I’m just curious. A friend of mine said he started using his a few months ago, I talked to one guy that says he needs it every day, even in winter in order to get to sleep. When do you guys use yours, there must be a big difference in the average home temperatures (and people’s heat tolerence) because I haven’t even thought of using A/C yet.
I won’t vote, since I haven’t been here long enough to comment. I remember sandman saying a fan was enough to keep cool where he resides. I’m hoping I can get away with the same.
We usually start using our A/C a few times a week in May, but only on those blasted hot days. After that usually daily June-August everynight for an hour while watching TV and then we set the timer for one hour and go to bed. There are times it gets used more on really hot and uncomfortable days or nights.
As for the winter times, we usually turn in on a few times over the months just to lubricate it. Otherwise we occasionally use a dehumidifier during the day.
On days when it gets real hot and moist, I turn it on at maximum power for 10 to 15 minutes in my room. Then shut it down and go to bed.
When I’m cooking I’m using a fan, it’s very effective, you don’t need to close all doors.
I sort of need it at work. But not at the temperatures my colleagues prefer. While they turn it down to close to 20 degrees, the one in my corner will be closer to 26 degrees, and I turn it off as soon as everybody is gone.
I don’t have A/C at home. And I only started regularly turning on the fan for sleeping a few days ago. I haven’t used it while doing anything else (watching tv or just idling at home) yet this year. It feels much colder this year than my first Taiwan summer last year. Is that true? But maybe my temperature feeling is different from everybody else’s? I need to take a sweater/long-sleeved shirt whenever I visit friends’ places, restaurants, cinemas.
I vote for NEVER because we don’t have A/C @ home and I can’t STAND IT ANYMORE!!! I think that is why I like to come in to the office, malls, coffee shops and internet coffee shop…just anywhere there is A/C, how can you guys stand the heat!!! :shock:
[quote=“iris”]
It feels much colder this year than my first Taiwan summer last year. Is that true?[/quote]
Indubitably. I use AC on a timer at night. In past years I’ve used it on the odd hot night in April, regularly in May and then almost every night from June. This year I haven’t turned it on once. We are climatocologicalisticly still in March.
We haven’t got an air conditioner and I don’t want one, because those electricity bills would be really scary. Anyway - sweating is supposed to be good for you. Why pay to visit a sauna when you can do it for free at home? I just walk around in my Y-fronts and keep sloshing myself down with cold water.
This year does seem to have been cooler than usual so far. I’d like to see the figures.
If you go to the Central Weather Bureau site you can check the past records. (The site uses frames–link to climate then monthly data).
Last June was a killer if I remember correctly. The mean temperature in Taipei was 28.6 degrees compared with the average 27.0 degrees. May 2002’s mean temp was 26.6 and May 2003’s 25.1 so last month was definitely cooler than last year.
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I use the a/c as little as possible. I might turn it on for an hour or so on a very hot day. I prefer to use a fan. It is a pity most apartments in Taiwan are designed so you can’t catch any breezes though.
Woke up yesterday to find that my aircon was running for the first time since I moved in. Must’ve been the cat! She is Taiwanese, after all.
I used to fight a constant battle with my high school kids. They would come in and switch the aircon on, then sit there in sweaters. I would switch it off and (horror) open the window if it was too warm. It’s fair enough having the thing on when there are 20-30 warm bodies and the sun shining in through the window, but if everyone is wrapped up against the November cold…
[quote=“salmon”][quote=“iris”]
It feels much colder this year than my first Taiwan summer last year. Is that true?[/quote]
Indubitably. I use AC on a timer at night. In past years I’ve used it on the odd hot night in April, regularly in May and then almost every night from June. This year I haven’t turned it on once. We are climatocologicalisticly still in March.[/quote]
Yes, so please don’t jinx it. In all my long hot summers in Taiwan, I’ve never experienced one like this. And I don’t mind one little bit.
Living up here I haven’t even installed my mega aircon yet anyway, not last summer either because it’s just nice here and I don’t need the AC.
I hate AC anyway.
Perhaps I should sell it to the highest bidder. It’s a mammoth, very quiet, vertical hanging, two year old Gibson that my ex bf must have bought ‘hot’, off a truck. Any bidders? It cooled an entire 20 pinger when I lived on Shida.
I run the air-con during the summer only but never at night, can’t stand the sound and breeze when I want to sleep.
Switch it on in the morning when I wake up and use the timer to switch it off after an hour or two, i.e. when I left the house already.
And on again in the evening until I go to bed. If it get’s to hot I might run it during the whole day as I did in Malaysia - keeps the apartment cool and insects out, too. Well, now that I have to pay for utilities myself I might reconsider that …
All the time at night during summer. We sleep much better with it on. We also like to have the AC up and sleep under blanmkets. More comfy. You might call it a waste of money, but I’ve decided that good sleep is very inportant. Costs about 1000NT a month mroe than a winter power bill. We also have a (don’t know how to say it in English) ‘split, indoor outdoor AC with a pipe to the machine outside’. It’s much quieter (quieter than a fan in fact) and doesn’t take up any window space.
All the time. I currently only have four at home, and am extremely jealous of a mate of mine who has one in the kitchen. I’ve already had an electrician round to rewire part of the house and I am aghast to hear I am already at Tai Dian’s capacity limit for domestic electricity. But I’m going to squeeze one in the kitchen if it kills me. (He also told me there’s “no earth in Taiwan” so it just might)
I used it last year but then when one roommate started running hers and my “share” of the electric bill doubled at the same time, I turned mine off hoping that my bills would come down. Unsurprisingly, they never did…thank God I moved into my own place where my bills are more than half as small as they were when the utilities were supposedly being divided among three people. I don’t have air conditioning because if the fans don’t work, then I’m wearing too much. Which happens to be another perk of living alone. I think spending summers with little to no air conditioning when I was growing up has made me able to survive without it now. I get after my colleagues about turning the aircon in my class below 24 degrees. I have it on for the kids. I’d rather have the windows open and the lights off to save electricity. Plus I prefer natural light to those horrendous fluorescent ones in every building. No aircon for me…the only reason why I’d get it is to get someone to finally sublease my place this summer.
I don’t know how you can live without it. I read Orwell’s Burmese Days a couple of months ago. I don’t know how those guys stuck it in Burma with ice delivered twice a week and no A/C. I guess I know what’s in my Room 101. Or not in it, rather !
You said it! Got them in all the rooms in my house except toilet and bathrooms - Hexuan, do yourself a favor and put one in the kitchen, I’ve not regretted it! Taiwan is a lot hotter than my frosty little country and I need that cool cool air…
