit, ok? no a/c...snow...lived there from birth to 23....so I know winter...lol


I ended up in Florida because sixteen years ago, when my x & I lived in Morgantown, WV....we were tired of late winters and having to enter the trans am from the hatch...and then in the summer it was about the same temps as Florida...we decided, if we were going to be that hot, we might as well be living where there's palm trees!

Because he was an MD...we could go wherever...and so it was Florida...now...he's left the state as my children are allergic to the mold here and of, course, my boyfriend & I are feeling the insurance crisis, the aversion to evacuation crisis of barrier island living...as we know, barrier islands are wind breakers for storms, not originally intended as homesites....It was always a dream to live in Paradise....thank god I got to do it while I'm young (44)!!!!!

[IBNYer]

Originally Posted by faithfulFrank

Well, up here in NY, you have some elderly who have to make choices....do I eat or pay for heat????
Do I stop paying for my medication, or do I pay for heat???

The sad truth is that in both climates, better home construction, like better insulation and windows, etc,etc goes far in keeping utilities down. Poor people in poor houses will have double the utility bills because of that.

As to driving.....we have rusty cars, you cannot see out your windows because of snow, ice, or just frost that will not go away, so you cannot see backing up, etc.

You have "black ice" that you cannot see, but the road could be clear, then all of a sudden, you are spinng out of control.

You have to start your car 20-30 minutes ahead of time, just to defrost your windows......and gas here is $2.50 per gallon....

You have to get your snow tires on....(I have 8 rims and tires- 4 studded snows and 4 summer tires)

You drive as careful as you can, but get rear ended by some jerk who doesn't understand that 4 wheel drive does not mean 4 wheel stop, goes 10 mph too fast, and slams into you, and there is NOTHING you can do about it.

You cannot see any parking lot lines, so people park anywhere, blocking you in sometimes. Then try pushing a shopping cart through the snow/slush/ice.....almost can't do it.....your cart flips over and stuff gets all over and breaks, etc.

You get up to go to work an hour earlier, just to shovel or snowblow your driveway, only to have the snowplow "fill in" the driveway again, so you have to do it again. Our ambulance goes to many heart attack victims due to shoveling. Not to mention the elderly falling and breaking a hip on the ice....did you know that about 1/2 of elderly having a broken hip will die within a year??, Not to mention pneumonia......

Yeah, I'll pay for some Air conditioning.

Frank D.

Boy Frank, I had to reread your post and it really hits the nail on the head.
We all, those who live anywhere near significant snowfall, know exactly what you mean, especially the snowplow "filling in" your driveway.
But actually when snows are too deep even the medics cannot rescue those in need. So its not even a hot or cold issue.

[Ben Around]

Originally Posted by Jammie

NAH, that's a very good point that you're making. I couldn't make it up HERE all summer long with no AC and the humidity is much worse down there. But I'll bet that no one could make it in the northern states without heat either.

Jammie--Well, no, I don't think people in our part of the north (I'm in MN) could make it without heat, but in these parts, the cold can kill you. Heat, on the other hand, won't unless you overexert yourself on a hot humid day (like that MN VIkings player did in summer camp a couple years ago--the temp was about 98 and the dew point was over 70--he died of heatstroke with a body temp of 106). When my family moved to Miami in the 60s, we spent the first summer in an unairconditioned house. We didn't die, but there where times when I wished I was!)

[Ben Around]

Originally Posted by Jammie

Oh yes!!! And have you ever been locked out of your car because your doors froze shut and you can't get them open?

No fun, but preventable!

[Ben Around]

Originally Posted by florigidge

as you know, my family moved to miami in 1951. it was a small concrete block house in hialeah (working class suburb), three small bedrooms, one bathroom, jalousie windows (the small slim jalousies, not those big wide ones.)

i was the youngest of three kids, the girl, so i had one bedroom to myself. as an adult, i have literally had closets bigger than my childhood bedroom. one window, jalousies, facing east. one window.

NO AIR CONDITIONING in the entire house from 1951 until about...well, i am trying to think. i think it was in the early to mid-60s. my aunt and uncle were getting rid of their window a/c to replace it with a newer model and i asked if i could have it. i was a teenager by then, concerned about my hair, etc. it was installed under my window (jalousies didn't allow for it to be otherwise).

the folks didn't get a bedroom air conditioner until a couple of years later - and their bedroom wasn't all that large either, with two windows. it was installed not under their windows but up on the wall.

and it wasn't until the early 70s, if i recall correctly, that they got a larger a/c for the living room. it was a reverse cycle - it would also put out heat. up til then we had used a small gas heater in the living room to heat in winter and i remember many a winter morning as a kid crawling out of my cold bedroom and standing in front of the gas fire to get warm. it could heat up the living room and the kitchen and that was about it.

that house never did have central air - and one bedroom never got an a/c ever. the common practice was to install room a/c's directly into the concrete block. in fact, i can't recall any house on our block with a/c until the early 60s. and some of my playmates/friends in the neighborhood, and those i went to school with didn't have a/c either until the later years, if ever.

i didn't grow up with cars that had air conditioning - my aunt and uncle, more well off, always had a/c in their cars however. my teenage car never had a/c (it was a family car - a small renault); the first car i ever bought (a datsun) never had a/c.

and this was all in MIAMI.

even in gainesville, when the a/c died on my car (a nissan) i never got it fixed and drove it for years (i keep cars until they completely fall apart; never owned a brand new one in my life) without a/c in gainesville. bought a VW Fox used when the nissan blew its engine and the a/c never worked in that one either.

soooooo, i'm here to tell ya, that yes, people did live without a/c in miami for years...and people even drove cars without it.

imagine that. kinda makes the rest of ya....um, the p-word. LOL. (no offense, i'm just trying to make you realize that there was a time when a/c didn't rule miami. think about the 1920s!)

Good post, flori. We moved to Miami in the early 60s in a house that sounds a lot like yours, including no AC! It was hell! We moved a couple years later to a house that had a big window unit built right into the blocks, just like you described. That thing would roar all day and all night--we might has well have been living under the flightpath at MIA. But the cool, dry air was heaven. Neither my grade school nor my high school had any AC, either. I remember how bad everybody smelled on the (unairconditioned) bus ride home at the end of the day!

I now live in MN and enjoy sleeping with the windows open from April to October. We have central air, but only have to resort to turning it on 5 or six nights a summer (my rule of thumb is when the temp is above 70 and the dew point is above 60 at bed time.)

Back to Miami: our car didn't have AC either. We did have those little windwings you could crank open and direct the breeze on yourself if you were driver or shotgun. I kinda liked that! A little off topic--the first car we bought in FL, a 1960 Ford Falcon, didn't have AC, but it had no heater, either! I don't think you can buy cars that way anymore!

[iriegirl]

This is a great post, reading both sides of the hot vs cold issue.
I love it. What Frank said about the cold is so true and anyone who has lived up in the Northern states knows it, and we also have the extreme in the summer with rain storms, heat waves, and oppressive humidity.
I thought that moving somewhere with moderate temps. would be the idea; but the folks on the Cal. and Az boards complain just as much about their states too. There are folks there who are moving back to PA and NJ !
I don't know if they realize that we have the same problems here as well.

[root]

Living in the cold and snow is not as bad as some people on this thread make it out to be. It seems like some of you would rather go through a hurricane than snow. The truth is that this winter has not been as bad as winters past. Where I live in Wisconsin, the first measurable snow we got was two weeks ago. So there was no snow in November, December, and the first part of January. And yes, traveling in snow can be difficult, but one has to be smart about it. The roads have been plowed very well as of late where I live. It seems like some people focus on the little things like shoveling (very few people showel by hand these days), scaping snow off of car windows, and starting cars early. I am also not making light of the situation where a lot of people in Texas and the midwest have no power because of the ice and winter weather.

I guess my point is that winter only lasts a few months, whereas hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, and other severe storms are a year long occurance in Florida. And they do much more damage than the snow and cold of the Midwest.

[iriegirl]

It's not just the snow and cold , root, it's the constant grey skies that affect many of us up North. It's depressing to me, and the cold weather makes me want to stay inside all day, instead of going out.

[nomoresnow]

I couldn't have said it better myself, irie.

[florigidge]

as a followup, i didn't break out in heat rashes or sleep in drippy sweaty bed clothes in my bedroom/house with no a/c. it could be hot, sure. but i didn't know any different unless i went over to my aunt and uncle's house.

the point is humans can tolerate a lot, if not, we would have died out eons ago. and i also think that those who never experienced life WITHOUT air conditioning have gotten so used to it that any heat at all makes them apopletic.

before i got the bedroom a/c and i was still in my early teens, my dad bought a big square fan and put it facing OUT of an open living room jalousie window. he then would close the living room windows/the kitchen windows/the bathroom window. he would leave open the bedroom doors and windows - and the breeze that would come through during the night could make you reach for a coverlet in july.

have you ever heard of a "cracker house"? (hmmm, not a crack house...LOL)

they were built to take advantage of the sea breezes in south florida, long before air conditioning was ever invented.

and they worked rather well from what i heard.