Living without AC

I have written before about the house not having AC.  I was worried about the kids and wife living without AC for the first time in their lives. However, they have handled the heat admirably. They don’t complain much and seem to appreciate the breeze that the ceiling fans create.

I, however, am a big whiny butt. I cannot stop bitching. The heat is making me miserable.  I came home from work last night, found the house to be 90-plus degrees and was instantly in a bad mood. I am not proud of it, but the facts are that everyone else is handling the heat well and I am not. I hate sweating even when I am sitting still. I hate having no place to go to get away from it. I hate not being able to boil water or even use the toaster without turning the kitchen into an inferno. I hate that I have a prickly heat rash for the first time since I was a kid. I hate that the temperature can put me in such a bad mood.

The ceiling fans are helping. There are two of them in the great room. I installed one of these fans because the old one was broken and now have to install another fan because my wife cannot stand the fact that the two fans do not match. There is a ceiling fan in every bedroom. Really, there is no place else to install ceiling fans even if I wanted to. With the fans and all the windows, we have good air circulation. The house is hot as hell, but not stuffy.

Also, the house is not hot all summer. The house has lots of  windows and lots of trees around it. On most Ohio summer days when the temperature is in the 80’s during the day and in the 60’s and 70’s at night, the house is warm, but not uncomfortably so. Many nights this summer I have even gotten a chill while sleeping and have woken up and turned the ceiling fan off. The house only gets really miserable when the temperature stays above 80 at night and goes up into the 90’s during the day. On these days the house is hot at night and hot during the day. There is no escaping. Taking cold showers helps, but only temporarily.

What to do about the heat? Not much right now. In 5 years (after some bills are paid) we are planning on replacing the furnace in the old part of the house and we will then add AC and hopefully add AC to the new furnace as well. This will cost upwards of ten grand and cooling the house all summer will also be expensive.

Window units? Not practical. The windows in the new part of the house are all 5 feet tall and 2 feet wide. Not easy to fit an AC unit into. In the old part of the house not only are windows not made for AC units, but the current electrical system cannot handle running an AC unit. Upgrading the electric? Ten to twenty thousand dollars. Not in the budget right now.

I did find an AC unit to put in my son’s room. His room is the hottest in the house because it is exposed to the sun all afternoon and evening. How do I know this? Because it  was my room when I was a kid. I bought an AC  unit which is essentially a large vertical rectangle on rollers. It has 2 hoses which exit the window.  To make the window airtight, I had to cut a piece of plywood to fit the window and then cut 2 holes in it the plywood for the hoses to go out. I glued a piece of insulation to the inside of the plywood. I painted the outside of the insulation brown to match the siding on the house. From the outside it looks ugly as hell. On the inside the AC unit  looks like the robot from the Lost in Space TV show. It does do a nice job cooling my son’s room. The only downside besides the ugliness is that when it is really humid, the AC unit builds up water in a tank which must be drained or the unit will shut off. I would not mind this except that the a$$holes who designed the unit put the drain 1/2 inch off the floor at the back of the unit.  This means I have to find something 1/2 inch deep to drain the water into, then disconnect the hoses running out the window so I can turn the unit and drain it. This is a serious pain-in-the-a$$. I could run a drain hose out of the unit and into pan on the floor, but I have a feeling I would forget to drain the pan and it would end up spilling on the floor. Because of this downside, I  will not be buying any more of these units to use in the rest of the house.

The rest of the rooms will just have to remain sweltering until we can afford AC. I just need to find a way to keep from feeling foul on every hot day.