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Comment by asciimov | Hacker News Reader

Life long Texan here. Some of y'all need to get this setting your house temp to 78° figured out. 78 is damned comfortable, even in high humidity, as long as you have your ceiling fans on moving that air around. Don't have ceiling fans? Better get them installed in every room. Lowes and Home Depot regularly sell ceiling fans that are $35 that are quiet and run just fine.

Sure 78 isn't as cold as 72 or 68 that many of y'all like keeping your houses in the summer, but it sure as hell beats the indoor temps of 95+ when you don't have power.

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I'm from a continental climate country (very cold in winter, very hot in summer). What you need is not AC settings, but different techniques to build your house. Basically -- better insulation.

Oftentimes it's enough to open window at night, so that the rooms kinda "accumulate" night cold that would rest for the whole day. Of course it won't be enough at 100+ degrees, but you'd need very little AC then.

I believe winter states like Montana already must build better insulated houses.

The catch? It's more expensive to build.

This is one of those situations where our building codes need to catch up to technology. People don't want to live in structures better suited to our environment, they don't want to pay for the cost to build them, and our governments wont force them to do it.

We do have good insulation for our new houses, but building those kind of houses are at odds with living without A/C. Some older homes, built before A/C, could make the heat much more bearable by having better air flow, more windows, and taller ceilings.

Only the arid/dryer climates cool down at night. It is not uncommon for the temps to still be in the upper 80's to 90's (30-34C) in the overnight hours. I remember one particularly brutal 4th of July, sitting outside at Midnight with temps over 100F (38C).

In my area this week, it's gonna be a scorcher, Temps are gonna be at or over 100F ever afternoon this week.

Kansan here, agreed. My family likes to keep the temperature in the house around 70... To me that's even a bit cold. And that's without ceiling fans (nearly no moving air).

78°F is 25.5°C. That's even cold in the summer.

When I lived with AC I kept it around 27-28°C to be comfortable, that's 81-82°F. Or maybe Texas has high humidity?

Large parts of Texas have high humidity, the panhandle and West Texas is much drier.

It is not uncommon to see people keep their houses 62-72F (17-22C) in the warm months and 80+F (26+C) in the cold months. Often these people don't have ceiling fans and refuse to wear appropriate clothing for the temps in their house.

this is what I do. I have a couple of lasko fans in rooms that need it, but generally don't around your house in hot clothes and you're gonna be find and get used to it quickly. Now if I'm cleaning house I'll turn it down to 73 or 74 for a bit, but it goes back up afterwards.

Is it common for people in TX to run their AC's all day?

It’s very common throughout hot & humid climates in the US to leave the central air conditioner maintaining set temperatures all day.

How often it’s actually blowing cool dry air out of all the vents depends on the unit/weather/setting/insulation etc.

With the thermostat set at 78. The air cycles on at about 2 in the afternoon. At about 6 it stops. The out side temperature has been dropping from the 90s to the 70’s overnight

the thermostat will dictate if that's necessary. Modern homes tend to have really good insulation. Older homes though can be horrible at efficiency but most people will get after market spray foams in their walls because it's pretty cheap compared to year after year AC bills of $400

In the hot part of summer during the daytime, you absolutely must unless you live underground or in a wind tunnel. Then there's also another lesser-known effect of climate change: the average nighttime lows get higher faster than the daytime highs. I have no doubt this phenomena will also catch the Texas grid with its pants down in the future as well, as "unexpected" demand during off hours grows.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200930194912.h...

That's crazy to think of. Here in South Africa it gets hot during the summer but you would be fine without an air conditioner. It would just be uncomfortable. I use mine maybe 10 days a year.

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