When you’ve lived abroad for as long as I have, it is some real culture shock coming back home.
I’m from the south and grew up in a house that had great quality heating and air provided by a heat pump.
I for sure took that heating and cooling from the heat pump for granted. But who didn’t. Even when I was a kid, the heat pump was everywhere. All the neighbors had central air conditioning and where we shopped had commercial HVAC. So it was sort of like heating and cooling, but particularly HVAC cooling, was just a given. When I left the country after college to work in developing nations, I wasn’t sure how long that would last. But I’m now finishing up just over 20 years spent abroad working in places where HVAC cooling is a luxury. Honestly, the culture shock got to be so intense when I came home that I just sort of stopped coming home. Until I came back to the States for good just over a year ago, I hadn’t been back in almost a decade. How things had changed. This was also the first time that I ever owned a home. So I learned a lot about residential HVAC from the HVAC professionals near my hometown. In fact, the HVAC contractor who put in the new HVAC equipment was a buddy I went to junior high with. I’ve had that new HVAC cooling for more than a year and I still can’t get accustomed to it. Thankfully, I have a smart thermostat that looks after the heating and cooling of my home these days.