Since moving into our current house five years ago, my wife Jenny and I agreed to never again live in a home without central air conditioning.
Connecticut has a peculiar aversion to central air conditioning. Most of our public schools still don’t even have central air because our local governments are run by seventy-year-olds who microwave their ice cream to take the chill out.
All of New England prides itself on having a temperate climate and stubbornly clings to the myth that fall starts on Labor Day even though September is predominantly a summer month.
It isn’t unusual for the first two weeks of school to consist mostly of unplanned half-day dismissals due to excessive classroom temperatures.
Before buying our house (with central air) my wife and I rented a house that only had one window air conditioner in a central part of the house, which we relied on to ineffectively cool two bedrooms, a bathroom, living room, dining room and kitchen.
Window units only provide adequate air conditioning when you have an entire contingent.
Window units are the chorus singers of the air conditioning world: remarkable when grouped together but as off-putting when individually encountered as a lonely old lady singing to her cats.
I grew up with window units and, while I enjoyed their effect in common spaces, I actually preferred sleeping without them. My bedroom used a reversible window fan to blow hot air out during the day and cool air in at night.
This arrangement worked fine for a single body splayed directly in the fan’s path.
Living with my fiance, however, while I stubbornly refused to buy air conditioners for windows we didn’t own, required me to create a complicated network of fans to redirect the cool air to wherever we were congregating on balmy summer days.
This is how I got my remote-controlled oscillating tower fan.
Oscillating fans overpromise on what they’re able to deliver. Though they hint at room-wide coverage, oscillating fans fall far short providing only sporadic comfort with their weird peek-a-boo delivery method.
Table-top oscillating fans are worthless for anything besides speaking into to modulate your voice like Tommy Boy impersonating Darth Vader.
My oscillating tower fan performed admirably enough for rental-property living but the best fans are installed fixtures like ceiling fans or attic fans.
Ceiling fans are the true champions of single-room circulation. Trickle-down windonomics eventually do pay off.
We love ceiling fans so much in my house that we added two more to the three that were already present when we moved in. They’re great on their own but even better when paired with central air conditioning to help keep the cool air moving.
I marvel at ceiling fans not only for their cooling efficiency but also for how widely they’ve been adopted against overwhelming odds.
Though I’d never, ever time travel (for obvious reasons discussed here), if I did travel back in time one of the top things I’d like to witness is the reception that ceiling fans got when the idea was first pitched.
“You want me to get my whole family to eat together underneath these spinning blades? And then install identical models above our beds? And we just lay there not thinking about whether these wobbly-ass fixtures are going to crush us while we sleep? That’s a hard pass.”
Side note: This column’s assumption that people in 1882 (when Philip Diehl invented the first electric ceiling fan by repurposing his motor famously used in Singer sewing machines) used terms like “wobbly-ass fixtures” may not be historically accurate.
Here’s another reason not to trust ceiling fans: even the ones that are constantly moving still collect a TON of dust. So much dust that it defies logic.
Google says that ceiling fans collect dust because the moving blades create static electricity but I suspect it’s because ceiling fans are powered by witchcraft.
I’m not buying that helicopters can fly through the sky with one spinning propeller but the one whirling above my bed stays put because it’s held in by drywall and an electrical wire.
The only fan that can even come close to matching the reach and performance of central air conditioning is an attic fan.
Attic fans are the fan-family alphas able to suck the air out of every room in the house. This is impressive but really only effective for cooling a house at night when the outside air is cool enough to replace the hot air being blown out.
For true cooling power during daytime hours you need central air conditioning. Having tried all of the alternatives, I can confidently report that central air conditioning provides the most consistent and reliable cooling experience.
This isn’t a controversial opinion anywhere outside of New England.
Everyone south of here knows that central air is essential. Considering that the past two Julys have been the two hottest in Connecticut’s history, it’s time for our state to catch up.
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