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Originally Posted by the dufferz  It's a weird one to compare. In Washington it a luxury, in the south it's manditory.
One factor that most people don't think about is the effect of radiant heat. Here is how to look at this. All day long the sun is drenching the roof, walls, windows, everything with pure radiant heat. After the sun goes down, the house envelope is still saturated with heat, like a rock that was next to a fire is still warm to hot for hours. Once the radiant heat penitrates the interior envelope, then all your interior walls and ceiling becomes a heat source to the inside of the house. this can takes hours to overcome with an A/C unit.
While the temperature is less than you have in the winter, comparing indoor to outdoor comparison, If you go into your attic on a day when it is 95 degrees, the attic very well can exceed 160 degrees. That's a 90 degree difference between that and a 70 degree interior temp, so it like having a winter time low of -20.
Sorry for the less than encouraging news. |
Yeah, I concur with what you're saying.
A good example is when I moved to desert Nevada from western Washington, I was amazed that I didn't need to use the furnace on these winter nights where it gets into the low 20s --even 18 one night early in December.
Why? Because since it's sunny out during the day with temperature getting up into the 60s, it heats the inside of the house enough to keep in the 70s practically all night long. That, in addition to the insulation they use down here while keeping in mind the 115 degree summer days, helps to keep all that warmth in the house.
I just shake my head when I think it's the middle of winter and I look at the thermostat in the middle of the day and it's reading 85 degrees!
--'rocco