Records temps coming out here next week.

[Idaho45guy]

I have a farmhouse built in the 1800's with no AC. I've seen it hit 100 degrees out here and it was bad, but not too bad if I was militant about keeping the windows and curtains shut during the day, and opening up the house at night to cool it off.

Today, it was 90 degrees. It hit 79 degrees in the house, which was uncomfortable, but livable.

Forecast next week is for 108 degrees on Monday. The record high temp in recorded history for this area is 105 degrees.

When I lived in Prescott, AZ the highest temp I saw was 102, and I had central air.

Looked at window AC units and they are over $200 for a cheap one. I have about 900 sq ft to cool on the bottom floor. Not sure if I can afford a window unit that would work well enough. And, not sure if there will be any available locally to buy tomorrow.

Really on the fence about spending the money for a few days of record heat, or if I should just suck it up and live to tell the tale of 108 degree temps in an old house with no AC.

[Czech_too]

Up until 2 years ago, I never had AC. Relied on ceiling fans to help keep the place 'cool' or at least feel cooler. Now with the addition I do have it and actually use it.
My thoughts here are to think long term. The higher temps are just starting and as we age we don't handle it as well as we used to, or at least I don't. Do some research and find a unit which fits your needs & budget. Maybe not get it this week, or next since everything will probably be sold out, but put it on the list and not at the bottom.

[pworley1]

+1 on what Czech-too said.

[Handloader109]

It is all about how comfortable you want to be. I grew up in the deep south with window units in the bedroom that were added when dad could afford it in roughly 1970 when I was about 12 or so. And we used then sparingly at night. He finally broke down and added central air to the old house in about 1990. Made their life way more livable in the summer. But central MS is way hotter than Idaho for way longer.
I would probably spring for a small unit for your bedroom. Sleep is way better if you are cool, it shouldn't a really big unit for the 900soft, but you would need a way to shut off stairwell. ,

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[Pressman]

Just sayin' the folks who built the house didn't have air conditioning. Were they tougher than we are?

[sparky45]

They weren't tougher, they just didn't know what they were missing.

[country gent]

If you have a basement use it during the day it will e cooler than the upper floors. During heat waves here I would sleep in the basement for this reason.

[country gent]

Another help is to do cooking outside or on a porch, washing and other chores during the cooler mornings and evenings. During the hottest parts of the day relax and rest up. Those old timers that built the house did this to keep from adding heat to the house.

Mom cooked and did canning out side during summer keeping the heat out of the old farm house, at least not adding to it.

[memtb]

We’ve already seen a 106 this year.....don’t need/want more! :mad::mad: I’d sure like to see a cooler, wetter weather pattern come into the northwestern US! memtb

[blackthorn]

Where I grew up in south-central Manitoba, we had no power until 1948 and most farm houses had a "summer" kitchen where cooking/canning took place. A lot of those kitchens had a bank of windows that could be opened for better air circulation. All those windows had to have screens to limit the amount of flies swarming around.

[PhilC]

Idaho45 we can't be very far apart based on your posts. I'm about 20mi west of the border, and just a tad north, of a line drawn due west from Worley.

Our house was built much later than yours but still not very efficient. I tolerated the heat for a few weeks in summer until I got older. Then added a ceiling fan in addition to a small fan on the window sill pointed right at me so I could sleep. In the early 2000s I got tired of tying to sleep in the heat and bought a portable AC unit, just for the bedroom, and it was perfect!

Like many homes built in late 60s early 70s in this area, ours is all electric, fully finished, with no central heat/AC. Sometime around 2008 or so, we had a mini-split heat pump system installed and have been enjoying reduced energy bills ever since.

Our climate is very different than central and southeast areas of the country.

[.429&H110]

+1 on cooking outdoors!
I have an old Hibachi for steak salmon bbq chicken
and a propane burner for the wok. A wok is an outdoor toy.

Last Wednesday the old record temp for Tucson was 109F
and we hit 115F in the shade, too hot to walk a dog!

In my A/C career I installed many mini splits, mostly Fujitsus
Big ones will do four rooms with individual t-stats
they are dumb simple to install, almost silent to run.

The UofA put data hubs in janitor closets and they got hot d'ya think?
my task was to find a way out 100 feet to the return air stack to hang the outdoor unit.

My cost for a single loop Fuji was $1700 with freight to AK.
Remember that they will have a condensate drain that loves to plug up and leak.
On an inside wall, running the drain can be the challenge.
Condensate pumps don't last forever, and some are noisy.
I usually put the indoor unit over the janitor sink
to let it drool safely.

If you watch a movie filmed in India you will see these outdoor units hanging from eaves everywhere, each unit has two hooks to hang them on chains, easy to install, difficult to make them look neat. They get dirty setting on the ground, they're designed to hang from the eaves for free air flow.

My house here in the Village has a big tired roof unit in the hot sun on a blazing roof. Works so far, for a wonder the wires don't melt. Condensers should be in the shade, on a north wall.

[Cosmic_Charlie]

A few summers back I rode my motorcycle out to Chattaroy WA and visited friends on the Little Spokane River. Smokey from all the fires and way too hot to enjoy riding. Hope it does not get that bad this year.

[BJK]

I was going to mention heat pumps also, I see .429&H110 beat me to it. For strictly A/C it's expensive to justify, but the quality of the A/C is very high. To help justify it they also heat in the winter and if you use oil you'll save $. It won't be free heat. But what you do spend for heat will transfer to the electric bill. This past winter was our first winter with ours (we have 2) and I figure we paid 1/3 what we would have if we had heated with oil. We filled our tank at the star of the season and didn't touch a drop. In the summer just tell it to cool. No more installing noisy window rattling units. That also gets old as we age.

In use heat pumps are very quiet, you won't even know they're running.

Our Fujitsu units are supposedly efficient down to -20°F (I think it's -20), but when it starts to get down to 0° I start thinking about lighting the wood stove and shutting down the heat pumps.

We got rebates to help with the expense, maybe something like that is available for you Idaho45guy?

[Conditor22]

I'm just a little south of you and were supposed to hit 109 on Sunday :(

[Cosmic_Charlie]

I'm just a little south of you and were supposed to hit 109 on Sunday :(

That is brutal.....

[megasupermagnum]

I've lived most of my life without AC. 79 uncomfortable, really? Even now, I have AC, and the house is currently 76 on the thermostat as comfortable as can be. I had the AC turned on, set at 75 the past couple weeks when it was 99+ all day, every day day (even at night it only got down to the upper 80's), but I now that it is only in the upper 80's for a day high temp I have it turned off again. It says it will hit 103 today, but I'll be at work for the next 10 hours anyway. I mean do people really have AC and keep their house at 65 all summer?

[Jim22]

Must be a few of us in this area. I am about halfway between Spokane and the Canadian border just off 395. I put in a mini split two or three years ago. Glad I did.

[Gator 45/70]

No worries, When Uncle Joe declares a ''Climate Lockdown''we can all sit at home under his mandatory orders to set all thermostats to 75 degrees.
This is for the good of the planet and lets not forget The children !
Oh and btw you'll need a pass in order to drive you're car to work and back...if you're an essential worker.
Better get those bicycles up to speed !

[Idaho45guy]

Idaho45 we can't be very far apart based on your posts. I'm about 20mi west of the border, and just a tad north, of a line drawn due west from Worley.

Our house was built much later than yours but still not very efficient. I tolerated the heat for a few weeks in summer until I got older. Then added a ceiling fan in addition to a small fan on the window sill pointed right at me so I could sleep. In the early 2000s I got tired of tying to sleep in the heat and bought a portable AC unit, just for the bedroom, and it was perfect!

Like many homes built in late 60s early 70s in this area, ours is all electric, fully finished, with no central heat/AC. Sometime around 2008 or so, we had a mini-split heat pump system installed and have been enjoying reduced energy bills ever since.

Our climate is very different than central and southeast areas of the country.

Must be Spangle? I'm down Highway 27 in Palouse.

[8mmFan]

No worries, When Uncle Joe declares a ''Climate Lockdown''we can all sit at home under his mandatory orders to set all thermostats to 75 degrees.
This is for the good of the planet and lets not forget The children !
Oh and btw you'll need a pass in order to drive you're car to work and back...if you're an essential worker.
Better get those bicycles up to speed !

This one made me laugh! Spot on.

Idaho, try installing a box fan (or two, or three) on an upper floor window pointed OUT. That will suck in “cool” air from the lower levels, and blow the hot air in the upper levels out.

I have an old farmhouse, also. We have AC units that we can use, but I try to NOT use them. I have found that the body acclimates to hot temperatures in a very short time. Even my wife, who is not one to smile upon “hardship”, has found that she sleeps ok at night on hot nights after “getting used to it.” I am trying to instill in my kids the mindset of “sucking it up.” It’s a pain a times but, as someone said above, “they didn’t have it in the old days. Were they tougher than we are?” Maybe I’m an “old curmudgeon” born to late, but I think it’s good to suffer [I]a little.[I]

8mmFan

[rbuck351]

We bought our last house about 5 years ago in Eureka MT. It's expected to get about 103 here but our house has a geothermal heat pump.The previous owner said there is about 2000 feet of underground pipe and it works great without costing a lot to run. It holds the temp at whatever it is set, but the system cost about $30,000.

I think if I didn't have any cooling system and funds were tight, I would probably try to find a swamp cooler. They are not the best but they are a lot better than nothing and cost very little to operate.

[abunaitoo]

I'm surprised that it hasn't been all that bad here.
Very humid a few days, but not real hot.
Now that I said that, we'll probably get up into the high 90' tomorrow.

[Randy Bohannon]

AC works like crap where the humidity is low ,adding a small portable swamp cooler really helps AC do it’s job.

[reloader28]

I've lived most of my life without AC. 79 uncomfortable, really? Even now, I have AC, and the house is currently 76 on the thermostat as comfortable as can be. I had the AC turned on, set at 75 the past couple weeks when it was 99+ all day, every day day (even at night it only got down to the upper 80's), but I now that it is only in the upper 80's for a day high temp I have it turned off again. It says it will hit 103 today, but I'll be at work for the next 10 hours anyway. I mean do people really have AC and keep their house at 65 all summer?

We keep ours on 77*. Runs half as much as 76* and after working outside all day in construction it still feels darn nice when I come home.

[farmbif]

its getting hotter, spring at Thoreaus cabin is now more than 2 weeks earlier than it was in his time, a bunch of plants and flowers he described in his writings no longer exist there. this is just one example of our warming planet. places that are hot and dry are getting more and more hot and dry and wet places are getting wetter. it seems to be a long term trend. ask the folks in Alaska if things have changed in the last 50 years.
I remember heat waves of the past in my lifetime, the one in Paris where a whole bunch of folks died from excessive heat comes to mind first.
if you think you cannot afford a $200 ac unit, you might want to make the investment, can't go shooting when suffering from heat exhaustion.
I remember growing up in Florida, when winter would break and it started getting hot we would go lay out a pool and sweat till you couldn't sweat any more and then jump in pool and repeat, did this for a week or so too acclimate to heat. now that I'm older its much more difficult to acclimate.
a little window unit in my house is all that's needed to cool things down a bit when heat get excessive.

[PhilC]

Must be Spangle? I'm down Highway 27 in Palouse.
Nailed it. :wink:

.429&110 ours is a Mitsubishi with 3 indoor units. Only one required a condensate pump (interior wall), the other two are on outside walls and drain direct.

[gbrown]

I live in a hot and humid area. Raised in houses w/o AC. When I returned from the service in '72, Mom and Dad had put in Central heat and air. Nice. We are having Temps of 92-96, right now. Keep the house at 72. Humidity at 50%.
Does good, monthly electric bill around 150. Can't complain.