[thebigr]

My neighbor lived in an older florida house without AC or Heat. She could not afford to buy a window unit. And her being such a good person and helping us when we need it we bought her one. I just can't see living in South Florida without.

[sponger42]

I went through the hottest summer ever recorded here with no A/C, just a window fan, in the hottest part of LA--Woodland Hills. Temps hit 110 - 112 every day for 3 weeks straight, but--as they say--it's a dry heat. Plus it would chill down to a comfy 70-ish after the sun set.

Rode my bike to/from work too. The key is to keep your window shades shut and put towels on the furniture. Without that clammy clothing, a thin sheen of sweat, a tall glass of ice water, and a fan breeze actually makes things pretty acceptable. Cool showers feel wonderful!

Dunno if I will be able to stand it when I move to the barrier islands on the FL coast, though. Temps will be lower and the seabreeze will help, but the humidity...

[macguy]

Originally Posted by sponger42

I went through the hottest summer ever recorded here with no A/C, just a window fan, in the hottest part of LA--Woodland Hills. Temps hit 110 - 112 every day for 3 weeks straight, but--as they say--it's a dry heat. Plus it would chill down to a comfy 70-ish after the sun set.

Rode my bike to/from work too. The key is to keep your window shades shut and put towels on the furniture. Without that clammy clothing, a thin sheen of sweat, a tall glass of ice water, and a fan breeze actually makes things pretty acceptable. Cool showers feel wonderful!

Dunno if I will be able to stand it when I move to the barrier islands on the FL coast, though. Temps will be lower and the seabreeze will help, but the humidity...

All you really need is a little sanctuary maybe one room you run a small air conditioner in. Just a little air at night so you can sleep. You have to have restful sleep, you can't be suffering.

[HockeyMom72]

Originally Posted by Tarastomsgirl

Actually its very common up in the North East to not have A/C in your home. Our apartment does not have it, nor have we needed it. It was 75 today, it'll be 73 tomorrow and saturday will be 68. Not everywhere has the brutal summers whichI don't miss in Florida. It all depends on where you go. Even on the really hot days here, the humidity is not bad and it only last for a day or two and then you get a break.

I second that. Unless the outside temp was over 85, I didn't turn on the AC. Even when it was, it usually went down into the 70s at night and I shut it off.

Besides, a $400 a month electric bill for central air is a MAJOR deterent. Why so high? Combination of LIPA and surcharges and cooling off two floors.

[INeedAChange]

what TallRick tried to do was smart--AC use is pretty bad for the environment:

FOXNews.com - Study: Air Conditioning May Indirectly Contribute to Global Warming - Biology | Astronomy | Chemistry | Physics

[sunrico90]

Originally Posted by thebigr

My neighbor lived in an older florida house without AC or Heat. She could not afford to buy a window unit. And her being such a good person and helping us when we need it we bought her one. I just can't see living in South Florida without.

Superb action. We don't see many like this.....

[vpcats]

I have gotten extremely used to the A/C here and I keep it in the low 70's after 5 pm and 76 daytime (for the dogs).
When my power went out during Katrina, I thought it was horrible and like I was going to pass out. Cold showers felt really, really good. When Wilma came, I was without power much longer but I had bought a generator, which didn't power the A/C but all the ceiling fans were running and, you get used to it. Cold showers again were really good. Another thing too though, Wilma was at the end of October so it wasn't the middle of August.

When I bought this house, every room had a wall A/C unit, plus the central. I took all those wall units out. In retrospect, that was dumb but I'm not opening up those holes in the walls again!

When I lived in NY, I had a window unit for the two bedrooms and they were hardly ever used.

But think about it, not that long ago people survived with no a/c and had much rougher jobs and less technology to help out in the daily lives.

Go to any of the islands in the Caribbean. Go to Europe. Go to most of the US. We are really spoiled by being unable to live without A/C anymore. I'm not arguing that it's not comfortable, but you pay for that comfort dearly, in more ways than one.

One of these days when I have extra money (dream on)....I want one of those permanent mega generators.

[tallrick]

If I can stay in Florida I will be installing solar air conditioning. For hurricanes I am going to use trigeneration, where waste heat from the generator fuels the absorptive cooling and leftover heat warms the household water. A better way to generate power is to eliminate the centralized power plant and lines for rural areas and generate on site. I always wondered why large buildings did not use local power generation to use waste heat for cooling needs.

[pslOldTimer]

My wife is a home health physical therapist who sees patients in many rural and poverty-stricken areas. Many of them do not have air conditioning. In fact, so many do not have AC, that she does not use the AC in her car, because the jolt of going from a cold car to a hot house so many times per day would leave her sick.

The other result of this situation is that she has gotten acclimated to not having AC. As a result, we moderate the use of AC in our house. There have been many Summers when we did not use the AC at all, except to remove humidity from the house when it rains. If we had a dehumidifier, we may have used the AC even less.

In the last 8 years, we have been caring for my Mother-in-law, who turned 103 last week. Because of her residence, we have used the AC for a longer period each Summer. Still, we do not turn it colder than about 81-82 degrees. We have paddle fans in every room and use them copiously. If there is any breeze outside, we turn of the AC and open up the entire house.

We have put a lot of thought and effort into the design of our new house, which we are hoping to start constructing in the new couple of months. It actually will have cross ventilation in all 4 directions (in some cases as long as a bedroom door stays open). The ceilings will actually rise to 23 feet in the main living areas and will be open across the entire house, including 12 feet over the open loft. At the peak, there will be two triangular plenum areas on either side of the ridge beam that will be between 3 and 4 feet high. There will be air grates every so often along that plenum and exhaust fans at the ends,in the gables. The idea is that hot air rises, and the passageways and fans will draw it out. The entire house will be surrounded with an 8' wide wrap-around porch, will will ensure that no sunlight hits the windows and doors, and all air drawn into the house will be as cool as possible. We are hoping that this adaptation of early Cracker house design will let us go longer into the Summer before we have to use the AC, and we actually hope that we can go all year round.

We, too, had a miserable time in the weeks after Hurricanes Francis and Jeanne, without power, but this is primarily because we didn't have central power to run our paddle fans. We had a generator than ran small table-top fans during the day, but the generator was in our RV, and we powered it down at night to conserve fuel, because gas was hard to get. As long as we have moving air from paddle fans we can be comfortable, so our new house will have a whole house generator strong enough to run everything except the AC. It will run on propane and fuel will be less of a concern.

Living without AC in Florida is largely a state of mind, especially if you have effective fans and enough shade.

[doom1001]

Originally Posted by kelly3120

I have a aunt in Cali who has no air and I think she's nuts!!!!!
I prefer cold so AIR IS A MUST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

San Francisco has temperatures in the summer that are like Florida temperatures in the winter,depending on where she lives it might not be that nuts!!!