July in the mid-west is hot. Not just hot, but humid. (Say it with a long drawn out “h” because that is how it feels.) So humid. Here in the middle of Illinois not many people live without air-conditioning. Why am I torturing my family with this medieval atmosphere? My husband and I actually like it warm. Maybe we are crazy, it is a possibility. We have a handful of days that are downright sweltering and miserable, I’ll admit it. But even then something about living in it makes me feel alive. Sweaty, but alive.

I remember visiting my grandparents as a kid. They kept their modest St. Louis ranch like a deep freeze. In comparison, the house I grew up in was not so frigid. My childhood home was built somewhere around 1865. Because it was old and drafty and expensive to heat and cool, my dad opted to install A/C only on the second floor where our bedrooms were located. Downstairs remained reasonably cool but not icy.

Perhaps because I have bad circulation. Or I am part snake. I hate being cold and I love being warm. Perfect to me is 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I know some people who would melt at this temperature. I have had co-workers and bosses who would freeze me out at 65 degrees in the office. There have been times that I would wear heavier clothes to work in summer months than in winter months.

We have lived in our home for 10 years now, since 2007. Up until three years ago, we had functioning central air. In the summer of 2014, we needed to have the Freon recharged. Then in July 2015, the Freon ran out again. Diagnosis: there was a hole in the line and our a/c unit needed to be replaced. We also happened to be in the middle of a huge remodeling project (kitchen, living room, dining room, & sunroom). For our kitchen remodel, I had decided to keep our stove and oven electric, and not switch to gas as I originally wanted to. (I do love cooking on a gas range!) My decision to stay electric was because of my future desire to get solar power.

What does this have to do with my no A/C story. A lot, actually. Here is my dilemma: if we get a new A/C unit now, we would either have to go with an older style to match our older furnace (2000) or pay more to replace the coil to upgrade to a better A/C unit. The lowest quote for the former was for around $2,100 and for the latter, around $3,500. For most people this may have been an easy decision to make, but for us, this means spending two grand on something we literally use for maybe two weeks out of the entire year.

There is also the possibility that our old furnace might not last that much longer either. It could last ten years more, I suppose. But it is a natural gas, forced central air heater. Remember, I want to convert to all electric. In short, I guess we are willing to suffer through a few miserable weeks of stickiness to uphold our ideal of eventually converting to electric climate control. Plus, I think of how much less electricity we are using in the summer months. One of these days, I am going to figure out how much less CO2 and other harmful air pollutants are being emitted from the coal-fired power plant because we are not using A/C.

How do we survive? It is really not as bad as it seems. You see, we have a whole-house-fan. (Hear the choir of angels sing!) This is our life saver in the summertime. I do not think we could survive without it. We turn the whole-house-fan on at night when it is cooler outside. The WHF sucks the cool air inside and the hot air gets sucked up and out through the attic. (add link to article on how to optimize using a WHF) Most nights during the summer, it actually gets chilly and I have to turn it off before I go to bed around midnight.

During the past three summers of no A/C there are other ways we have learned to keep our house cooler. (add link to article on top 10 ways to keep your house cool without A/C) I would still like to improve on these efforts. On the top of my list, installing awnings or shutters to the south and west facing windows of our home. Maybe by the time our gas furnace quits, we will be so good at keeping cool by other means we will not even need A/C. Wouldn’t that be great!