Logically, easing up on the load we put on our heat pump in the Summer was a no brainer.
But it still took us several years of living here to really get serious about reducing the air conditioning costs. I don’t know but I really rationalized what I was spending on air conditioning for the last few years because it’s just so dang hot. Coming from a region where many houses don’t even have air conditioning, I wasn’t prepared for this level of heat. But then again, there’s really no way to prepare to endure this sort o heat. You really just have to experience the Summer months in this region before you can really understand what it take to manage June through September. When we bought our house, I’m glad the realtor was so firm about getting the sort of updated HVAC technology that we have. The house we are in comes with some of the very latest when it comes to residential HVAC. I can’t even imagine what it would have cost me had we not had such efficient HVAC equipment. Not having to deal with high heating costs sort of also played into our home leaning into too much air conditioning. But this year, we adopted a logical approach to the cooling costs. We left the air conditioning off as much as possible until the temperatures hit the 90’s. That’s so we could acclimate to the heat better and that means we need less air conditioning. That adjustment has led us to keeping really good thermostat setting discipline thus far this Summer. And I’m aiming to slash hundreds if not a thousand dollars off our air conditioning bill over the entire Summer.