I live on the first floor of a house in Boston, and this summer made it through without AC. By keeping heavy curtains drawn and closing both layers of the double windows during the day, then opening windows at night and using fans to draw cooler air through the apartment, I was able to keep the apartment relatively cool throughout the summer.
Sure, there were nights my apartment still hit 87F indoors by the time I was going to bed -- a week of nights that don't dip below 80 will do that -- but it doesn't take that long to get used to it and the breeze from open windows and running fans made it much more tolerable.
There are a lot of places in the US that benefit tremendously from AC -- I grew up in the Mojave desert and there is little arguing with AC at 110F -- nonetheless the the machines are overused. If more people decided to tolerate 80F as room temperature, even without active measures to replace AC in their homes, we'd see a precipitous decline in energy usage. Add to that careful control of airflow and insulation and many regions simply don't need AC.
Meanwhile, I am at my office, and the AC is run so high in the summer that many people wear jackets indoors year round here. Lovely.
the machines are overused. If more people decided to tolerate 80F as room temperature...we'd see a precipitous decline in energy usage
When I first moved into my current house I was setting the air conditioning at 78 degrees. Then I had my central AC unit serviced and the tech showed me little dots of mold throughout the inside of the unit in the basement. He told me not to set the thermostat above 75 degrees in the summer time because it doesn't get enough humidity out of the air. He also said to make sure I kept a dehumidifier running in the basement.
Now I keep the thermostat on 75 and keep the basement at 50% relative humidity using a dehumidifier in the summer. I also ended up installing a UV light inside the basement unit myself to kill microorganisms.
So it's easy to say to just tolerate higher temperature but the unfortunate thing is that high humidity levels inside a home can lead to serious issues.
Sure, there were nights my apartment still hit 87F indoors by the time I was going to bed -- a week of nights that don't dip below 80 will do that -- but it doesn't take that long to get used to it and the breeze from open windows and running fans made it much more tolerable.
There are a lot of places in the US that benefit tremendously from AC -- I grew up in the Mojave desert and there is little arguing with AC at 110F -- nonetheless the the machines are overused. If more people decided to tolerate 80F as room temperature, even without active measures to replace AC in their homes, we'd see a precipitous decline in energy usage. Add to that careful control of airflow and insulation and many regions simply don't need AC.
Meanwhile, I am at my office, and the AC is run so high in the summer that many people wear jackets indoors year round here. Lovely.