The country is in peak summer right now and I’ve never been more thankful for central air conditioning. Except … when it’s not working.
I spent the last 4 days at our condo in the Sunshine State and it was HOT & STEAMY. How hot?
This was Thursday & Friday … mid 90° temperatures with humidity taking the “feels like” to 120° …!
On tropical days like these, it’s hard to be outside between 1-5pm. It’s better to hide inside and take advantage of the air conditioning. Except … mine wasn’t working. I’m not sure when it went out, but it wasn’t working when I arrived just before midnight on Wednesday to “check in things”.
We had left the place in late-April and everything seemed fine until I noticed the thermostat creeping up in our unit over the last week. Our place is on the first floor of the building in the side that faces North, so we were protected from the worst of the heat, but I was happy we had already planned on coming down.
In the heat of summer, air conditioning is a serious business. Even at our main home in relatively cool Minnesota, we run our central air almost every day throughout the summer.
Believe it or not, Europe – which notoriously lacks air conditioning in most homes (20% AC in homes vs 90% in USA) – loses 2x as many lives each year due to lack of widespread air conditioning as the US loses to gun violence! (About 50K lives a year versus 20K, basis Grok & ChatGPT reports).
We were fortunate that our crafty Florida handyman is also a licensed air conditioning professional. He was on the job quickly on Thursday – sizing up the problems, ordering the parts, and installing a new blower, circuit board, and compressor (on our 5th floor rooftop … in the full afternoon sun!).
While our 18 year-old air conditioning system was getting upgraded (I helped some), I also had to get my SUV repaired (dead battery) and do a half-dozen other things that had come “undone” in the last three months. After 2 steamy nights sleep, we were back in the cool zone & had a running vehicle by Friday night.
What I learned about vacation properties on this trip is that it pays to check on things every few months. There is a lot that can go wrong. Even in a simple “lock & leave” condo unit. The cameras, sensors, and remote technology that we all use these days still needs to be supplemented with an in-person visit.
How is your air conditioning holding out in the summer heat?
Image: Pixabay
MrFireStation 
The number about deaths caused by lack of AC in Europe is really shocking.
It is been relatively cool so far this summer with the highs around the low to mid 80s. Our heat pump is working really well. I have a fiend who is a very experienced HVAC tech and the two us swapped out my whole house heat pump and air handler almost two years ago. We replaced a unit that he put in 23 years earlier. I changed out the unit to gain 20 SEER cooling which is twice as efficient as the old equipment we replaced. Besides being more efficient, the equipment is very quiet. I regret not replaced the old system sooner, if I only knew how much better the new equipment is.
Modern heat pumps and central air conditioning have the ability to ramp their output up and down to match the requirements better. This saves electricity by allowing the unit run at a lower output during the night. Let’s call the lower output one ton. During hot days, we get a couple weeks of around 100 degree highs, the unit produces its full five tons. This ability to ramp up and down to meet requirements saves electricity and improves comfort because it runs continuously to dehumidify and avoid temperature swings.
Here is my rant for the day about air conditioning. The global warming fanatics, the same ones who want you to drive an electric car, don’t like air conditioning. But, they do like heat pumps. I wonder if they realize heat pumps work as both a heater and an air conditioner!
Here’s a little thermodynamics. The green fanatic living in Madison Wisconsin complains about the wasteful people in Orlando, Los Angeles and especially Phoenix air conditioning being a big waste of energy. Mr. Green Do-gooder in Madison sometimes has have to heat their home from -20 degrees up to 70 degrees F. They are creating a 90 degree temperature delta.
Mr. Energy Do-gooder calls a person living in Phoenix Mr. Energy Hog. Mr. Energy Hog sometimes has to cool their house from 120 degrees to 75 degrees F. They are creating a 45 degree temperature delta. Modern air conditioning moves 12,000 BTUH per Ton, which equals 3,516 Watts of Heat. A 20 SEER system only requires 833 Watts per ton. 3,516 divided by 833 = 4.22. Air conditioning works by moving 4.22 Watts of unwanted Heat from inside the house to outside the house for every Watt of of electricity used. The person in Phoenix only needs to create a temperature delta that is half that of Mr. Green D0-gooder in Madison, WI, and they are using modern air conditioning that is 4.22X more efficient than heating. Mr. Green Do-gooder is the real Energy Hog!
I have just used thermodynamics to prove that you should just go ahead and enjoy your air conditioning!
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I never thought this blog would end up with a discussion of HVAC thermodynamics, but there is a major personal finance aspect to running our homes. Energy is expensive!
I’m afraid that Madison Green Fanatic would still call me an Energy Hog as I am hearing or air conditioning two homes 365 days a year. It’s hard to get around the cost and “wasteful” consumption with that.
Article on heat deaths in Europe … https://reason.com/2025/07/03/environmental-regulations-are-literally-baking-europeans-to-death/
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I thought adding some thermodynamics would help make things eclectic. Mr. Madison Green Fanatic doesn’t understand the math, because he studied Gender Studies on the bad side of the UW campus.
The European Numbers in the cited article are even worse than your original post. One number I gleaned from the article is 34 cents per kilowatt hour. That is about where I am at in the People’s Republic of California. California’s Energy Do-gooders are really do some crazy stuff. They are blowing up dams which supply hydroelectric power, which is cheap green energy to save the snail darters. They replace them with Solar Arrays and Windmills. I would like to point out that the Solar Arrays disturb the environment of Desert Tortoises and require denuding the land of Joshua Trees and Cactuses. The Windmills are bird choppers on land and whale killers in the ocean. And you doing this to get very expensive occasional power. The occasional power needs to be backed up by gas turbines, so you just doubled the infrastructure.
I just completed installing a whole house backup generator. Last week the generator ran for three hours on Friday evening and it allowed us to run our AC, watch TV, soak in our spa and cook dinner with food that wasn’t spoiled due to lack of refrigeration.
My neighbor just put in solar with battery backup. He told me his battery backup doesn’t provide enough electricity to run his AC, so he hopes the electricity comes back before they go to bed. This is exactly the scenario that is playing out on a National Grid Level. Even more so in Europe. For someone thinking about ‘investing’ in solar, I recommend buying dividend stocks with a history of raising dividends instead. You will get a better return without maintenance concerns.
Sitting in on the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting a couple years ago gave me an interesting insight into green energy. Berkshire owns a bunch of electric utilities. Berkshire is so large and profitable that they have excess capital that that are having a hard time putting to work. They are putting capital ‘to work’ investing in ‘green energy’ at their utility companies. Utility commissions allow Berkshire to raise the electric rates to offer a return on their capital. Good for the shareholders. Bad for the electric consumer.
Here is an article that helps establish Al Gore, who started the green energy scam establish his green bona fides and shows whether he does what he says or not.
https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/-/5-551648/
Here is an article about Bill Gates, who wants you to eat his vegan burgers that avoid cow flatulence caused global warming.
https://luxurylaunches.com/real_estate/bill-gates-mansion-water-consumption-07122025.php
Glenn Beck with Harriet Parke wrote two fictional books that explain what is going on “Agenda 21” and “Agenda 21: Into the Shadows”. These are based on the United Nation’s Agenda 21. Both fictional books describe a bleak spartan lifestyle for most of the world’s population. Of course there are elites in society who are needed to make all the important decisions in society and therefore deserve to live well. Great fiction that does a great job of predicting the future.
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Yeah – the #s in that Reason article are more severe than what I included. I went to a number of sources and used a “low side” average. It’s still shocking how preventable those deaths are.
When I worked at MegaCorp, we did a study in Asia that revealed how many people die of poor air quality. Not smog in the streets … but indoor air quality. It turns out that much of the third world (Asia & Africa) still cooks over a wood fire in their home. At a conference in Xi’an, the Chinese Academy of Sciences presented that they thought it equaled 4 million deaths a year.
Where are the Green activists on getting these people clean fossil fuels to cook boil water and cook their dinner?
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Great follow up! We are continuing to further Mr. Green Do-gooder’s education. Today we are teaching about one of the most important Economic Concepts, namely diminishing returns. I would like to add the concept of green washing.
The US has made dramatic improvements in cleaning up our environment and water since the early 1980s. We don’t hear about acid rain anymore. In fact, farmers in the Midwest have to broadcast sulfur onto their fields to make their soil acidic enough to grow crops. I have to sprinkle sulfur around my 31 year old redwood trees before it rains to keep them alive and help them grow. I didn’t have to do this years ago when I planted them. The US was able to achieve this by switching away from coal fired to clean burning natural gas electric generation. The US actually meets the Kyoto Treaty which we didn’t sign onto because of the switch from coal to natural gas. We are also burning much cleaner sulfur free diesel. In the early 1980s, you couldn’t see the mountains behind Pasadena because of the smog. Today you can.
We live on the same planet as the rest of the world include the Asian countries that burn wood to cook and they are literally polluting themselves to an early death. Offshoring our manufacturing means that many of the green energy goods we are deploying in the US are being manufactured in countries that are operating pollution wise where the US was back in the 1960s. The green energy goods being manufactured by the world’s leading polluters offset any gains in terms of less pollution and carbon dioxide when measured on a global basis. The Peoples’ Republic of California is green washing our environment locally, but we are actually causing more pollution on a global basis. Pollution and carbon dioxide must be okay as long as it is Not in My Back Yard.
The third world has low hanging fruit when it comes to making low cost improvements that will help clean up Mother Earth. How about requiring all products sold in the US to be manufactured to at least our environmental standards. It would help level the playing field for manufacturers in the US with their Indian and China competitors and help clean up the planet where we all live at the same time.
Switching from wood fired to natural gas cooking would be a great start. The island of Hispaniola is shared by the nations of Haiti and The Dominican Republic. When you fly over the island you can see the boundary between the two islands clear as day. The Dominican Republic side is dense rainforest while the Haitian side has been stripped of all its trees because they are still cooking with firewood. Cutting down trees to burn for cooking also takes away the photosynthesis benefits of trees consuming carbon dioxide to feed themselves and outputting oxygen as an end product of the chemical reaction. It is not fair going further with this, because it would mean we are forcing Mr. Green Do-gooder to also take a class in Biology on the same day we twisted his brain with Economics and the concept of diminishing returns.
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I enjoy reading the essays of Matthew Ridley. He’s a British scientist and member of their House of Lords. He has this great essay from about 10 years ago that really frames how much progress we have made around the world. We truly live in a golden age, but few see that in the media … https://www.mattridley.co.uk/blog/17-reasons-to-be-cheerful-1/
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I missed this. An interesting read. I do not agree with his love of city living. Living in the country has never been easier. Expansion of internet into rural areas enables work from home. Starlink makes VOIP and gaming quality internet available anywhere you can see the sky. VOIP and gaming are a lot harder than streaming video because the communication needs to be bidirectional with low latency (ping times). The internet with home delivery services also makes living in the country easier.
Here is a link to an article about diminishing returns and environmental cleanup in the third world that is on point with the comments about not cooking over wood fires. https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/us-mexico-reach-agreement-on-long-standing-sewage-crisis-in-tijuana-river-5892374
San Diego has probably the best weather in the US with very expensive real estate and beaches. San Diego has high California standards for keeping the air and water clean. This is great, but their Mexican neighbors to the south don’t have vehicle smog testing and are dumping raw sewage in the Tijuana River that outlets into the Pacific right on the US – Mexican border. Most of the time if you go to the historic Hotel del Coronado, you can’t swim in the ocean because of the pollution. The Navy Seals who are based on Coronado have to go up to Oceanside to train.
The Trump Administration is easing up on some of the crazy environmental regulations that are strangling business grow and energy production in the US. But, at the same time, they are making our very dirty neighbor become better neighbors by not dumping on our border. This is very pragmatic.
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Ugh – Tijuana. What a mess. I’ve been to San Diego many times, but never crossed the border to Tijuana. No interest in seeing the urban plight. Do people go there for any particular reason? Is it a Mexican version of Sin City?
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My wife and I used to go down to Tijuana to consign furniture. We bought mostly wrought iron and rustic Hacienda style pine. No mass produced particle board. Unknown to many is that the Pacific Design Center is filled with show rooms that interior designers take their clients to. The orders for many of the bespoke furniture pieces are faxed down to shops in Tijuana. The shops ship the furniture up to LA on a moving van. We went direct and cut out the middle man to save a lot.
We never took part in any of the rowdy activities. That would mostly be college students who were arbitraging the under 21 drinking age in TJ.
We stopped going after 2000 due to cartel violence. Very high homicide and kidnapping rates. Making them treat their pollution will make a big impact on the ocean around San Diego.
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Given the state of the economy in Mexico, I’m sure there are wonderful artisans/crafts people making some beautiful things. Mexican glassware isn’t very sophisticated, but there are some wonderful glass blowers in a giant studio near Cabo San Lucas that we visited about five years ago. When I was in college, I blew glass as an art minor. I was amazed at the work they did at that studio.
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I would recommend using a Nest Thermostat or equivalent. It has an energy savings mode for when we are gone for 1-2 weeks at a time. It is always nice to be able to remotely check what the temperature of the house is and / or even change the temperature just prior to coming home so it is more comfortable when we arrive.
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Another way to a achieve the same with any programmable thermostat is set your thermostat to a reasonable away temperature and hitting the hold button. Hit return button when you get return from your vacation.
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Yeah – we actually have a Nest thermostat. We keep our Florida place on “hold” at 77° when we’re not there. I noticed it was 79° a week before I went down, but a couple degrees of variation isn’t unusual when it’s 20° hotter outside. I’m not sure how long the AC was actually out.
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