I'm not a big fan of air
conditioning because I don't like that closed up feeling. But when
the temperature hits 85 and it's humid, I love it. It's especially
great at night when you're trying to fall asleep. But the other
night, just as a test, my husband and I decided to try something
different. What we found out is that you don't need to keep the air
conditioner running all night to sleep like a baby—at least we
don't.
We have a 6500 BTU, 390 watt window unit in our bedroom. We also have an oscillating fan that's 48 watts when it's running on high speed and 40 watts when it's running on medium speed. The air conditioner costs 44 cents to operate for 24 hours, and the fan costs 16 cents a day when it's running on the highest speed.
It was a very hot and humid a couple of nights ago and our room was still very uncomfortable at 10 o'clock at night. So, we put our air conditioner on for an hour before we went to bed. While we were downstairs reading and watching TV, our Zenith was busy cooling our room off. By the time we went up there, it was a very comfortable 72 degrees. Once we were ready to get into bed we turned the AC off, opened the windows and put on our fan.
Within about 5 minutes my husband was snoring. I took a little longer, not because of the heat (the room was still cool), but probably because of the tea I drank a couple of hours earlier. The room was still very comfortable when I fell asleep about 20 minutes later.
I kept the fan running a total of about 8 hours, which cost a little over 5 cents. If we ran the AC for another eight hours it would have cost closer to 15 cents. So we save about 10 cents each day. For three months that's a savings of about $10.00. Not such a big deal, but it's nice to hear the birds singing when I wake up!
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