What do you do for air conditioning?

[kelt65]

Window units are certainly cheaper & easier to install. I don't know about cheaper to run if you are talking about cooling an entire house.

Well, it's kinda the point that you don't need to cool the whole house .

[SouthernLady]

The front of my house already had HVAC to it, but the back side which has been connected to the house is still as it was when it was built in the 1880s. No heat, no air. Well, except for a window unit that was put in upstairs, but I haven't used it. Downstairs has a hole in the wall for a wood stove, which I have yet to purchase.

When I am actually home to do this, I use the old trick my grandparents did in their non-HVAC 1790s home--I open the windows top and bottom all through the house in the early morning and late evening hours. It creates a pull through the house and cools things off quite quickly. In fact, except for this summer which has been quite the bear in my area, I don't usually need to use my AC.

Good luck with your pick!

[Sara]

I open the windows top and bottom all through the house in the early morning and late evening hours. It creates a pull through the house and cools things off quite quickly.

What do you mean by top and bottom? Do you mean that you have double hung windows and you put both pieces in the center of the window frame?

[Don M]

I open the windows top and bottom all through the house in the early morning and late evening hours. It creates a pull through the house and cools things off quite quickly.

What do you mean by top and bottom? Do you mean that you have double hung windows and you put both pieces in the center of the window frame?

Yes that's how it works! My house only has single hung windows.

[SouthernLady]

Yes, that's what I meant. It provides for a better airflow.

[phil]

if you make your spouse a little angry it helps because then you get the cold shoulder treatment

[Gothichome]

Gothichome has AC but there is not enough fan to get the air up to the second floor. A little bit gets there but not much. Trying to cool the second floor makes the main floor dam right cold. We have found using the open window trick, we do get cooler air on the second floor. We open the windows on the shade side of the home and lower the top window on the sunny side. We can generat a noticeable breeze drawing cooler shade air in. As phill mentioned same draw affect.

[Don M]

If you have a whole house fan you could improve the second floor cooling even more!

[DavidP]

Gothichome has AC but there is not enough fan to get the air up to the second floor. A little bit gets there but not much. Trying to cool the second floor makes the main floor dam right cold.

I had the same problem in the condo where I lived before buying my old house. It turned out that there was one large duct that took cooled air from the basement to the attic where it was distributed to the upstairs rooms. The HVAC guys put a supplementary blower into that main duct right after it made a 90 degree turn to climb up through a pipe chase. This helped a great deal. It would not work if your ductwork is set up differently, of course.

[Rod Paine (WavyGlass)]

The house we're interested in has steam boiler and radiators. If they're working well, I'd like to leave them. But I'm not the kind of person who can live without air conditioning. What have other's done?

Mitsubishi mini-split systems, in our 1927 Sears type house, replaced noisy and expensive to operate window units. Trouble free units with the exception of difficult cleaning process and lack of such a local service, as noted on my web page. Now in their 5th year and dealing easily with our current Virginia heat and humidity.
split system air install
-Rod