Vaporize or Spend $312 - We Chose the Latter
Posted on June 06, 2006 by Him and tagged spending, utilities
When we signed the lease for our apartment a year and a half ago, we came in knowing that while there was central heating, there was no central air conditioning. We signed the lease in the middle of a harsh Chicago winter, so air conditioning was pretty far from our mind...until the relentless Chicago summer arrived. I'm pretty tolerant to the heat, but there were a few days when it got even too hot for me. Not to mention I tend to sweat profusely (disgusting, I know). When our cats starting panting, I knew it was way too much.
If you don't know, Chicago summers are nothing but hot and muggy. Ninety degree days combined with 95% humidity not only gives people bad hair days, but in the summer of 1995, 739 people died due to the heat. Not a good environment to have less than adequate cooling.
Our only sources of cooling that summer were two undersized air conditioners. One was quite a behemoth, an older hand-me-down from my older brother. It was beige and it meant business, but the truth was that barely kept our dining and living rooms cool. Not only that, it weighed a ton and probably wasn't very energy efficient. The other one was my dinky air conditioner that managed to cool off my room in my fraternity house in college. That went into our bedroom window, and barely manages to keep that cool. That one is still around.
We decided that the large behemoth needed to go - its archaic dials, heft, poor energy efficiency, and craptacular ability to cool a room helped us come to that conclusion. Not only that, but I stored it in my parents' garage over the winter and didn't want to deal with it anymore. We were in the market for an air conditioner.
Her looked up how much air conditioner we needed, and it turned out to be about 14,000BTU. We also wanted one that was uber energy efficient and had cool doodads such as timers, climate control, and other energy saving perks. She did the legwork, and even got a 10% coupon for Lowe's. Serendipitously, the air conditioner we wanted went on sale this past weekend at Lowe's.
$312, 14,000BTU, and 105 pounds of air conditioner later, we're cool cats (I guess so are our cats, natch). Yes, that money could have grown to be a billion dollars in some investment account, but to be able to go to work not drenched in sweat is priceless.
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Sounds like a good decision. You'll probably recoup the cost through more efficient cooling within a couple years.
I spent a summer in a third floor apartment in Atlanta once without any air-conditioning and I'd never do it again. It was miserable.
Michael | Jun 7, 2006
My in-laws still haven't turned on the A/C this year, and they live in the D/FW, Texas area. You know, here: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ifps/MapClick.php?CityName=Fort%20Worth&state=TX&site=fwd. If they could do it there, I'm sure you could do it here. Of course, people like me would never visit and would hose you down before letting you into their house, but it's a small price to pay for frugality.
I'm fairly prone to heat exhaustion, and considering my other health quirks, buying the a/c is a no-brainer winner vs. frugality. Health over money.
I totally sympathize. Up until we moved into our new place in April, we lived in an non-AC apartment for two Chicago summers. Not fun! It was cheap, yes - but the feeling of being perpetually exhausted is not very nice at all.
Financial Tidbits | Jun 8, 2006
Hope you are enjoying the nice cool air! By the way, did you get the climate control with the remote? That's what I've got. It's almost like central air!
jim | Jun 18, 2006
for the record, it is worth pointing out that the reason why so many people died has a really strong political slang to it (as noted in the wiki article).
i spent my first 27 years of my life in chicagoland icky weather, and didn't have A/C past age 12 or so.
(chicago summers were one huge factor in moving to portland, oregon, but i digress)
a good friend of mine did an entire year of performances as a memorial and exploration of the people who died that year. good stuff.
Julie | Jun 6, 2006
As a fellow Chicagoan, well done. Air conditioning is really a necessity in the summer. And what's the point of being miserable if you can afford not to be? You can't save every single dollar all of the time...if you did, life wouldn't be worth living! :-) Enjoy the timer...it will friggin' rock your world to come home after work to a house that's been "pre-cooling" for the past 1/2 hour, after baking in the 90+ weather the whole way home.
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