We don't have central AC so put in window units every summer. We don't do this until the heat gets in the upper 80s and 90s. I agree with you completely about the closed windows. When it's a scorcher,and we are going to be gone for the day or don't want to use the AC,we open the windows at night and let our huge upstairs window fan suck the air from the outside and through the house. In the morning,we close all the windows and pull the curtains shut on the south windows. The house stays very pleasant doing this. However,if there is a full week of 90 temps and humidity,nothing helps and on goes the AC.

I have a window routine as well and it impacts energy use a lot and also comfort. We don't have central air, or window units. The open window/fan routine we use at night, and on very hot days, the blinds are kept shut to stop thermal gain.

Only got window units in the last couple of years. Admittedly, this isn't the South . . .
Close the windows during the day, shut the curtains to reflect the heat away. Open everything at night.

I've been known to hang out in the basement (unfinished) where it's cooler . . .

We were lucky to have a full basement that stayed cool. I shut and covered the south windows upstairs, put a reversible fans in the upstairs window on the north side of the house and sucked the cool basement air into the house. At night, it gets cool (think 6000 ft elevations) and we would pull the cool outside air into the house. It took some work, but I got it so it was almost like a/c!!

I didn't handle it and still don't, unfortunately. We always lived where it was cool until about 30 years ago. If we stayed at our grandmother's house, she'd open the windows and doors at night, but it was never cool enough to actually sleep. When the a/c breaks, I can't sleep. At all. I do remember thinking how creative mom was when she put ice cubes in the path of the air from the fan. Now, as adults, he and I both have to have it 69 degrees. But the converse is true in winter, so we save on heating bills.

I consider our A/C a necessity, not a luxury! Having lived all of my life in the Wash., D.C. area, which is known for its heat and humidity, once we got central air, I never looked back!

We used a window fan to draw out the hot air, too, but it didn't really make it any cooler. More hot air just came in to replace it.

I remember lying in bed in a pool of perspiration, praying for any kind of cool breeze. That must be one reason why I really like cold weather; I could almost always get warm, but it was never easy to get cool.

Just a history lesson coming up. Houses used to be built in the deep south with north-south orientation. The best was with the front facing north. Then, the porches would be deep and the air would be cooler than in the hot direct sun. The front and back doors would be opposite one another as much as possible. This created a draft as the cooled air from the porches went into the house.

One house built here long before the Civil War, had a primitive air conditioning system. Besides the deep porches, the central hallway went up a couple of floors to a copula sort of arrangement with holes under the roof. Candles (and later gas jets) were placed up there and lit. This heated the air in the dome, which would rise up and flow out the openings, drawing the cooled air in from the down stairs porches.

We often just lay on the floor at night as this would be the coolest. We also ran the lawn sprinklers outside the bedroom windows. With a window fan drawing air in through the water, it was much better. Closing the windows and drawing the heavy drapes in the mornings was a routine thing. I sure am glad that we don't have to endure that anymore.

Oh Andie, that's fascinating! I love learning that kind of stuff.

When I was a kid, and well into adulthood, I'd sleep outdoors with lots of mosquito spray when the house was just too hot! Sleeping bag on the ground; later on, on a chaise. Even later, when DS was old enough, I'd send him up on the roof with a sprinkler hose turned upside down. Laid that on the roof peak, and let the water drizzle. Worked wonders! Now that I'm in the south, AC is the answer.

I can remember like yesterday the first time I experienced AC. I was thirteen and we had just moved to Arizona. All the houses had air conditioning as did the one we rented. It felt so odd and took me a little while to get used to it. That was also my first experience with swimming pools..never even saw one before that when I was living in the midwest.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.
Air-conditioning is the best invention in the world.

Andie, it never occured to me to sleep on the floor, shoot.
I always slept with my window open and my pillow smack dab in the window. Lord, it does get hot in the south.

We just sucked it up and dealt with it. I can't remember
anything but open doors and windows and being in love with the ice man.

Always 20 degrees cooler in the hammock...

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under here...

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I like the info about the sprinklers and the heat-drawing cupolas.

We don't have central AC in our 1898 house. We live in a neighborhood where most houses at one time or another had sleeping porches. I'm still trying to figure out which room that would have been here. We have one window unit, and last year we didn't even put it in. I have one of those awful wall units in my home office, but it doesn't work very well. In general, the upstairs windows get opened and pretty much stay open until fall, though I will sometimes draw west-facing blinds or curtains on hot, sunny days. This past summer, we put a ceiling fan in my tiny, high-ceilinged kitchen. It makes the whole cooking thing a little more pleasant, in a tropics sort of way.

Mostly, unless the wind is coming hard out of the west, we benefit in the summers by the "cooler by the lake" effect. And the beach is only a block and a half away, if things get too torrid--the water in Lake Michigan is always cool! In fact, my first summer living close to the water (different decade, first apartment), we used to sleep on the beach now and then, under a big dune that cast a very black shadow.

Living in Texas, only a masochist would be without A/C, but growing up in Chicago, we didn't have it until I was in Junior High. When it really got hot, we'd hang out in the basement where it was cool, albeit damp. We'd also sleep on the screened in porch where you could be sure to catch whatever breeze there was.

Some of my friend's houses had sleeping porches that were screened rooms attached to bedrooms on the second floor. I loved sleeping in my one friend's sleeping porch. It was up in the trees & I always thought it was like sleeping in a treehouse.

We're getting pretty near to the time when we'll be shutting the windows & turning on the A/C. I try to hold off until May, but don't always make it down here. Much as I know it's a necessity here, I really hate sealing myself up for teh summer.

When I was 8 or so during WWII, we followed my father to AZ for a few months of Army desert training. (Of course the Army later sent him to the humid jungles of the Pacific, but that's another story). We lived in a thick-walled adobe house with no AC...in fact no electricity except for a limited amount from a generator. Each afternoon we took naps covered with dampened towels with the fans turned directly on us. The Army sent us salt tablets to take. Yet at night we often slept under blankets. Thank God I don't really remember this except from old photos and hearing my Mom and older sister talk about it...or maybe I've just blocked it out...lol It was a bleak desert landscape with sand dunes ...very little other vegetation...it only rained once in the months we spent there. I've wondered if it is more widely populated today.
Never could understand those folks who wanted to retire to AZ. josh

Can you imagine living in the South back when women had to wear all those clothes and with corsets????

My windows never get opened. When the temperture suits in the spring and fall, the tree or weed pollen is so heavy that I can't handle it. This year, we even had the A/C on in December when the temps were pushing 90. It's been a weird year!

Agnes, I've said the same thing about women in the 19th Century living down here. They were stronger ladies than I am, that's for sure. I couldn't have stood it.

I also understand about the pollen. We're in pine pollen season now & it's pretty miserable if you're affected by it. Every morning I go out & hose off a lawyer of yellow pollen off my car & sneeze about a zillion times.