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Especially once you consider that in some places (New England) you have people living in both extremes. So they're using heat in the winter AND air conditioning
by saudioger 8y ago
Especially once you consider that in some places (New England) you have people living in both extremes. So they're using heat in the winter AND air conditioning in the summer.
New England winters are on average colder than some places near the arctic circle (Iceland for example) and summers get hotter than many places in the US as well.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y agoI live in New England, and the situation is definitely a little complex. Some factors where I live: - Firewood is really cheap. My house uses oil for its primary heating, but we supplement with a wood stove because aesthetics and cheap heat. - A lot of the summer it's not the heat that gets you, more the humidity. We run A/C a lot, but often we could get by with just better dehumidifiers whose waste-heat stayed outside the house. - Only relatively new houses have central A/C and/or dehumidifiers. Older houses tend to use window-mounted A/C's, which are less efficient and less appealing. Unfortunately retrofitting a house with central A/C can be outside many people's budgets. - At my latitude, we get enough sunlight to make roof-mounted solar panels worthwhile for many people. But the financial break-even time can be pretty long, and there don't always seem to be government-subsidized low-interest loans to help.
- saudioger 8y agoAh firewood is nice. I live in a dense urban area and we wouldn't really have the option. We're on an electric heat pump for heating/cooling/dehumidifying (it's a nice system, a little expensive, but better than resistance electric heat and window units). We're in an old house without ducts, and compared to traditional systems it was cheap to install ($10k for 1500 ft sq).