Wayne Boatwright > wrote in
:

> On Sun 20 Nov 2005 06:02:42a, Thus Spake Zarathustra, or was it Rhonda
> Anderson?
>>
>> Wayne, do you mean that your air-conditioning runs all the time, even
>> when you're not home?
>>
>> Rhonda Anderson
>> Cranebrook, NSW, Australia
>
> Yes, most of the time. Our summer temps are almost always above 110
> degrees F, often running as high as 115 and occasionally as high as
> 118. If we didn't run the air-conditioning, it could/would affect many
> things in the house, not just the butter. :-) Our 5 housecats and 1
> puppy would probably have heatstroke.
>
> Here it is past the middle of November and we're still having temps in
> the low 90s. All the penalty of living in the desert. :-)
>

It's not quite that hot where I live. Our hottest day has been 47C or 48C
(about 118F) - we had one day that hot last January, I think, and maybe
one the year before also. We have a few days each summer where it's over
40C (104F), and quite a few days where it's in the mid to high 30s (95
and over). They're saying that this coming summer there's a 50% chance
all temps in NSW will be higher than average.

Our temps might not get as high as yours, but I think I'd rather your
climate. I hate the humidity. It's not as bad where I live as it is
closer to the coast, but it's still awful. Makes it feel hotter than it
really is - 25 can feel like 30 something when you're dripping wet. Even
when we're on water restrictions and we're officially in drought, it's
bloody humid! We've been getting a bit of rain lately, and while it's
cooled off with the rain (weird weather lately - sleeping with no covers
on the bed one night, then blankets the next!), then the sun comes out
and it's so muggy.

We have two wall unit reverse cycle airconditioners. When we moved in
here when we got married (13 years ago in Dec) there was the one unit in
the dining room. This does the living area, but does not reach the
bedrooms. There's a ceiling fan in the bedroom, but often here it doesn't
cool down at night (too far from the coast for sea breezes <g>). If you
open the window and all that's out there is still warm air, the ceiling
fan doesn't do a lot of good. Every summer there'd be a number of nights
where we'd give up, and come out and sleep in the lounge room with the
air conditioner on. A few years ago we had a bit of extra money and
replaced the dying unit in the dining room and put a unit in the bedroom.
It has a sleep function so I can set it to turn off after a set number of
hours. If I turn it on and set it to turn off after a couple of hours,
and switch on the ceiling fan, that usually keeps it cool enough to
sleep. That one can be set to a particular temp.The one in the dining
room just has low and high settings.

If we were going out somewhere for a while on a very hot day we would
probably leave it going for our cockatiel, but in general I can't afford
to run it all the time - our electricity bill gets high enough as it is.
We have fabric awnings on the front windows - dining room, lounge and
master bedroom - they're all largish windows that go down almost to the
floor. On hot days if we put those down, the living area doesn't heat up
quite as much, but you have to put the light on in the middle of the day
<g>. The one on the bedroom window doesn't help too much, though. Our
house faces west, and while the dining and lounge room windows face onto
garden, the bedroom one faces onto a concrete porch. The bedroom can
become like an oven in summer.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's been a great tradition of building
houses to suit the climate in some parts of Australia.

Rhonda Anderson
Cranebrook, NSW, Australia