What did people do before air conditioning?

[poltr1]

They sweated and had lots of fans going.

My parents live in a house that doesn't have air conditioning. And that's not likely to change. I'm sure that will affect the resale value, when it's time to put the house on the market.

The two apartments and condo I live in now have air conditioning. I don't think I can live without it now.

Even though I air condition down to 76 degrees, it's still a welcome feeling when I come home. (And thankfully, my electric bill hasn't been very high. I guess my neighbors air condition as well, which prevents heat transfer between the units.)

But this week at work was rough. I thought about wearing shorts because we had no A/C in the afternoons. I'm glad I had the foresight to wear breathable shirts, and not heavy polo shirts.

BTW, Christine Lavin wrote a great song called "Air Conditioner". I won't copy the lyrics; click on the link.

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

I think houses in general used to have better ventilation decades ago. Central air removed any motivation for houses to have any sort of natural breeze flowing through them.

[gorgeousgary]

What bikergeek said; we used to know how to design houses for cross-ventilation and shade. Not to mention there used to be a lot more trees for shade, and fewer two- and three-story houses.

[yourmommma.livejournal.com]

I completely agree about better ventilation in older houses. Our current house has terrible air flow.

When we were kids we didn't have air and we always had some nights when we would all sleep on sheets in the living room with the front door open and all the windows open, too. One of my most powerful memories was sitting up in the living room with everything open watching Joe Pine on TV during the Watts riots.

Now we use our air conditioner cause the heat makes me sick. I keep the house at 78 during the day and then move the thermostat down a couple of degrees as the night goes on. If I'm still up at 4 am, it goes to 72. If we could open our windows at night we probably wouldn't have to air condition all the time, but we can't because we don't feel safe enough. Also we use a lot of fans...needless to say in my 13th moon phase I have a lot of trouble thermoregulating. That plus chronic fatigue makes every summer night an adventure!!!

When we design our house for Arizona, I keep thinking about all these things to try to be as energy efficient as possible as air conditioning is out...we won't have the power for it. But we really shouldn't need it if we site the windows and so forth properly. This is what I think about when I'm awake at night.