| Page 2 of 3 < > |
Give Me Swelter
"I'm environmentally aware," she says. "I don't feel like I'm suffering."
There are social consequences to her chosen lifestyle. "My dad won't come over to my house if the AC isn't on," says Jentz. What do her friends say? "Oh, they just say, 'Well, that's Kathy . . .' "
  Kathy Jentz doesn't use air conditioning in her Silver Spring house. To her it feels "artificial." (By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post) |
Some non-users don't impose their steamy lifestyle on friends.
"We just don't entertain in the summer," says Debra Roush, who lives with her husband, Steve, and two college-age children in a brick Cape Cod in University Park. "Nobody will come and sweat with us." Roush says they used to invite over other friends who didn't have air conditioning. "I used to walk around the neighborhood and feel good that other people had their windows open. There aren't too many of us left."
Roush says she and her husband have had estimates of $15,000 to put a central system in their home, but they always seem to have more pressing expenses, such as college tuition. "We cope with ceiling fans and, if it gets over 95 degrees, we might put in a window unit, but I hate that because then you can't open your windows."
Some households swear by attic fans as an alternative to central air. Pamela Roddy's 1973 cedar-sided contemporary home in Bethesda has a high-volume, 36-inch, industrial-grade exhaust fan installed in the attic. This powerful type of fan draws out the hot air from the whole house and sucks in the cooler evening air through a few slightly open windows.
Roddy says that's all she and her husband need to keep cool, and last Sunday, they even baked a blackberry pie at 450 degrees."We are not penny-pinching. I just love the soft breeze of this fan," says Roddy, a scientist who works in public health. She recycles, does not use pesticides and does not water her grass in the summer. She says the only problem is that the rush of air from the powerful fan wreaks havoc with her dining table candles.
For Abigail Rome of Takoma Park, wasting energy and global warming are reasons enough to keep her fans whirring and windows open. Her house has one window unit in the main bedroom, which she says she has turned on only three times in the past eight years. "Money saving is an issue, but I can afford air conditioning if I want it," says Rome, a consultant in conservation and eco-tourism. "I strongly believe anything we can do to reduce our negative impact on the environment is worth it. I drive a Prius, but most of the time I bike."
Jeff Cohn, a writer, gets by in the summer months in his Takoma Park house using ceiling fans and not using his oven. When his daughter is in residence, he will turn on a window unit in his home office if it gets unbearable for her. For Cohn, a Minnesota native, it's all about priorities.
"Put it this way: I'm cheap," he says. "Why spend money on air conditioning? I would rather spend my money on food and women."
Beat the Heat Without AC
· Take a cold shower before bed. Added cooling: Go to bed with wet hair. (This risks bed head, but hey -- it's a look.)
