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40 sats \ 18 replies \ @Undisciplined 9 May \ on: What's something your significant other believes that you find ridiculous? AskSN
Also, depending on the temperature outside and which windows you open, your wife's right about the AC thing.
Stop the madness. If it is cooler outside and there is enough air flow coming into the house why would I have the AC on? I would just cool the house with outside air. If I want to cool it faster I suppose having the windows open while the AC is on could make that happen slightly faster. That's debatable. But it is certainly not blowing the hot air out. It's called air "conditioning" for a reason.
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Since this is now an a/c debate thing...suppose the inside temp is 80, my wife feels that setting the thermostat low, at say 70, cools things faster than setting it at say 75. I explain that a thermostat is nothing but an on/off switch, like a light switch on the wall, and is either on (and the ac runs) or it is off (and the ac does not). Setting it at 70, or 60, or 32 makes no difference in how fast the house cools...the ac will be switched on (and run) until meeting the set temp. She still says setting it lower means cooling faster. I believe she feels a lower set temp means blowing colder air.
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This is definitely something my wife does too. It bothers me more in the car, because then I have to adjust it back while driving and she gets annoyed because she takes that as a criticism of how she does the AC (which it is, I suppose).
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Some thermostats have an option for low and high settings which adjusts the amount of air blown. It never blows colder air.
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My advice. Some battles aren't worth it. Just let her set the temp lower and then when the temp gets to the level you desire set it at that.
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Words of wisdom right there. I will say this...my wife has excellent intuition. That sounds kind of sexist maybe, the whole "women's intuition" thing, but I believe it. Once we had car trouble, and she comes right out without looking at anything and is like, "I think it's the alternator." Understand, the car was doing something totally unrelated, like a clutch issue or something. I don't recall the exact symptom or problem, but her proposed problem had seemingly nothing at all to do with what the vehicle was showing. I wish I could recall what exactly it was, but when I got into fixing things, somehow she had been right. In the oddest way, something crazy like the clutch line broke loose and was wrapped around the alternator. That's not what happened, but I think you see my point. Somehow, without knowing, she still knew. I've learned to try to listen better even when it doesn't make sense to me.
I'm thinking about a video I saw explaining why you don't save much by turning off the AC while you're out during the day. And, the explanation was that it's so expensive to cool all that air down, you may as well have just kept it cool the whole time.
You might be in a situation where it's warmer outside than you want to make it inside, but it's cooler in part of the outside than the adjacent part of the inside: like maybe the north side of the upstairs. So, if you open those windows while the AC starts, the warm air will flow out of your house more efficiently than the AC unaided.
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i think this only holds true if it was a small space and the AC vent is pointed directly towards the window. I still think it is unlikely as vents in a forced air system merely allow air that is being blown through the ducts by the blower to escape into the room and circulate with the existing air. If there is a breeze from outside the outside air would be entering the room at a rate quicker than the inside air is exiting. If there is no breeze, it is a small space and the vent is pointing directly towards a window I suppose it could aid in some warm air being pushed out.
If the room had an individual air conditioning unit and not central air it seems more plausible.
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Convection is orders of magnitude more efficient than other forms of heat transfer, though, so even if you can only generate a little exchange, that'll offset a decent amount of AC.
Maybe we're quibbling about what "blowing out" the heat means, but I maintain that this can be a worthwhile thing to do.
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opening the 2nd floor windows allows cool air to settle in the bottom floors, displacing & pushing less dense air around in the process.
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That's less blowing hot air entirely out of the house, than it is giving it somewhere else in the house to go.
AI disagrees with you but there is a heated debate on physics stack exchange about it that doesn't seem to reach consensus other than to never open your windows when it is warmer outside than inside which is likely the case most of the time in the summer when you would be running your AC.
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Full disclosure, I really struggled in my thermodynamics class and still think magic is the simplest explanation for refrigeration.