{"id":5036,"date":"2010-08-10T10:24:50","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T14:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/?p=5036"},"modified":"2010-08-10T10:24:50","modified_gmt":"2010-08-10T14:24:50","slug":"the-great-air-conditioning-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/10\/the-great-air-conditioning-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Air Conditioning Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AirThis summer has been hotter than normal for CT. On average, in the Hartford area, there are 18 days a year that are 90 degrees or more.<\/a> So far this year we’ve had 26 days of 90 degree or warmer weather. And we’re not even half way through August yet. Sheesh.<\/p>\n

When buyers are looking for homes, particularly during the warmer months, they often focus on central air. The house they buy should have it. In reality, there are many homes in our area that do not have central air. A quick look at the CT MLS tells us that there are currently 3,885 single family homes for sale in Hartford County. Of those, 1,823 have a central air system. So 47% of the current inventory available has central air. If you look at the breakdown based on construction year, 63% of the homes with central air conditioning were built in 1980 or later. Not really surprising. And not great for people that tend to gravitate towards older homes. They’ll most likely have to do without central air. Or suck it up and put it in themselves.<\/p>\n

And this is what brings us to the Great Air Conditioning Debate, which was recently underway at the Bergquist residence (and I’m sure a bunch of other homes in the Hartford area). We live in a big, old house that does not have central air conditioning. Usually we are able to manage the heat with a series of open windows\/run window fans\/close windows\/close curtains procedures that we’ve trialed and errored over the years. But for some reason this year our systems aren’t working that great and the entire house has just been really steamy. Our home office is located on the third floor, the hottest part of the house. After about 11:00am we have to abandon it and move our laptops down to the first floor. Sleeping has also been restless.<\/p>\n

In early July we called “Uncle” and brought out the 2 window units that were sitting in the basement. Last year we didn’t even need them. They’re now installed in our bedroom and the home office. The rest of the house remains gross.<\/p>\n

All of this discomfort has caused Kyle and I to start discussing the thought of putting in central air. It would be great to have cooler, less humid air. It would contribute to our resale value somewhere down the line. Window units are a hassle and don’t really fit well into our oversized windows. Also, it would be nearly impossible to effectively cool our house with window units.<\/p>\n

The main detractors for us seem to be the overall installation cost and the somewhat wasteful nature of the system. Old houses are more expensive to retrofit to central air. It would cost us somewhere between $20,000-$25,000 to put central air into our house. That’s a good piece of change. Additionally, I can’t really wrap my head around the idea of paying that much for something that’s only used about 30 days a year. We’re actually big fans of fresh air, so if temperatures weren’t approaching the 90s, we would prefer to just have our windows open.<\/p>\n

Neither of us had central air growing up and we’ve made it this long without it. Do we really need it that much? We’ve decided no. We’ll keep running our systems and that will be good enough. Even if I am a little bit whinier on the hot days. And the overarching reason why we won’t get central air? The curmudgeonly native Vermonter in both of us won’t allow it. Who can’t deal with a little heat? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

If you’re going through this, or went through this at some point, feel free to share the outcome. Until then, stay cool! Whatever your strategy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This summer has been hotter than normal for CT. On average, in the Hartford area, there are 18 days a year that are 90 degrees or more. So far this year we’ve had 26 days of 90 degree or warmer weather. And we’re not even half way through August yet. Sheesh. When buyers are looking for homes, particularly during the warmer months, they often focus on central air. The house they buy should have it.<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1575,1578,1579],"tags":[1668,1692,1866,1974,2247,2947,3100],"class_list":["post-5036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun","category-hartford","category-home-maintenance","tag-90-degrees","tag-air-conditioning","tag-central-air-conditioning","tag-ct-mls","tag-hartford-county","tag-temperature","tag-window-unit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}