I had to put political in the title just to qualify my appeal for information to this knowledgable group. It is 92 degrees in my home office right now, and hard to do the work I do (see other diaries), when I am sweaty and miserable.
We don’t have central air. We thought about putting it in when we bought this old house, but couldn’t afford it. I also tend to have a bias against it given the vast resources it uses. When I was a kid, as I am fond of telling my children, if I wanted to be somewhere cool I went to the library.
We also hoped that if we put in excellent “green” insulation we would limit the need for it. Such insulation has made a tremendous difference, but not enough of one.
We thought we’d get by on window units. This way we would only need to cool the area of the house we are in. Seems like the energy efficient thing to do. But window units seem to be getting worse. Less efficient rather than more, more expensive and less effective. Last year we had to throw one out because it turns out some of the energy star ones are prone to mold. The one failing us now is a “portable” one that we bought last year with a flexible tube to the outside.
I’m pretty sure I’ll be buying window units this weekend, and would welcome any concrete advice, both on specifcs and whether I should take out loans to put in central. Especially welcome advice from people who are very knowledgable. Googling just leads me down rabbit holes of opinion.
I’d also welcome an informed meta discussion, since this is what we do best at DailyKos. My main beat is income inequality and I see this through that lens and wonder if the market place has decided, essentially, if you don’t get central air you are not worth our business. By marketplace here I mean specific executives, men mostly, who can’t imagine not having central air. Why would they work on innovation for people who can’t afford central air, and just want a cool bedroom? Is this another way lower-middle-class people are screwed by the system? Or does it just feel like that to me at the moment?
I’d also be curious to know if there is a website that lets us measure carbon footprints based on our energy use. I have a slight personal level of annoyance at environmentalist types that have disdain for plastic water bottles, but no personal hesitancy about jetting around the world. Am I correct in my assumption that flying is a much bigger use of energy?