Don’t you just love the AC?

I’ve always lived in a home with an air conditioner.  Granted, I have always lived in places where it was either a) hot, b) humid, c) dry or any combination of a/b or a/c.  b/c just wouldn’t make any sense now, come on.  Well, the greater Seattle area is maybe b.  It sure isn’t hot for most of the year, and with all of the rain, there’s no chance the words “dry” and “Seattle” are ever spoken of in the same sentence.  So being my first foray into the non-warm climatel (I think I just made that word up), I was and still am, a bit surprised to find that most living residences (homes, apartments and condos) do NOT have air conditioning.  As in, it’s not even an option.

When we first moved up here we were living in Kirkland and right on Lake Washington.  The apartment complex they put us up in was really quite nice.  But even still, not a single unit was offered with air conditioning.  You would think that living on a pretty big lake would offer you some gentle breezes though, and it would.  But not when you live with no windows lake-side.  And when you have smokers living downstairs (the entire community was sold as “smoke-free” HA!) and you are on the top floor, you risk opening your windows and being overpowered by the nastiness.  Last summer got pretty hot in Kirkland, even for Rancho Santa Margarita standards.  For most of July and August it would reach 90-something each day.

So, when it was time for us to move out of temporary housing and into something else, we made it a goal to try and find something with air conditioning.  Now, like I said, most places don’t have air conditioning.  Most new homes don’t offer it, and when they do, most people won’t spring the cash to have it installed.  What we kept hearing over and over was “oh, you’d only need it maybe 2 weeks MAX a year, so just turn on a fan and you’ll be fine.”  Nevertheless, we really wanted to have a place with air conditioning.  Emily did a great job of searching for places to rent, and found this really nice home we’re in now.  It’s close to work in Redmond and we really liked the family that owns it.  PLUS, it had air conditioning!  Can you imagine that?  Done deal!  Well, we moved in here the middle of September, and from that point until about 2 weeks ago, we essentially had the heat running and never needed the AC since it was too cold for it.

The past 2 weeks up here have been really beautiful.  The sun has been out I’d say 85% of the time and it’s been nice and warm and clear skies.  It’s been nice to drive with the windows down and not have to use my seat warmers in the morning.   Yesterday however was HOT.  Sticky stuffy HOT.  Emily thought we should finally turn on the AC, so I went downstairs and played with the settings on the electronic unit thingamajig.  Hmmm…not really too powerful.  I felt the floor vents downstairs while I was washing the dishes.  Pretty weak, and not icy cold.  But a nice cool ambient temperature at least.  We never had to worry about the strength of the unit with the heater before, as long as it got hot.  But just to be safe, I thought I’d turn it off so we didn’t wake up freezing cold and have to go all the way downstairs to shut it off.  We did pull out some fans and left those on though.

When I got home from work this evening, Emily mentioned how the AC had hardly done anything to cool things down with it running all day long.  Then I think a lightbulb went off in her head.

Where is the AC unit outside the house?

Yeah…we never really looked for that.  Guess the home owners didn’t either.  Whoops!  Live and learn…and keep your fans running 24/7.