Doing without modern HVAC is not something that I can quite fathom.
That’s due to the fact that I live in a region where the weather can be really warm for much of the year.
In the summer, the heat gets to be really tough. But, I have actually pondered just what it would have been like here in the past. That’s when they used things like evaporative coolers and fans alone to battle this sort of heat and humidity. It’s just something that is foreign to me and most others as we have always known the HVAC heat pump. However, many people have used those old methods to help cool off their homes. I got to thing about it because I end up spending so much money on the HVAC cooling during the worst of the heat. The HVAC is a necessity but, I’m just tired of it crushing our budget for nearly half the year. I don’t think going to an evaporative cooler and fans is the answer. However, there is a middle ground for sure. That middle ground is simply paying attention to a few details in order to reign in the cost of the HVAC. The first thing I had to do was get some HVAC setting discipline. Without that, there really is no significant savings. The best equation I could find was to allow the house to heat up a bit during the peak heat of the day. Then maintain a temperature that is roughly 15 degrees cooler than it is outside. I did that along with pulling the drapes and changing out the weather stripping. And I was blown away to have saved over 15 percent on the HVAC utilities.