I walked outside to get the paper this morning and it was suddenly different.
It was so different that it made me stop a second. I didn’t hear the heat pump running when I walked outside for the first time in like four months. I smiled really big all morning because I can tell the weather is indeed shifting. The days of near constant triple digit heat and humidity are over. We still get warm during the peak heating hours of the afternoon and the air conditioning is cooling the house. But that other mess is gone for 8 months. That is indeed reason to celebrate. Another reason to celebrate the end of all that heat is all the money I saved on HVAC cooling this year. I finally did it. After years of failed attempts, I made real headway in slashing the cost of HVAC cooling during the summer. Look, there’s really no way to live here in the summer and not utilize air conditioning. That’s just not realistic. However, by tightening up my house to keep the cooling comfort in and the heat out, I started something. I also started covering windows to stop direct sunlight heating. It really didn’t take all that much to do these things. But keeping the thermostat in the low 80’s during the day did take some effort and discipline. Since I work at home, it was plenty warm during the afternoon all summer. But I used fans and that made a huge difference for me. The summer heat is over and this summer I saved almost 20 percent on my HVAC cooling costs over last year.