Ya' know how the Bible says "be hot for me or cold for me. Do not be lukewarm for me".... well apparently picking a mild month to sacrifice our air was a bit of a "lukewarm" decisions. God seems to have turned up the heat, so to speak, to help us come out of our comfort zone. I can tell He wants us to sacrifice more than we feel comfortable. Here in the south it has been pretty warm these days. I'm talking 85 degrees inside the house. We are sticking to our plan as much as we can and I think we are doing a pretty good job. We have cheated though (hangs head in shame) and turned on the air a hand full of times. On the nights where it is 80 degrees or higher we run the air for one hour right around the kids bedtime. I just hated to see them sweaty and miserable as they tried to go to sleep. After an hour the house is so nice and cool and stays that way through the night. Also, we have had to turn in on a couple of other times. We had my uncle and aunt come and watch the kids for about an hour one night while we went out to eat. I hate to see other people suffer when they are doing a huge favor for us. I would say we have turned the air on for about 10 hours total this month. Overall I would say that is not too bad.
Here is the kicker though. We got our power bill and it was WAY more than I expected, considering our limited air usage. I would have hated to see what the bill was if we would have been letting it run all day and all night. Ouch!
I think this challenge is helping us see that the air does not have to run much to keep us comfortable. I think the rest of the summer will be much more aware of how often the air is on. To us, 75 feels pretty cool, if you can believe it. I can't wait to go on vacation though.... I plan on enjoying the air thoroughly while we are in Florida!
3 comments:
You may find, when you turn the AC on full time, that it was the turning it on and off that caused the higher bill. It's far easier on the system to stay cool than it is to cool an already warm house down. That said ... I admire your resolve and sacrifice! We turned our AC on for the first time this year in March! :)
I'm amazed that you are keeping it off. Of course, we don't even have AC, but we also consider 85 to be hot and have literally no humidity.
And I miss you, but you are completely and totally busy. And no, you aren't supposed to have a 1 year old yet. He's getting too big too fast.
When we lived in AZ we used to set the temp to 80-but that is when it was 120 outside. Did you know it is actually more energy efficient to keep it at a good temperature than all the up and down and trying to cool it off when it is really hot?
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