How horrible was last night! I don't think it dropped below 18 degrees at any point. This morning it has cooled down but its really muggy. Looking at the weather its going to be cooler now. I think the worst part of yesterday is that it got to 30+ degrees while we are still so close to the sun, it was still light after 10 o'clock so it never got a chance to cool down. Its not so bad in August when by the end of the month the sun is setting before 8. First thing I did when I got to work this morning was put the A/C on max, I wish electricity wasn't so expensive so I could put one in at home.
Really? It was a normal temperature down here last night. Maybe being by the sea helps.. Not been to sleep yet. Was not tired and was thinking of staying up until tonight and pass out about 9pm. Now I am starting to feel very tired but I have a few things to sort out so cannot sleep.
I was trying to sleep from 11pm but woke up so many times feeling as if I was going to melt that I didn't get a good nights sleep at all.
We had a storm to cook us down from the oppressive heat, about 31 degrees here until 9 o clock. I'd best get used to it though, since I'll be in oven country for a month.
Not staying somewhere with A/C? Any time I have been to hot countries I have always had the benefit of it, god knows how you would sleep if it was like last night every day of the week. It didn't help that the pollen levels seemed to be through the roof yesterday, couldn't breathe at all.
Everywhere has A/C over there, the big issue for me is the travelling from one A/Ced building to another. Walking outside is the stuff of nightmare. Stepping outside the door to be instantly dripping in sweat is nicht gut. I remember about 20 year ago, I stayed in a building with no A/C, all I remember is my feet feeling like they were melting.
You guys don't have A/C in your houses? I guess that just sounds strange to someone who lives in Florida. A/C is a necessity, not a luxury here. Having non-functioning A/C in June, July, or August here would put you at serious risk of heat exhaustion. I can't recall a day it was under 95F last year, and most days it was over 100F. Even at night it was 85F. It's a bit more mild this summer, but still pretty bad. If I want to do yard work it pretty much either has to be done early in the morning or right before the sun goes down, because it's just too damn hot otherwise.
Out of interest how much does your electricity cost (per kWh preferable). Over here it is probably fair to say around 13p ($0.20) would be a good average, now if you have a 5kW A/C unit that's 65p ($1) an hour, £15.60 ($24) a day! When you consider that my monthly electricity bill is only between £60 and £100 a month thats a cost that I just could not consider. To be fair its only ever hot here between June and August and in the past 3/4 years we have had very poor summers with very few days peaking above 30 degrees (86F) but we can get odd days where it hits 35C (95F) and beyound. We have such a varied climate that for the rest of the year they would be redundant. Wouldn't have been much use in December when it hit -17C(1.4F) here in south London (colder in other places). I live in the south east which is normally the hottest place in the UK and have A/C in my office so for the most part I can get by without it as it is so rare that it is as overwhelming as it was yesterday. Just for reference the 10 day forcast now shows nothing above 20C (68F), this is of course subject to change but it shows the difference we get. Before Sunday the whole of June was a complete wash out with it raining every single day and never getting above 20/21.
It's not too common here, since temperatures get into uncomfortable territory for maybe a month a year. Houses here are also mostly brick so don't heat up as much. My home stays pretty cool and an open window at night keeps things comfortable.
I don't know the price per kWH. It's showing as $.03 per kWH on the FPL website, but I think that's out of date. Suffice it to say that our energy is very cheap. We pay about $130 a month for energy in colder months and closer to $200 in the summer months, and that's with the A/C running all the time. It's not like we really have a choice. Save for a few weeks in January, it's never cool enough to shut off your A/C down here.
Even if that's gone up a few cents your still paying much less than us! Of course my stuff was worked out on its maximum theoretical draw, if you don't set it as low it wont draw as much but at 13p kWh its not cheap to run anything over here anymore. My home is filled with low energy lighting!
An energy efficient A/C unit is a good investment here. The Carrier unit we installed saves us so much on energy, that it will have paid for itself in energy savings in another year, and after that it will be saving us something like $1800/yr. The unit that was here when we moved in was an energy guzzling piece of crap that wasn't even properly installed. Our energy bills have been about $150-200 cheaper with this new unit.
Do you have any issues with Carrier out of interest? Our family and litigation departments are full of them and our Air Con people hate fixing them. Every other department has Daikin units which seem good and one of our branch offices has Mitsubishi which seem to break down every 5 minutes (yesterday one was leaking and today one sounds like it is about to explode according to a call I got this morning). The Carrier units are about between 13-15 years old so they are probably a lot better now than they were then.
No, we haven't had any problems. A brand that was supposedly good that I hear a lot of people having issues with is Trane. My dad has blown two Trane condensers on a system that's not that old.
There's quite few northern states that don't have ac units as a norm. My friend moved from Florida to Washington state last year just as summer started and freaked out cuz there's no ac units in apartments up there, but obviously it's not the bad since the high is only 70F right now. And it's in the middle of summer. I moved to north carolina thinking it'd be a bit cooler than florida in the summer. All i've got so far is same if not hotter temps than florida.. at least it's not as humid.
Yeah, high heat is tolerable but add high humidity and you've got energy sapping weather. Kind of like going out in the sun as a vampire on Oblivion lol.
All packed and ready to ship out. I'm gonna try the "not eating until the next meal time when I arrive in china, be it breakfast, lunch or dinner to combat any jetlag, though I've always been pretty fortunate and not suffered too badly. My next posts will probably be from the airport, if I can find a wifi spot. If ichi really has banned Chinese IPs, then my next post will be in a month's time!