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Old homes may have assumed cheap heating, but new homes seem to assume AC (cheap electricity). I have comfortably lived in 100-150 year old row homes without A
by Crito 13y ago
Old homes may have assumed cheap heating, but new homes seem to assume AC (cheap electricity). I have comfortably lived in 100-150 year old row homes without AC, and have sweltered in a 25 year old row home with broken AC in the same city during comparable summers.
Those drafts are a godsend in the summer, homes without drafts or AC turn into solar ovens.
(Other properties of old homes, like high ceilings, also contribute to livability in the summer (at the expense of being more expensive to heat during the winter))
So basically you have a seemingly balanced tradeoff; do you want to waste energy in the summer, or in the winter? Of course the tradeoff is not really balanced, you can put on more clothing in the winter so long as you keep your home above 0C (for the pipes), but you can only take off so much clothing in the summer.
- WildUtah 13y agoOne weird trick I use to get the effect of those drafts in the summer is to open a window.
- Crito 13y agoOpened windows along with box fans (or better yet, a house fan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole-house_fan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole-house_fan) will help, but you will still be in a worse situation than if you had a house designed to stay cool and the same fans. Houses designed to stay cool without AC, among other things, tend to have more intelligent window placement, and windows that open much wider than is perhaps normal (you won't find those rubbish casement windows that only crank open to an acute angle in homes designed to stay cool without AC: http://www.choicesil.com/images/House1-16-08%20017.jpg http://www.choicesil.com/images/House1-16-08%20017.jpg). Given the option of staying in a house that never had AC, or a house with broken AC, I would chose the former every time. Fans and open windows will help in either case, but they will be more effective in the home that prioritized that usecase.