Last September, my daughter moved from our city to a beach town farther south.
I don’t blame her; I would love to go there myself, but I find the cost of living to be too high there.
Anyway, she purchased an older house that has a sunroom on the back. If you are not familiar with sunrooms, they are exactly what they sound like. They are rooms that are full of light because they have at least one whole wall of windows. They are delightful, but they make your air conditioning have to work pretty hard. In fact, it turns out that the central cooling at my daughter’s new house is nowhere nearly efficient enough to win the battle against the sunshine. The former owners put in a window a/c unit in the sunroom, and even though it is ugly, she is leaving the a/c right where it is. In fact, she is very hot-natured, and she has always kept her thermostat set on 70 degrees. Now, though, she has discovered that utilities cost a lot more in her new city, so she has begun setting her thermostat on 75 degrees. But then, she couldn’t get to sleep, so she went out and bought another window a/c unit and put it in her bedroom. She has decided that this hybrid of central cooling and window air conditioners is working out well for her. Her cooling bill has decreased by $75 since she re-set the thermostat and got the window a/c to work for her. I never would have thought an inefficient window a/c would decrease a utility bill!