Thursday, June 28, 2012

Moving Air

This is an old house.  When Gary moved here, he wanted central air conditioning installed, but found out that after great expense, it would still only cool the downstairs.  We make do with two small air conditioners, one upstairs and one downstairs.  One cools the living room and one a bedroom upstairs.

On a steamy day like today some of the rooms would be unbearable, but Gary is an expert at moving air to keep the rest of the house cool.

First of all, he makes sure that every window is closed tight, blinds pulled down and heavy curtains pulled across. We sit in darkened rooms, doing our work at our respective computers, me in this office, him in the living room.

He sets the air conditioners at 75 degrees F., no lower since we don't waste electricity.  Next he strategically places oscillating or box fans to pull air from one room to another.  He does tend to get carried away.  This morning, I found four fans in this office.  One did just fine so I removed the rest.  

There weren't any doors to close off the second story, so he installed a folding door in front of the stairwell.   This closes off the part of the house that we aren't using, so we only have to run one air conditioner at a time.

Today, we were mostly homebound with the day so torrid we couldn't bear to walk or garden. Luckily, Wisconsin is never that hot for long.  By tomorrow, we can dispense with all of this.


No comments:

Post a Comment