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Andrea Rondeau column: Summertime means air conditioning wars

Mostly I just hate having to feel like I need a parka in July when someone cranks the AC up at work.
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Who else faces the air conditioning wars at work or at home when the weather gets hot?

For me, it’s at the office. I’m the kind of person who is always on the cool side. While others are happily sitting at their desks in a T-shirt (winter and summer), I’m huddled in a sweater and scarf. But when the weather gets hot, it gets even harder to find that happy medium, it seems. Some would be thrilled with about 15 C, while that causes me to have to blow on my fingers.

Traditionally, of course, office temperatures were set for men wearing business suits. Now that we’re not all in the same uniform, so to speak, it’s harder to se the thermostat for universal comfort.

Now, I’m not some kind of anti-air-conditioning extremist. I love the AC in my car. Love. But I do tend to flick it off and on regularly, even in the hottest of weather, since car air conditioning mostly only has one setting: frigid or nothing. So to achieve the right balance takes a little elbow grease.

At home, however, though I have a heat pump (this creates hot air in the winter and air conditioning in the summer), I do not turn it on during the summer, unless the circumstances are extreme. So far, I’ve gotten by without it.

Thing is, I like to feel what it’s like outside. I want to live in the summer weather, not cool the place to winter. I want to be able to wear shorts, sandals and breezy shirts. I think far too often we try to ignore the natural world around us and what it’s trying to tell us in a misguided bubble of unwarranted superiority.

But that’s a little philosophical. Mostly I just hate having to feel like I need a parka in July when someone cranks the AC up at work.

It reminds me of a story that came out recently considering the idea of whether or not British Columbians are becoming addicted to AC. Numbers from BC Hydro indicate yes. And my own anecdotal observation would tend to support their findings as well.

Instead of trying to fight the weather so hard, perhaps we should be looking at better ways to live with it? Just a thought.



Andrea Rondeau

About the Author: Andrea Rondeau

I returned to B.C. and found myself at the Cowichan Valley Citizen.
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