Mini splits are great honestly. We have a whole house central air (heat pump for our AC and heating), but we’re seriously considering adding a mini split to 2 of the 4 bedrooms. Or possibly even all of them- we have to ice out the downstairs to make the bedrooms tolerable, and that’s with a light colored new energy star roof. Zone cooling honestly makes so much more sense 
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A week or two ago, with a window unit in our kitchen, it was about 80 in our first floor at 8 pm, and it was 93 upstairs 
I leave all the windows I can open with fans all night, and shut all the windows and curtains when we get up, but we have an uninsulated garage below our toy room and office, and it’s just so terrible.
My brain keeps trying to tell me that the weather is a fluke, and “this isn’t normal for Colorado”, but it is absolutely normal now. I have to accept it and save up the money for AC so I can sleep during the summer.
Good to know mini-splits are great! I don’t know anyone who has one, so I keep reading about types and install costs and bigger heat pump systems and getting very lost in the weeds.
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Do none of you have in-window a/c units? They are a lot cheaper than installing mini splits or whole house a/c.
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Is central really necessary, though? We don’t have it here in the deep South, with months of temps over 90 and humidity at least in the 80s. But we do have two through the wall or window heat pumps, not just one.
Now, our house being underground really means that we can get away with a lot less climate control than some houses, butIn both of our prior residences, one of them a mobile home, we just went with more than one window unit. It was never cold, but that was comfortable enough. . It seems like that would be a lot easier than getting a central system installed.
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We have a mini split and like it! The last owner put it in, so I don’t know details, but we’ve been happy with it. It covers our sunroom + bedroom (we have a weird layout).
We looked into mini splits for the rest of the house, but the quote we got would have been more than putting in central air.
We bought a fancier window unit to cover our main living area, and it is fine for our purposes (weird layout strikes again!) and then a window unit for the guest room/my office. It definitely does not look good but I think we’ll be able to make it. I think we just won’t have people over for dinner parties until the fall 
(because we can’t guarantee that it’s cool enough to host people comfortably in the whole house)
The attitude I’m trying to have is that I’m enjoying the coolest summer of the rest of my life 
It really has changed so much since I grew up here.
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We beefed up our window units this year and I’m really glad we did. Unfortunately about half of the downstairs, including the kitchen, doesn’t have good window spots where we can put them. But it keeps things liveable.
I really want to look into mini splits. It would be nice to have the heat pump aspect too.
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Long term costs differ hugely though, mini splits are waaaaay more efficient than a window unit. Plus a lot of HOAs don’t allow window units. And the added bonus that you don’t have to worry about cats or kids falling out of windows with a mini split.
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There are also window heat pumps which are as efficient as mini splits. Cost more than window ac, of course. Less than minisplit though.
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Yeah, we’d like the efficiency of a heat pump, and we don’t want to put window units in our kids’ bedrooms if we can avoid it. Our 3 year old is one of those kids who touches EVERYTHING, even while she’s watching you frantically tell her “no” as you try to grab her, so I absolutely don’t trust her to not fall out of a window.
For now we’re living with window units, but if it just keeps getting hotter I don’t know if they’ll cut it in the future.
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This is exactly what we are dealing with in our house (in Colorado). Thankfully we have a ranch with a full basement underneath and the basement never seems to get above 70. We do open windows at night and try to pull in as much cool air as possible then try to keep it cool during the day. Once the main floor hits 80 we close up and turn on the AC for the day.
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Oh, a basement would be lovely in this heat. I think we’re one of the few houses in our neighborhood where the builders went up instead of down. Great for natural lighting, not so much for insulation.
On the other hand, we just had a beautiful wood stove installed 
We ordered it last winter, it will be great in like 3 months, haha.
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Oooh that’s so fancy! I am jealous. I wish we had a wood stove or fireplace, specifically in the basement. In the winter it never gets above 60-65 down there. Upstairs we have huge south facing windows, so that helps keep upstairs warm, and then the furnace doesn’t ever kick on so the basement is freezing
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It looks so good! We have one and love it, I am vicariously excited for how cozy you will be this winter.
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I’m very excited 
Our heating is sufficient, but it’s going to be so fun!
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Most of the windows in our house don’t work well with in-window units. They open outward. Some don’t, they could have an in-window unit. Maybe we will end up getting some? I don’t know. I bought a couple of portable ACs when we decided not to spend $17K. But it hasn’t worked out great because they draw too much electricity and blow fuses. Daughter’s room gets super hot but we cannot seem to keep a unit going in her room. I’m not sure of the fix. My husband is trying to get an electrician to come. Meanwhile, we are able to keep our bedroom upstairs and the family room downstairs sort of cool with the portable units. This isn’t great for sleeping. Daughter has been sleeping in the guest room which isn’t cool but it’s not as hot as her bedroom, and Son has been sleeping on couch cushions on the floor of our bedroom. If a window unit would work better, I’d do that. But I don’t know enough about electricity to know if that would be better or worse for the fuse problem.
I called a different company, one recommended by @Meowmalade, for another AC estimate. They can come on August 16. That doesn’t help us much with the current heatwave but maybe we’ll have it figured out by next summer. I don’t really know anything about minisplits. I guess I need to research?
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I hope they’re able to help you! They can also advise on mini splits.
It’s not going to solve your problems in this kind of heat, but a few window fans at night could really help (and fans will cool you down in general). I usually run one blowing air in at the living room and then one blowing air out at the upstairs bedroom. It’s the hottest part of the house, so you want to push that air out and replace it with the air from the main floor. Or I have two fans blowing air in and then a window open elsewhere and the air will get pushed out from the pressure difference.
One other thing I do is during the day is I sometimes put a fan (I have a Vornado that I really like) at the foot of the stairs and have it push the cooler air upstairs. Having some air flow makes it feel cooler too.
This is such a horrible week to be without AC! Did I also mention my frozen water trick? Freeze bottles of water and wrap them in towels to hug at night. It makes all the difference in the world! Stay cool, friend!!
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Yes, supposedly this works! Close all the other windows. The two fans just need to be at opposite ends of the house, don’t need to be in a direct line, one blowing in and one blowing out. (If one window is shaded/North side of house) it probably works better. The pressure difference moves the hot air inside the house out.
(Still, heat waves suck. We had one last week. It sucked.)
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Yeah, we have a lot of fans and the last time we had central air was… 2010? So we have all the fan tricks and the open windows at night for cool air and close them up in the morning/ draw the blinds (or currently, bedsheets, at least in one room) tricks. But this heat is too much. It doesn’t get cool enough at night to make much of a difference, so we’re running the portable ACs and holing up in a couple of rooms instead.
And there’s the pool, and the basement, and currently we’re at my cousin’s house because they have air!
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I hear ya, here it’s not getting cooler outside than inside until after midnight, when it breaks even. We’ve been sleeping in the basement (yay, we finally have a basement that we can sleep in!). I started looking at AC last fall and we didn’t end up getting it until earlier this year! It’s good that you’re starting the process now, even if you won’t get to enjoy it until next summer. I hope Four Seasons pulls through for you! Funny story: the guy from a fancy expensive HVAC company was giving me all the quotes and I was making faces at the price and he knew he wasn’t going to make a sale. And then he volunteered that Four Seasons is much cheaper and I looked them up and the reviews were great. I bet his bosses wouldn’t be happy to know that he referred a different company!
Has Husband moved into his nice cool lair?
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Oooh, pool though! I wish I had had a pool last week!
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