My husband and I started reading this forum back in September. The articles on air conditioning were all well and good until we got back around to summer, at which point we have run into some practical considerations (and disagreements) on which I am hoping to receive some input from some Mustachians who have already struggled with these issues.
1. The other day, it was 78 in our house and the butter I pulled out of the fridge was a little soft on the corners. Fridge temp was 44, so I kicked on the a/c for the first time this summer to help out the fridge a little. Is our poor old fridge simply getting weak, or does anyone else have issues with the fridge not staying cool enough when they keep their house warmer?
2. We live out of town, so we do our grocery shopping once a week when we are in town for church. We buy too much fruit and too many vegetables to keep it all in the fridge, so both fridge drawers are veggie drawers and the fruit sits in bowls on the counter. With the higher heat/humidity, though, the softer fruits seem to be spoiling/ripening a little faster and more likely to end up with fuzzy white spots. We also sometimes have store-bought bread (hot dog and hamburger buns - I bake our normal bread) that we don't put in the fridge, and I keep expecting it to be growing something when I get it out. Any suggestions on how to keep food from having issues?
3. The toddler and I stay home during the day, so we play/work outside and get used to the warmer temperatures and a house that heats up to 78, but my husband works in an air-conditioned office building, so when he gets home, he thinks it is hot, because he doesn't really have an opportunity to adjust to the summer heat. It doesn't help that the humidity starts to build up in the house by then, so even with fans it is sometimes starting to feel hot to me, too. How have you used the a/c less when spending all day outside is not an option?
4. The first week of June, it was still getting down to 60 overnight, so if I opened the windows and turned on the house fan in the morning, I could get the house down to 68 before the outside temp started going up, and the house would only get up to about 76 by evening, even though outside it was low 90s. Now it is only getting down to 70, and since it is still 80 when we go to bed, we don't open the windows in the evening, so I can't cool it off as much. Also, since we have now run the a/c some, my husband thinks we should not be letting in the humidity from outside that the a/c will have to suck back out. In addition, his dad (an electrician) says he has found that in his area, his a/c works less hard if he sets it at a temperature and then just leaves it, since the real killer for the a/c is if he lets any humidity get back into the air. Because our house gets humid by evening even without opening the windows (I used the a/c to drop the temp from 78 to 74 yesterday morning, then turned it off the rest of the day, and it was 79, muggy, and less comfortable than the 89 outside by evening), he thinks we need to set the a/c at some temperature and just leave it on so the humidity doesn't build up. I think the a/c won't draw out enough humidity set at 78 all day because it won't run enough in one session to do much good - and then I have to deal with 78 all day, instead of only in the afternoon after I have (preferably with the outside air) cooled it off in the morning and then let it slowly heat back up. Then if I kick the a/c on when he is on his way home from work, it can draw out the humidity then and keep things in the house from getting too moist. I figure that will use less electricity than leaving it on all the time at a high temperature, even with the humidity making it run longer the once or twice we run it. Does anyone have any real data on this to give us advice?
Btw, we live in Kansas, so we will probably be having 100+ days before the summer is over - can't remember what it gets down to at night by that point.
Thanks!