We broke down and asked Bob to go ahead and put in a conventional air conditioner last week. The house was doing very well considering the heat wave we’ve had, but when the temp climbs over 95 degrees for over two weeks straight, and topping out at 100, it gets uncomfortable!

Fortunately, we had budgeted a high-efficiency DX cooling unit, and Bob has worked installation into his schedule. If we get our photovoltaic panel array at some point, I guess we can feel a little better about using the energy for powering this thing.

At 90 degrees and under, the combination of good cross ventilation and ceiling fans in every room is fine, so most of our summer we will be leaving it off. I’m not a fan of conventional air conditioning, because in my experience, it results in closed up buildings where no one interacts with the outdoors. With our indoor/outdoor patios, we will see if we can keep a good balance...