Western WA cooling units (for when the weather is hot)

[Olympian2]

Originally Posted by TrueTimbers

Sorry for the typo,darn Google speech. Ha

I wasn't trying to be the typo police. I cut and pasted "ductless mini spit" (quotes included) into Google, and it oddly works just fine. Google usually knows what you mean of course, but in this case there is no "showing results for ductless mini split instead." I was briefly perplexed as to why they were referred to as "spits". (The typo is apparently common as "Ductless Mini Spit System Condensers" are for sale on Amazon.)

Back to the OP's question, I assume that newer houses have heat pumps. Otherwise, I think that most people just use fans. The way that I learned to use fans during warm spells (such as now) or outright 3 day heat waves, is to put a box fan or two intaking air in an east window in the evenings with a box fan or two exhausting air out of west windows. In the morning, the house is chilly sometimes down into the 50s. Then I close the windows. Using this method, the indoor temperature has never gotten over 80 degrees even though it has been a bit above 100 degrees outside.

The reason that this works is that heat spells happen when the westward winds shift from blowing cool air off of the Pacific Ocean to east winds blowing hot air off of the deserts in Canada and Eastern Washington. But being desert air, it is dry and cools down at night.

[Votre_Chef]

I think it depends on how much money you want to spend. Most people obviously don't have air conditioning, but in and just after college, I worked at Sears, and of course, when it got hot, we sold air conditioners (and sold out of fans) pretty quick. Three basic kinds (I wasn't a salesperson, so I'm not an expert on air conditioning) we sold were large, multi-room units, portable units and smaller window units (I just listed them in descending order of price and effectiveness). Most of our stock was portable units, followed by a lesser number of window units and just a few larger units (and of course, we had tons of assorted fans). My guess is that basically reflects how often each type is purchased in this area. The overwhelming majority just get fans (we'd run out of about four or five dozen of them), then mid-priced portables (about 20-24 of them), then smaller window units (about 10-12), then the larger units (maybe 6 at most). I remember during heat waves and we were out of all of them, customers would say they were willing to purchase anything we had, regardless of price. Just my experience for what it's worth.

[Fat Freddy]

When we built our house, the government gave us $1500 as an incentive to install a heat pump because of the environmental advantage.

[jm31828]

I don't think a swamp cooler would work too well in western Washington- the most common type for those that have it is a traditional AC system. Some use portable units that exhaust out a window, some have actual window units, and some have central AC as you find in homes in most of the rest of the country. The number with central AC is growing rather quickly- I had it installed in my new house this Spring and the guys said they were incredibly busy over the last couple of years installing these in existing homes all over the region.

Our house warms up very quickly without the AC turned on- it'll reach 80 degrees or higher on the 2nd floor even on days when it's not incredibly hot outside (such as days when it's only in the lower 80's outside). Add to it the fact that I am extremely hot blooded and can't really stand an indoor temperature above about 72 degrees, we set the thermostat at 72 and leave it, so if it gets above that the unit kicks on. It's been running on most days for the last 3 months.