How much do you use A/C? (Denver, Arvada: houses, neighborhood)

[WilliamPacker]

We have a small window unit for our bedroom. My wife works the night shift so when it gets hot during the afternoon, I'll go in there and turn it on for her so she can sleep. Otherwise we don't use it at all. We recently replaced the drapes in our living/dining room. It is amazing what heavier drapes will do to keep your house cool. I haven't cooked or baked inside all summer either. Our house doesn't cool off the best. If we did cook in the house more we would need the ac.

[formercalifornian]

The air conditioning in the house we purchased last year went kaput the week after we moved in. We lived without it during the August heat wave. This year, we installed a whole house fan and increased our attic ventilation. We also insulated the walls of our garage, which sits under two upstairs bedrooms, to prevent the heat from building up.

This summer has been perfectly comfortable, but obviously we haven't had a heat wave like the one last year. We run the whole house fan for a couple of hours at night following hots days. I don't think we've run it at all the last couple of weeks. I also actively manage the windows during the day, keeping the blinds and drapes closed when the sun beats down and opening the windows on the shady sides of the house. Our ceiling fans are in constant use.

If we have a really hot summer next year, I'm not sure what we'll do. Perhaps we'll install a new a/c, but for the time being we're doing fine without it.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by WilliamPacker

We have a small window unit for our bedroom. My wife works the night shift so when it gets hot during the afternoon, I'll go in there and turn it on for her so she can sleep. Otherwise we don't use it at all. We recently replaced the drapes in our living/dining room. It is amazing what heavier drapes will do to keep your house cool. I haven't cooked or baked inside all summer either. Our house doesn't cool off the best. If we did cook in the house more we would need the ac.

We got new windows a few years ago and noticed a huge difference. I was skeptical at first that it would be worth it, but the difference in comfort level was huge!

[formercalifornian]

Originally Posted by WilliamPacker

We have a small window unit for our bedroom. My wife works the night shift so when it gets hot during the afternoon, I'll go in there and turn it on for her so she can sleep. Otherwise we don't use it at all. We recently replaced the drapes in our living/dining room. It is amazing what heavier drapes will do to keep your house cool. I haven't cooked or baked inside all summer either. Our house doesn't cool off the best. If we did cook in the house more we would need the ac.

I avoid using the oven in the summer, too. If it can't be consumed cold or cooked on a grill, we don't eat it. We also take very good care of the large tree which shades our west facing windows. If we didn't have that tree, our house would be unlivable.

[the3Ds]

Originally Posted by Nameless

I know some people around the area have swamp coolers but this question is for those with A/C. How much do you use it during the Summer? I couldn't imagine why anyone would use it all day and night unless it was for health purposes. Since it tends to get in the 50's at night it would seem a shame to have the house all shut up.

I visited a friend in Fort Collins in July and he had no A/C in an upstairs apartment. It felt great in the morning but the evenings sure seemed tough. It would seem to me all you would need A/C for would be to cool it off in the late afternoon once you get home from work for a couple hours and then it can go off again. Am I right in this thinking? Here we have been in the 60's for lows for the last couple weeks and my A/C has been off every night. We've had to turn it on in the early afternoon with our highs in the 80's. It's been nice to have fresh air at night again We'll still be using A/C most afternoons all this month though.

Reason for asking is I'd like to move out this way in a couple years, weather being one of the reasons.

We have a 2-story house that gets morning sun on the front and afternoon sun in the back. The back of the house has all of the larger windows so it heats up a lot. We have our air conditioning set to 79 so it usually turns on at about noon and we have it running until about 5:00 pm. We realized that most evenings, it's cooler outside than it is in the house. This summer has been more of a "typical" Colorado summer (according to the experts) but last summer, it hit 100 degrees for quite a few days. We leave our upstairs windows open at night to let in the cool breezes, but to be honest, when we first head upstairs for bed, it is very hot. We've got all of our ceiling fans running on high as well as a floor fan in the master bedroom. I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't have air conditioning, but for us, it was a must. Our electricity bills in the summer range between $100-$140. We try to keep it in perspective and remember that when we lived in Arizona, a typical air conditioning bill would be $250-300. Our bills in Colorado would be much higher if we didn't keep an eye on when the temperatures drop enough outside to turn it off.

[livecontent]

I think we have to take some lessons from the past before air conditioning was common. Some homes were designed to take the advantage of cross ventilation with windows that would take advantage of breezes. Trees were planted that would provide shade. There were heavier window coverings. Screened in porches were more common with people sleeping there in the hot summer months.

Now we built massive homes with open windows that bring in more sun and light, with light widow coverings. We have more split level homes where the bedrooms sit above a garage; where in summer these rooms are hot and in winter they are difficult to heat. Homes are built to be showcased and small ornamental coniferous trees are preferred over large deciduous shade. White roofs are not a fashionable and dark earth tone roofs are the requirements in many developments. Of course many want multiple story homes when a small one level home would suffice, which are easier to keep cool and to heat.

Many homes need air conditioning or excessive air conditioning, because they are built with the idea that we have air conditioning. Perhaps a little change in our concepts of building homes can help.

Livecontent

[Moonwalkr]

We have a decent sized 2 story house with dark roof but we rarely use our AC. I'm originally from the hot humid southeast so I'm used to sleeping with a film of sweat, this dry heat is nothing (and especially this summer it's been pretty mild). We do have a mini-split AC unit in our master which sits atop a garage and gets pretty warm in the late afternoon. It does a good job cooling down the 400 sqft with 20' ceiling that traps a good amount of heat. The mini unit is extremely energy efficient especially if you don't need to cool down thousands of square feet that you don't use. It's a 30 year old house but we done a lot of green makeover so our gas/electric bill this summer has been consistently around $50.

Oh yeah, we cook almost everyday and there is almost daily baked goods to feed a family of four, but opening the windows in the evening and all the kitchen heat (usually not much since all our appliances are well-insulated and very energy efficient) quickly goes away.

[denverian]

We have a 2 story house w/basement, and use central A/C pretty much 24/7 from late May to mid September. Since the house is only 4 years old, we don't have huge trees to shade it, so that's probably part of why we use it so much. If I shut it off and just opened windows, it would easily be in the 80s inside the house, way too hot for me! This summer has been the coolest I've experienced in Denver, so we have had days here and there where we shut it off and opened the windows. And it's not always in the 50s at night - even this summer. While it may feel comfortable outside at midnight, we don't have an attic fan to suck the cooler air in, so the house won't really cool down at night.

[the3Ds]

Originally Posted by livecontent

I think we have to take some lessons from the past before air conditioning was common. Some homes were designed to take the advantage of cross ventilation with windows that would take advantage of breezes. Trees were planted that would provide shade. There were heavier window coverings. Screened in porches were more common with people sleeping there in the hot summer months.

Yes, in the morning, our house is nice and cool (and stays that way until about noon). It was built about 10 years ago and has a really large shade tree in the front and a large porch that keeps things cool. When we open the back patio door and the screen door in the front, a nice breeze blows for hours. We have 10 gorgeous tall aspen trees in the backyard but they don't prevent the sun from beating into the back windows (it's actually the sliding door to the deck that generates a lot of heat...one day it would be nice to have a covered deck). The master bedroom faces the back so it gets a lot of sun. We bought blackout drapes last year and the difference in room temperatures is amazing.

I also think that we have to realize that in the summer it should be warm/hot and in the winter it should be cool/cold. You should not have the temperature in your house (during the dead of winter) comfortable enough to wear shorts. It's winter! We wear sweats around the house because it's cold! I also hate going to people's house where I freeze my butt off in the summer and sit around with goosebumps when I am wearing summer clothes. Those who keep their house at 65 in the summer and 80 in the winter pay for it with their bills. I don't have a problem sleeping on top of the sheets during the summer...that's what summer is for!

[the3Ds]

Originally Posted by livecontent

Of course many want multiple story homes when a small one level home would suffice, which are easier to keep cool and to heat.

When we started our househunt, we couldn't FIND any homes that were 4 bedrooms and one story in the area we wanted to live. We lived in Arizona and Florida and loved our 1-level houses. We don't live in a large house by any standards, but the only homes we found that were one level (usually with a basement) were either 3 bedrooms (we need 4 for our family) and very small or the bedrooms were split up (some were in the basement and that didn't work for our young family). Our house is under 2000 square feet, so not a large house by any standards. We were disappointed to not be able to find a home that was one level, especially because as we live in the house longer and start to get older (we aren't moving (if things go as planned) for at least 20 years...we'll be close to retirement age), we are not going to be wanting to go up and down stairs all day.

The house we live in now has all of the living space on the first floor and the bedrooms on the top floor. I guess it makes it easier since we don't have to go up and down stairs all day, but my husband and I still talk about how nice it will be to move and live in a house without stairs. Unfortunately, the standard in Denver seems to be smaller lots with homes that go straight up. In Arizona and Florida, they have larger lots so the homes can be spread out on one level.