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Without AC

Started by TheArkansasRoadgeek, May 27, 2018, 08:06:13 PM

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jakeroot

Quote from: TheArkansasRoadgeek on May 29, 2018, 08:02:23 PM
Quote from: jakeroot on May 29, 2018, 07:54:16 PM
I've already seen 90 degree readings this year (at least at my personal weather station in my yard).
Cool! can you upload some pictures of it? Is it homemade or bought? What kinda contraptions does it have? A wind meter? A barometer?

It is painfully simple. Best photo I could take at nearly 10pm. The blue in the background is actually twilight. It sits on top of a clothes line.



J N Winkler

Quote from: Beltway on May 28, 2018, 09:59:10 AM
Quote from: US 81 on May 28, 2018, 09:12:08 AMI grew up without A/C in TX. Elementary school and most public buildings were un-airconditioned. People survived, but I personally am probably extra mean and grumpy to this day because of it.  :-/

The elementary school I went to in central Florida in the 1960s didn't have AC.  Of course the school year misses most of the summer.  After the first couple weeks of school the temps become more moderate.

The junior high was built new in the late 1960s and it did have AC thruout the building.  Most of the high school's buildings were much older and did not have AC.

I grew up in Wichita, and the three schools I went to for K-12 education were all built in the 1950's and lacked A/C.  Newer schools did have A/C.  In the early noughties, almost a decade after I graduated, the voters approved a bond issue to tear down and rebuild some aging schools (including my elementary school) and to retrofit A/C to others that did not already have it.

When I was in grade school, the school year typically started in late August, which is fairly late in the summer, and schools that did not have A/C operated on a heat contingency plan for about two weeks that called for turning off lights in the classroom in the afternoon (even high-efficiency fluorescent lights contribute perceptibly to passive heating) and dismissing school one hour early.

People who have to work outdoors, such as farmers and construction workers, have always been at work at first light (just after astronomical twilight) in the summer.  As summer temperatures have risen, it has become more common to start work at 3 or even 2 AM, when it is still pitch-black dark, and rely on artificial light.  This coming Saturday we will open our new main library, which is of slab-on-grade construction with the key concrete pours occurring in the late summer of 2016.  IIRC prep on those days started at 2 AM with concrete coming out of mixers beginning at 3 AM.

Quote from: Beltway on May 28, 2018, 09:59:10 AMOur house was built new in the early 1960s and had central AC with ductwork in the attic, so that was a modern installation for the time.

Central A/C was definitely the norm for new house construction in Wichita by 1960, and probably by 1955.  It took some time for insulation to catch up.  Houses built in Wichita still had single-pane glass with storm windows by default in 1970.  By the time my parents built their house in 1979, the default was double glazing without storm window construction.  (My parents' windows were all of the casement type, with one fixed pane and one pane that can swivel out on an arm to allow fresh air in through a bug screen.  Other houses built locally in the late 1970's/early 1980's have double-hung windows with two panes, both double-glazed, and no bug screen.)  Now triple glazing is the norm in new construction.  My parents insisted on more insulation than the builder provided by default, and when they had their furnace and A/C replaced about a decade ago, the HVAC installer told them that this decision had probably saved them many thousands of dollars over the years.

Prior to 1955, new houses tended to have swamp coolers instead of true refrigerant-based A/C, even though Wichita is a considerable distance east of the furthest reaches of the low-humidity belt (covering the Rocky Mountains and some of the high plains immediately to the east) where evaporative cooling is effective either on its own or as an energy-saving adjunct to refrigeration-based A/C.  My maternal grandparents, who were farmers and were never accustomed to having indoor A/C, retired in the early 1970's to a house in town that had been built in 1953 and had swamp cooling only.  When my grandfather died and my grandmother started to become too frail to live on her own, my mother had central HVAC retrofitted to make the house salable.  My grandmother lived in the house for a couple of years thereafter and insisted on setting the A/C in the mid-eighties in the summer.

My first car was a 1978 Chevrolet Impala, which my maternal grandparents had bought new to replace a 1963 car of the same make and model.  Neither had A/C.  When I was in high school, I volunteered for two summers at the Wichita Public Library, and drove myself to the downtown library my second summer.  For about a week or so I coped with the lack of A/C by wearing shorts, until a department head reprimanded me for inappropriate dress.  It turned out that while shorts are perfectly acceptable for members of the public visiting the library, they are not for staff or for volunteers working alongside staff.
"It is necessary to spend a hundred lire now to save a thousand lire later."--Piero Puricelli, explaining the need for a first-class road system to Benito Mussolini

WR of USA

I can easily handle life without AC up here in Massachusetts. A good portion of my high school does not have any AC and people will usually complain on the hottest days (right around now). Because winters get so harsh and cold, I don't mind the heat at all.
Traffic? No problem, enjoy the scenery!

Long live the lovely Sagamore and Bourne bridges and their welcoming traffic bottlenecks for the tourists!

abefroman329

Quote from: WR of USA on June 14, 2018, 11:20:33 AM
I can easily handle life without AC up here in Massachusetts. A good portion of my high school does not have any AC and people will usually complain on the hottest days (right around now). Because winters get so harsh and cold, I don't mind the heat at all.

When I traveled there for get-out-the-vote efforts in 2002, I stayed in a few houses in southern NH that did not have AC and were built after central AC was commonplace.  It was mind-boggling.

J N Winkler

Quote from: WR of USA on June 14, 2018, 11:20:33 AMI can easily handle life without AC up here in Massachusetts. A good portion of my high school does not have any AC and people will usually complain on the hottest days (right around now). Because winters get so harsh and cold, I don't mind the heat at all.

Quote from: abefroman329 on June 14, 2018, 11:39:15 AMWhen I traveled there for get-out-the-vote efforts in 2002, I stayed in a few houses in southern NH that did not have AC and were built after central AC was commonplace.  It was mind-boggling.

Northern New England (NH, VT, and ME) is all Dfb.  Most of inland Massachusetts is Dfb/Dfa, although the islands and certain coastal areas are Cfa.  In the nineties I talked with a Vermont native who told me that people in his state typically bought cars without A/C, considering that option better left to snobs in Massachusetts and Connecticut with more money than sense.
"It is necessary to spend a hundred lire now to save a thousand lire later."--Piero Puricelli, explaining the need for a first-class road system to Benito Mussolini

hotdogPi

#55
Quote from: J N Winkler on June 14, 2018, 01:06:48 PM
Quote from: WR of USA on June 14, 2018, 11:20:33 AMI can easily handle life without AC up here in Massachusetts. A good portion of my high school does not have any AC and people will usually complain on the hottest days (right around now). Because winters get so harsh and cold, I don't mind the heat at all.

Quote from: abefroman329 on June 14, 2018, 11:39:15 AMWhen I traveled there for get-out-the-vote efforts in 2002, I stayed in a few houses in southern NH that did not have AC and were built after central AC was commonplace.  It was mind-boggling.

Northern New England (NH, VT, and ME) is all Dfb.  Most of inland Massachusetts is Dfb/Dfa, although the islands and certain coastal areas are Cfa.  In the nineties I talked with a Vermont native who told me that people in his state typically bought cars without A/C, considering that option better left to snobs in Massachusetts and Connecticut with more money than sense.

In the summer, Burlington VT and northern Connecticut (specifically the airport) are 3°F apart, which can make a moderate difference.

(Post edited; I was remembering the difference as 8°, but that's the difference in the winter, not in the summer.)
Clinched, minus I-93 (I'm missing a few miles and my file is incorrect)

Traveled, plus US 13, 44, and 50, and several state routes

I will be in Burlington VT for the eclipse.

Beltway

Quote from: WR of USA on June 14, 2018, 11:20:33 AM
I can easily handle life without AC up here in Massachusetts. A good portion of my high school does not have any AC and people will usually complain on the hottest days (right around now). Because winters get so harsh and cold, I don't mind the heat at all.

I have friends in the Buffalo NY area.  A number of buildings there don't have AC.  Summers are mild by southern standards.
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Baloney is a reserved word on the Internet
    (Robert Coté, 2002)

ET21

AC is needed for the Midwest, between the Gulf moisture and the crop sweat. You'll easily see 80 degree dew-points during the height of a good corn season
The local weatherman, trust me I can be 99.9% right!
"Show where you're going, without forgetting where you're from"

Clinched:
IL: I-88, I-180, I-190, I-290, I-294, I-355, IL-390
IN: I-80, I-94
SD: I-190
WI: I-90, I-94
MI: I-94, I-196
MN: I-90

Duke87

Quote from: MNHighwayMan on May 27, 2018, 11:41:40 PM
As a person who becomes unbearably irritable and unpleasant when unwillingly subjected to prolonged temperatures much above 80°F, I will continue to consider refrigeration the greatest invention of the 20th century.

Greatest invention of the 18th century, you mean.

Obviously it wasn't until the 20th century that the technology became inexpensive and mass-produceable enough to start selling to ordinary people, and for the infrastructure necessary to support its use in homes to be in place, but it existed in proof of concept form as early as 1755.
If you always take the same road, you will never see anything new.

MNHighwayMan

Quote from: Duke87 on June 15, 2018, 07:27:26 PM
Quote from: MNHighwayMan on May 27, 2018, 11:41:40 PM
As a person who becomes unbearably irritable and unpleasant when unwillingly subjected to prolonged temperatures much above 80°F, I will continue to consider refrigeration the greatest invention of the 20th century.
Greatest invention of the 18th century, you mean.

Obviously it wasn't until the 20th century that the technology became inexpensive and mass-produceable enough to start selling to ordinary people, and for the infrastructure necessary to support its use in homes to be in place, but it existed in proof of concept form as early as 1755.

Well, I mean I kind of meant the modern kind, that runs on 120 or 240V AC and uses stuff like R-12 and R-134a as refrigerants, but yes, the tech did exist in some form before then. You are technically correct: the best kind of correct, and so on. ;-)



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