
Realtor’s always used to brag about how south facing windows were a luxury in homes because you would get lots of sunlight. Now they are a drawback.
Why do I say this? My experience in my new apartment. It has south facing windows, and the cooling bills are higher than I have ever paid for electricity even when I had a home.
I’m not complaining. I am just sharing what my experience has been. The last 30 days have had many 90+ days and so it is the worst I think of summer.
Now of course I have mitigated it somewhat by having curtains that block out the sun. However they absorb the heat to some extent so I am not fully isolated. With the apartment since the AC/heater is directly connected to the outside it means that if you have it off the heat from outside comes in. I have two rooms that have the ac/heater. The bedroom and living room. Since I work in the living room, I turn the vent off in the bedroom. However when it gets warmer than 81 then it can affect other things in the apartment like the internet.
Internet routers don’t like to be hot and when they are hot, they slow down. Since I run the washer/drier almost everyday it can also increase the heat. So it becomes necessary to turn on the bedroom AC to keep that part of the apartment cool. When I moved into this apartment in spring I only had to pay for the electricity to fund the fan over the heat that was provided by the building for free. It turns out that this kind of temperature is much more expensive than what I have paid in the past. For example when I had a house in the coldest part of winter in Chicago when it got below -20 I would be about $600 a month. My bill this month is $325 for two rooms, so it is more expensive. Of course those prices were also 15 years ago so perhaps the home prices have increased as well and it unfair to compare prices so widely separated in time.
I like to watch videos of people who live in other places and they share their costs of living with the audience. To live in hot countries in south Asia like Vietnam, Philippines and others they talk about how their electrical cost can be $400 to cool a one bedroom apartment. That seems too expensive for the average citizen of the country and AC is really a luxury for most people.
Things change don’t they?