Heat Wave

All I can say is that I purchased a portable air conditioner shortly before summer began this year, and today it has paid for itself a thousand times over.

Boulder Creek is typically at least 10 degrees hotter than Santa Cruz in the Summer. I can only attribute this to the the fact that the heat sits on the land the way pudding sits in a bowl - it has nowhere to go. Also, Santa Cruz gets a daily afternoon ocean breeze that blows their pudding away... into Boulder Creek I suspect. Meanwhile, Boulder Creek's afternoons just get even hotter.

Our little house is blessed with a large opening in the canopy of trees. This is normally a very good thing, since the mold will eat you and all your belongings if you don't get at least 4 hours of sun a day in the woods. However, in the summertime this opening allows the sun to beat solidly down upon our roof from about 9:30am - 11:30am and again from about 1pm - 5pm. The first 3-4 of these hours is typically all it takes to bring the temperature of our living room to 10+ degrees hotter than outside, thanks to our lack of decent insulation. And because of our lack of nice ocean breeze, opening the windows doesn't really help. Opening the windows at night only invites 17 billion insects into the house, since we have no window screens (thanks to the type of windows we have). We tried last year to put up with the bugs... it wasn't worth it... oh god it wasn't worth it.

Which brings me to the air conditioner. Remembering our discomfort from last year, and discovering that getting customized window screens is not a cheap and affordable option, I was pleased to discover that for a comparatively cheap price we could own a nice air conditioner that could be rolled from room to room, as needed. After researching some models, I found one on Craigslist for almost half price - even better! The reality of the portable air conditioner is that it generates more heat than cool air, so unless you can get that heat out of the house effectively, it is a piece of crap. This is why so many people complain that the units don't work. They *do* work, just not as well as their windowed counterparts. Anyways, after a few false starts (including accidentally leaving the exhaust hose unattached while relatives were visiting... ugh), I got it to the point that it helped pretty significantly to keep the heat at bay.

Which brings me to today. The worst heat California has had in ... years? Dozens of people have dropped dead. Power has gone out in many areas from over-consumption (nearby San Jose is currently suffering from this- people are sleeping in their back yards), but thankfully ours has held steady. Staci and I pulled the air conditioner into the bedroom (the most insulated room in the house), closed up the doors, and powered it up. By midafternoon, the temperature in the living room hit 112 degrees!! Poking my head out to grab some lunch was like stepping into a kiln. Unbelievable!! But here in the bedroom, the temperature is a "cool" 85 degrees. Downright balmy, thanks to my new best friend the portable air conditioner.

We loves it, precioussss.