Arctic Summer

My husband tends to sweat - a lot. He can work up a good head of steam playing video games. I, on the other hand, need quite a bit of physical exertion just to sweat a little bit (this makes me mad, because it makes me think I have a slow metabolism, which is also probably why I am so lazy).

In the summertime we set the thermostat at a reasonable (I think, anyway) 78 degrees. Even so, I would often find myself shivering away. I would actually don a heavy sweatshirt because I was so cold in the house, while outside it’s 100 degrees. Sometimes I would even go outside to sit in the sun for an hour or so to thaw out, while still leaving my air conditioner on inside my house. The job of an air conditioner is to keep you comfortable, not to freeze your tootsies off.

Well, of course, this is just craziness. Shivering inside your house during the summertime is a pretty good hint that money is being wasted. But at the same time it is hard to reach a compromise on thermostat settings when the occupants of a home are at polar opposites on the temperature-comfort scale. I actually am most comfortable when I’m a little on the warm side; my hubby has a preference for a more chilly environment.

What to do, what to do? Well, for one thing this is a great opportunity to work on marriage-compromise skills. Regardless of electricity costs, the truth is that it’s a lot easier to make myself warm and comfy in a “freezing” 78 degree house, than it is for my husband to remain calm, cool and collected in a cozy 86′er. He tends to get grouchy when he becomes overheated, so the costs of cooling the house are a small price to pay to keep him even-tempered and maintain marital harmony.

But still, there’s usually a money-saving opportunity wherever bills are higher than we like. Electricity bills go right through the roof the minute the air conditioner comes into regular use. And it always seem to me that once you turn it on (late May here in Texas) you don’t turn it off again at all until the end of October (then it’s time for the heater which you don’t turn off again until the middle of May, but that’s a sad tale for another day). That is five months of $200.00 electric bills.

So how can I reconcile our different temperature preferences with the desire to save money? Since I am home all day while my husband is at work it occurred to me that I can have the house at whatever temperature I like best. So that is what I do now. I turn off the air conditioner, close all the curtains to make my house dark and cave-like, and am nice and comfy. As I type this it is 2:00 pm and the outside temperature is 90 degrees; inside it’s only 83. Perfect for me, but if I need little extra heat-relief I switch on a ceiling fan, which I think is much cheaper to run (it’s only one) than an air conditioner for an entire house.

My husband and I are crazy for ceiling fans. This dates back to our first house, which only had a very small window air conditioner which was in a location that was strangely out of the way for cooling off the house. So one of the first things we do when we move into a new house is to put ceiling fans in all the rooms. I’m not kidding you, ALL our rooms have ceiling fans (except for the dining room, which we never use). My husband has really gotten good at installing them over the years because he has put in so many, though it was actually my little sis who installed our very first ceiling fan in our very first home (I told you she is talented).

I know that my poor sweaty-bear of a husband will be miserable in this 83 degree atmosphere, however. I also know that he will most likely be home from work around 6:30 pm. Putting these two things that I know together, I conclude that the best course of action is to turn the air conditioner back on at around 5:30. By the time he gets home, the house will again be cool enough to keep him happy. The minute he leaves for work in the morning, though, at about 8:00 am, I turn that ac right off. So that is nine 1/2 hours every day that I’m not running my ac, and thus using lots of expensive electricity.

I haven’t been doing this very long, only about two weeks. So I don’t except to see much difference on my next electric bill. But if I remember to do this everyday (which is no guarantee, because I don’t always remember to do things), I think I will notice a difference in my August bill. I hope so, and I will let you know.

The only thing I’m not sure about is the cost of bringing the temperature of the house back down again after the ac has been off for 9 hours. However, I have noticed that with keeping my house dark and cave-like, the interior temperature usually goes up to 85 or 86, so the house only needs to cool down seven or eight degrees to make my hubby happy. I may be a little chilly for the next few hours, but the thought of the money I’ll be saving on electricity (starting at 8 am the next day) will keep me warm.