There’s a run on air conditioners in the Bay Area

Current events

Unless you live in a new mansion or upscale apartment, housing in the Bay Area doesn’t normally come with air conditioning. You don’t need it. Or that’s what we’ve been told. That is, until a heat wave hit this weekend. It hit 90 degrees F inside the house yesterday on the Peninsula, so we headed to the mall to cool down.

We drove to Stanford Shopping Center because they allow dogs in their stores; we couldn’t have left Lola at home. (French bulldogs, being a brachycephalic breed, don’t tolerate heat at all.) It was an ok solution, but since the thermometer in the car registered 104 degrees by the time we parked, walking between the stores in the outdoor mall wasn’t fun. Last night, even with all the windows open, the house didn’t cool down like it usually does.

Today, we broke down and decided to get an air conditioner. We headed to Home Depot as soon as it opened, only to discover that they’re all out of air conditioners all across the Bay Area! In fact, their next shipment was coming in on the 30th, for the smallest unit they had. A little more checking around and we found that Lowe’s still had 4 wall-unit A/Cs left in their San Bruno store. $189 for a 10K BTU unit which we’ve stuck in the second (guest) bedroom. We consider it money well spent for a small area of haven. Thank goodness our house is less than 1000 sq. ft., though I’ll be interested to see how much higher our electricity bill goes up this month. This way, when we leave the house, neither Lola nor the puppy we’re getting next month will suffer in the heat.

Still, I can’t help feeling like a wimp. People not so long ago had no such thing as air conditioning, and they survived. If we didn’t have to worry about our dogs’ health, I’d probably have foregone the purchase. How did they manage in the past?

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2 Feedbacks on "There’s a run on air conditioners in the Bay Area"

Kay

Whoa! No AC! I didn’t know that was possible. I hope you and Lola, whom I mention in this post, enjoy your new appliance without too much added utility costs. Our electric bill is always higher in the summer, but I can deal with the cold better, so our heating costs in the winter aren’t that bad, evening things out a bit.



Ricemutt

Thanks for the mention! We’re doing much better now…it only hit 100 today :P But the A/C is a nice add and we’re all now holed up in the second bedroom chilling nicely.

Actually, none of the last several places in which we’ve lived — Seattle, Portland, and Brussels — have come with A/C standard in housing. You just don’t need it. We were supposed to find the same situation here, but maybe this is just a strange year for weather!