My sibling has lived out of town for most of his adult life.
She married the ‘boy next door’, they purchased a home, plus had two daughters.
Naturally, in order to see my extended family, it meant that I would need to travel there or they would need to travel here. So we’ve done it both ways, and most of the trips are made during school holidays for the sake of his children, and for the sake of my vacation schedule, however during the Summer vacation, they always come north to my home. Their summers in the south are sweltering. And even though our northern summers seem boiling enough for our liking, they all think that our weather conditions is cool, then our home has central air conditioning, and ceiling fans. I’ve observed that once our home has four more bodies in it, the air conditioning plus ceiling fans are running much more steadily than normal. I got to thinking about the reason for this. Once I googled the question ‘how much heat does one human body emit?’, I ended up reading about Btu’s plus what that means for central air conditioning. One HVAC website stated that “on average, a sedentary guy will add 500 Btu’s per hour to a home, whether it’s boiling or cold outside”. In addition, if people are using PCs, lights, etc., there are extra Btu’s to consider. Once I understood the reason for the non-stop running of the cooling system plus fans, I started thinking about the added cost to my utility bill. I’m no Scrooge, although I am careful of how my money is being spent – or wasted. In the end, I decided to adjust my temperature control by one degree – warmer, that is. I figured that these southerners were used to the heat anyway!