Metro areas with the most and fewest households using air conditioning

[kernals12]

I don't understand why anyone wouldn't have an air conditioner. You can get one for a few hundred bucks at Home Depot and then can keep it in your basement, only bringing it out in the summer.

[Scott5114]

I don't understand why anyone wouldn't have an air conditioner. You can get one for a few hundred bucks at Home Depot and then can keep it in your basement, only bringing it out in the summer.

I couldn't. Air conditioners here are about five foot cubes, attached to a concrete pad outside, and they look heavy enough one person couldn't move them. Also we don't have basements.

[US 89]

I don't understand why anyone wouldn't have an air conditioner. You can get one for a few hundred bucks at Home Depot and then can keep it in your basement, only bringing it out in the summer.

If you live in a place where it will reliably cool into the 60s every night even in summer, you don't really need an air conditioner and you can just open windows at night to let in cool air. This is why very few people in the mountains or the Pacific Northwest have one - heat waves severe enough that opening windows doesn't work are so rare that it generally isn't worth it to buy an A/C unit in the first place.

[kernals12]

I don't understand why anyone wouldn't have an air conditioner. You can get one for a few hundred bucks at Home Depot and then can keep it in your basement, only bringing it out in the summer.

I couldn't. Air conditioners here are about five foot cubes, attached to a concrete pad outside, and they look heavy enough one person couldn't move them. Also we don't have basements.

I was thinking of window units. Also, how can you not have basements in Oklahoma?

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I don't understand why anyone wouldn't have an air conditioner.

Because cold is bad, right?

[Bruce]

I don't understand why anyone wouldn't have an air conditioner. You can get one for a few hundred bucks at Home Depot and then can keep it in your basement, only bringing it out in the summer.

Our windows slide horizontally and there is no outlet close enough to handle what an AC needs.

Our homes are simply not designed for it, because it wasn't necessary until the past decade or so. And, of course, more AC use would only worsen the problem locally.

[Scott5114]

I don't understand why anyone wouldn't have an air conditioner. You can get one for a few hundred bucks at Home Depot and then can keep it in your basement, only bringing it out in the summer.

I couldn't. Air conditioners here are about five foot cubes, attached to a concrete pad outside, and they look heavy enough one person couldn't move them. Also we don't have basements.

I was thinking of window units. Also, how can you not have basements in Oklahoma?

The house is attached to a concrete slab poured directly at ground level. In other states, basements are needed because the bottom of the slab that the house rests on has to be below the depth at which soil freezes. But here in Oklahoma, that's only about a foot below the surface (if it even freezes at all, because prolonged temperatures below 32° aren't terribly common here), so you don't have to dig down deep enough that constructing a basement makes financial sense.

Even if you did want a basement badly enough to spend the extra money on it, they just don't work here because the high clay content of the soil makes it absorb a lot of moisture. We also have a high water table. Those two things combined means that a basement is likely to become too moist and musty/moldy, even flood, from moisture seeping in from the soil. So buildings here are always constructed without them.

But just about every house here does have an air conditioner, because it's rare that we don't crack the 100° mark at some point every year.

[hotdogPi]

I don't understand why anyone wouldn't have an air conditioner. You can get one for a few hundred bucks at Home Depot and then can keep it in your basement, only bringing it out in the summer.

I couldn't. Air conditioners here are about five foot cubes, attached to a concrete pad outside, and they look heavy enough one person couldn't move them. Also we don't have basements.

I was thinking of window units. Also, how can you not have basements in Oklahoma?

The house is attached to a concrete slab poured directly at ground level. In other states, basements are needed because the bottom of the slab that the house rests on has to be below the depth at which soil freezes. But here in Oklahoma, that's only about a foot below the surface (if it even freezes at all, because prolonged temperatures below 32° aren't terribly common here), so you don't have to dig down deep enough that constructing a basement makes financial sense.

Even if you did want a basement badly enough to spend the extra money on it, they just don't work here because the high clay content of the soil makes it absorb a lot of moisture. We also have a high water table. Those two things combined means that a basement is likely to become too moist and musty/moldy, even flood, from moisture seeping in from the soil. So buildings here are always constructed without them.

But just about every house here does have an air conditioner, because it's rare that we don't crack the 100° mark at some point every year.

I would think they would build basements as shelters from tornadoes and (formerly) potential Soviet attacks.

[kernals12]

I don't understand why anyone wouldn't have an air conditioner. You can get one for a few hundred bucks at Home Depot and then can keep it in your basement, only bringing it out in the summer.

I couldn't. Air conditioners here are about five foot cubes, attached to a concrete pad outside, and they look heavy enough one person couldn't move them. Also we don't have basements.

I was thinking of window units. Also, how can you not have basements in Oklahoma?

The house is attached to a concrete slab poured directly at ground level. In other states, basements are needed because the bottom of the slab that the house rests on has to be below the depth at which soil freezes. But here in Oklahoma, that's only about a foot below the surface (if it even freezes at all, because prolonged temperatures below 32° aren't terribly common here), so you don't have to dig down deep enough that constructing a basement makes financial sense.

Even if you did want a basement badly enough to spend the extra money on it, they just don't work here because the high clay content of the soil makes it absorb a lot of moisture. We also have a high water table. Those two things combined means that a basement is likely to become too moist and musty/moldy, even flood, from moisture seeping in from the soil. So buildings here are always constructed without them.

But just about every house here does have an air conditioner, because it's rare that we don't crack the 100° mark at some point every year.

I would think they would build basements as shelters from tornadoes and (formerly) potential Soviet attacks.

I was thinking of tornadoes.

[US 89]

Even if you did want a basement badly enough to spend the extra money on it, they just don't work here because the high clay content of the soil makes it absorb a lot of moisture. We also have a high water table. Those two things combined means that a basement is likely to become too moist and musty/moldy, even flood, from moisture seeping in from the soil. So buildings here are always constructed without them.

My grandparents had a basement in their house in Oklahoma. It is still the mustiest place I have ever been. But it did provide good shelter the one time I was there during a tornado outbreak.

[Scott5114]

I don't understand why anyone wouldn't have an air conditioner. You can get one for a few hundred bucks at Home Depot and then can keep it in your basement, only bringing it out in the summer.

I couldn't. Air conditioners here are about five foot cubes, attached to a concrete pad outside, and they look heavy enough one person couldn't move them. Also we don't have basements.

I was thinking of window units. Also, how can you not have basements in Oklahoma?

The house is attached to a concrete slab poured directly at ground level. In other states, basements are needed because the bottom of the slab that the house rests on has to be below the depth at which soil freezes. But here in Oklahoma, that's only about a foot below the surface (if it even freezes at all, because prolonged temperatures below 32° aren't terribly common here), so you don't have to dig down deep enough that constructing a basement makes financial sense.

Even if you did want a basement badly enough to spend the extra money on it, they just don't work here because the high clay content of the soil makes it absorb a lot of moisture. We also have a high water table. Those two things combined means that a basement is likely to become too moist and musty/moldy, even flood, from moisture seeping in from the soil. So buildings here are always constructed without them.

But just about every house here does have an air conditioner, because it's rare that we don't crack the 100° mark at some point every year.

I would think they would build basements as shelters from tornadoes and (formerly) potential Soviet attacks.

Tornado shelters are usually in the form of precast concrete boxes that are installed in the ground, usually in the backyard. Since they're separated in the house and not occupied on a regular basis, if they get damp or moldy it doesn't matter so much.



There are also "safe room" type installs, which are metal boxes installed inside the house somewhere that bolt to the slab of the house, and I've seen a few tornado shelters that are like a small basement underneath the garage. And there are some places that just don't have a shelter, so you either have to go to the lowest level, smallest room, center part (the mantra of any good TV meteorologist in Oklahoma) or to a city-run tornado shelter.

[bwana39]

80° may be a bit low of a cutoff, but you've got to have one somewhere. Even on an 80° day, indoor temperatures might rise to unbearable levels depending on construction of the building, lack of insulation, rooms on higher floors or along south-facing walls, placement or lack of windows, etc. You also have to account for humidity, which isn't much of a problem along the west coast but definitely is in the South and Mid-Atlantic. With the typical humidity in Oklahoma, I definitely wouldn't want to be in an un-air-conditioned building in the 80s.

The highest I've ever seen anyone keep their thermostat in Oklahoma is 78°, and that's my parents. Most people keep the AC set lower in the 70s (I usually default to 72°, but my wife tends to reset it somewhere in the 70°—75° range depending on the outside temperature and her mood). Public businesses often set their thermostats even lower, somewhere in the 60s, low enough that people that tend to get cold easily tend to bring a jacket with them in the summer when they plan on staying indoors somewhere like a mall or big-box store for a longer period of time. I would imagine all of this is due to the higher humidity requiring lower temperatures to reach a similar level of comfort.

My aunt lived near Phoenix, she only had a evaporative (swamp) cooler and it was fairly cool in her house. Here in Northeast Texas, the air is over 90% saturated and is 100F. It is like being in a sauna. In Arizona, you could introduce cool wet air and it would cool you and the space. Here it would just make it even muggier.