Metro areas with the most and fewest households using air conditioning

[Bruce]

From The Seattle Times using 2019 ACS data collected by the Census Bureau:



(This is why Seattle is in a state of emergency)

[bing101]

That's interesting to see San Francisco and Seattle to be in the lowest with AC units. I know in the case of San Francisco once you go to the outer suburbs such as Walnut Creek and Pleasanton then the percentage of homes with AC would increase due to the city being away from the Bay or coast ranges.

[Max Rockatansky]

Do they consider swamp coolers to be AC?   That might explain the data from Phoenix.

[SkyPesos]

I knew Seattle is the least air conditioned metro, but thought Portland would be a close second, not 34% higher than Seattle's percentage.
LA is surprisingly low imo.

[Max Rockatansky]

I knew Seattle is the least air conditioned metro, but thought Portland would be a close second, not 34% higher than Seattle's percentage.
LA is surprisingly low imo.

Los Angeles can be surprisingly temperate the closer you are to the water. 

[Roadgeekteen]

Around here, most places have AC but a lot of our schools don't. This can be a problem near the beginning and end of our school years.

[Pink Jazz]

Do they consider swamp coolers to be AC?   That might explain the data from Phoenix.

Most homes in Phoenix now use conventional refrigerated air conditioning.  Tucson on the other hand swamp coolers are more common.

I wonder where does Albuquerque rank.  Swamp coolers are very common in Albuquerque.

[thspfc]

Around here, most places have AC but a lot of our schools don't. This can be a problem near the beginning and end of our school years.

Air conditioning in schools needs to be required by law in states where the temperature frequently gets above 80 degrees.

[dlsterner]

Around here, most places have AC but a lot of our schools don't. This can be a problem near the beginning and end of our school years.

Air conditioning in schools needs to be required by law in states where the temperature frequently gets above 80 degrees.

When I was growing up in the Florida Panhandle, neither the elementary school nor the junior high school I attended had air conditioning.  (This was late 1960s and early 1970s). As you would expect, it was pretty rough in the early part and the late part of the school year.  My high school was in a newer building and was fully air conditioned.

[Max Rockatansky]

Around here, most places have AC but a lot of our schools don't. This can be a problem near the beginning and end of our school years.

Air conditioning in schools needs to be required by law in states where the temperature frequently gets above 80 degrees.

Why?  People existed in warm climates way before modernized air conditioning was even a thing.  We managed to survive the two weeks when it was approaching 110F in Fresno when our AC was down this month.  Even now we keep the house at 82F, we used to keep it at 85F. 

Interestingly all the Naval installations I worked in at Florida had a mandate for the same 82F temperature setting  as a form of regional energy conservation. 

[1995hoo]

None of the schools I attended were air-conditioned with the exception of some rooms (the fifth and sixth-grade wing of my second elementary school, which was a wing added well after the original building was completed, and the planetarium in my high school). We dealt with it–all the teachers had multiple box fans and would close the blinds and turn off the lights during the hottest parts of the day (although turning off the lights didn't do much because they were the ubiquitous fluorescent tubes that didn't throw off much heat). The worst year in that respect was probably third grade since the classroom was upstairs on the south side of my first elementary school, meaning it got the worst of the heat.

Not having AC was actually worst during that period of April and early May when the mornings are still somewhat cooler but the afternoons are hot. My mom made us wear long pants based on whether she thought the morning was too cold for shorts, rather than the weather forecast. Made for some miserable afternoons. September has hotter weather in general, but the mornings aren't as cool so there was never an issue of being overdressed. (For whatever reason, as kids the idea of sneaking a pair of shorts into our backpacks and changing at school never occurred to us.)

[ozarkman417]

Around here, most places have AC but a lot of our schools don't. This can be a problem near the beginning and end of our school years.

Before my third grade year, most rooms in my school did not have AC, only a select few rooms did. One day where temps exceeded 90 late in my second grade year, the school released students two hours early because the administration deemed it unsafe for students to be in the building in such hot conditions without AC. Over that summer, AC was installed to the whole building.

[1995hoo]

Thinking further about this, I'm thankful we had AC during fifth and sixth grades. Reason: No showers available after phys ed.

[Max Rockatansky]

I don't recall there ever being an AC unit in any K-12 school I attended in Michigan or Connecticut. 

[Roadgeekteen]

I don't recall there ever being an AC unit in any K-12 school I attended in Michigan or Connecticut.

Newer schools tend to have them, also recently renovated schools. My elementary school, 6th grade school (in Needham 6th grade is its own school), and high school (although it didn't work well half the time) had AC, but my middle school only had it in a few classrooms.

[Max Rockatansky]

I don't recall there ever being an AC unit in any K-12 school I attended in Michigan or Connecticut.

Newer schools tend to have them, also recently renovated schools. My elementary school, 6th grade school (in Needham 6th grade is its own school), and high school (although it didn't work well half the time) had AC, but my middle school only had it in a few classrooms.

That's the thing, our new high school (north of Lansing) was opened in 1999 during my Junior year.  It definitely did not have AC units in any of the classes rooms.  I believe the gym and weight facility were the parts of the building that had it. 

[Roadgeekteen]

I don't recall there ever being an AC unit in any K-12 school I attended in Michigan or Connecticut.

Newer schools tend to have them, also recently renovated schools. My elementary school, 6th grade school (in Needham 6th grade is its own school), and high school (although it didn't work well half the time) had AC, but my middle school only had it in a few classrooms.

That's the thing, our new high school (north of Lansing) was opened in 1999 during my Junior year.  It definitely did not have AC units in any of the classes rooms.  I believe the gym and weight facility were the parts of the building that had it.

Michigan is a bit cooler than Massachusetts.

[Max Rockatansky]

I don't recall there ever being an AC unit in any K-12 school I attended in Michigan or Connecticut.

Newer schools tend to have them, also recently renovated schools. My elementary school, 6th grade school (in Needham 6th grade is its own school), and high school (although it didn't work well half the time) had AC, but my middle school only had it in a few classrooms.

That's the thing, our new high school (north of Lansing) was opened in 1999 during my Junior year.  It definitely did not have AC units in any of the classes rooms.  I believe the gym and weight facility were the parts of the building that had it.

Michigan is a bit cooler than Massachusetts.

The climate data for Lansing and Boston very similar.  Southern Michigan is very mild, or least more than popular perception would have you believe.

[Roadgeekteen]

I don't recall there ever being an AC unit in any K-12 school I attended in Michigan or Connecticut.

Newer schools tend to have them, also recently renovated schools. My elementary school, 6th grade school (in Needham 6th grade is its own school), and high school (although it didn't work well half the time) had AC, but my middle school only had it in a few classrooms.

That's the thing, our new high school (north of Lansing) was opened in 1999 during my Junior year.  It definitely did not have AC units in any of the classes rooms.  I believe the gym and weight facility were the parts of the building that had it.

Michigan is a bit cooler than Massachusetts.

The climate data for Lansing and Boston very similar.  Southern Michigan is very mild, or least more than popular perception would have you believe.

It probably just depends. How wealthy was your community if you don't mind sharing?

[SkyPesos]

Contrary to the comments so far, I've never heard of a K-12 school without AC before, as all schools in my district (8 of them) have AC, as well as schools in neighboring districts to the best of my knowledge. It's in an "outer ring"  suburb (outside of I-275), so not sure if that contributes to it having AC or not.

[Rothman]

None of the elementary schools had AC in western MA when I was a kid, I don't believe.

[Rothman]

Contrary to the comments so far, I've never heard of a K-12 school without AC before, as all schools in my district (8 of them) have AC, as well as schools in neighboring districts to the best of my knowledge. It's in an "outer ring"  suburb (outside of I-275), so not sure if that contributes to it having AC or not.

You're a youngin'.

[Max Rockatansky]

I don't recall there ever being an AC unit in any K-12 school I attended in Michigan or Connecticut.

Newer schools tend to have them, also recently renovated schools. My elementary school, 6th grade school (in Needham 6th grade is its own school), and high school (although it didn't work well half the time) had AC, but my middle school only had it in a few classrooms.

That's the thing, our new high school (north of Lansing) was opened in 1999 during my Junior year.  It definitely did not have AC units in any of the classes rooms.  I believe the gym and weight facility were the parts of the building that had it.

Michigan is a bit cooler than Massachusetts.

The climate data for Lansing and Boston very similar.  Southern Michigan is very mild, or least more than popular perception would have you believe.

It probably just depends. How wealthy was your community if you don't mind sharing?

Well off, the income statistics for the 2000 census are on the Wikipedia page:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeWitt,_Michigan

[Roadgeekteen]

Contrary to the comments so far, I've never heard of a K-12 school without AC before, as all schools in my district (8 of them) have AC, as well as schools in neighboring districts to the best of my knowledge. It's in an "outer ring"  suburb (outside of I-275), so not sure if that contributes to it having AC or not.

You're a youngin'.

Cincinnati is warmer than Michigan and Massachusetts.

[DTComposer]

 

LA is surprisingly low imo.

Not when you consider that it's only L.A. and Orange Counties, and at least of quarter of those households are within 10 miles of the coast. In the fifteen years I lived in Long Beach (all without AC), there were maybe thirty-forty days total that I wished I had AC.

That's interesting to see San Francisco and Seattle to be in the lowest with AC units. I know in the case of San Francisco once you go to the outer suburbs such as Walnut Creek and Pleasanton then the percentage of homes with AC would increase due to the city being away from the Bay or coast ranges.

Same thing here. Two-thirds of the households in the metro are within 5 miles of the ocean or the bay.