My husband, George, and I grew up in the northeast.
We are accustomed to extremely cold weather.
For about six months, we experience temperatures well below zero, feet of snow and brutal winds. Our house up north is equipped with a forced air gas furnace. Although it’s a fairly new and high-efficiency heater, the cost of heating makes up about half of our energy bills. We try to compensate by getting by with open windows and box fans in the summer. We’ve never made the investment into central air conditioning. We simply deal with the heat and humidity for those few summer months and used to dread the coming of winter every year. Once we finally retired from our jobs, we started looking for a vacation home down south. We were frustrated with shoveling snow, being trapped in the house all winter and depending on a furnace to keep warm. As we toured different houses, we discovered that houses are much different in the south. None of them included a basement or insulated windows. The ground is nothing but sand and palm trees grow in the gardens. The biggest difference between our home in the north and the one we bought in the south is probably the HVAC system. Our vacation home doesn’t include any type of heating system. There’s only air conditioning and the ductwork is gigantic. The diameter of the ducts is so wide that I could crawl inside. Although the air conditioner is very old, it provides a tremendous amount of cool air. It handles the excessive heat and keeps the home nice and cool.
boiler