Hot, but no AC

Thursday, 4:45 pm

By Kate

Aug

02

2007

We’re having a right toasty sort of day with the mercury hovering around 94° F. But at least it’s dry heat. For our neck of the woods, 40% humidity is almost desert conditions.

I used to snicker about the dry heat thing, but after visiting Phoenix on a 106° day, I had to acknowledge that, while hot, it wasn’t unbearable. I was comfortable as long as I stayed in the shade.

Conversely, take last week for example. It was the first time all summer that I’ve turned on the air conditioning. That just about killed me to see the electric meter spin frenetically, but I couldn’t stand it without AC. And it wasn’t that hot. Upper 80s, as I recall, but the humidity was stuck at around 98%. I want to tell you, those are sauna conditions. The house was so damp that all surfaces were sticky and the carpets felt wet and I left damp footprints on the kitchen floor. My clothes even stuck to me. If I so much as moved, it looked as if I’d just crawled out of a swimming pool. And mildew. Oh lovely, lovely mildew that appeared almost before my eyes.

Under those circumstances, I don’t feel too guilty about turning on the AC. It sucked the humidity out of the house and kept the mildew at bay. And made me feel human.

Today, the AC isn’t on. The house has maintained a steady 82° so far today, and it feels dry. Tomorrow will be a different story. The humidity is supposed to head way up again, with even higher temperatures. Ugh. What a thrill to look forward to that again.

I have to say that my electricity use for the month of July was totally hosed by 4 days of air conditioning. In 4 days I burned through 68 kilowatt hours of electricity, which is twice what I had been using for an entire week.

At this point in the summer, I really start looking forward to September when we have our annual three weeks of almost perfect weather.