With summer time on the way, my temperature has been rising just thinking about the heat waves. I know it is wasteful, and where I live we only get possibly a week or at most too of truly extreme heat all summer, but still, I think it may be time to get an air conditioning system. After years and years, sweating it out, or going to the movie theaters to stay at all cool, I feel like I truly deserve an air conditioning system, and the fact that I’m getting older also really contributes. The problem is that they can be so pricey.

After our window mounted air conditioning system conked out in the middle of the worst heatwave, we got an estimate on installing a new central air system. The rates that they show you online are already quite high, but what they don’t tell you is the rest of the story. Not only do they have to install the air conditioning system, charging you for parts and labor, but they might have to wholly overhaul your ventilation system. If, like me, you scarcely or never use your heater, chances are that it’s not in that great a shape. Particularly if you have a house built in one of those new developments that spring up over night with shoddy construction, you probably don’t even have properly sealed ducts. Before you get a new air conditioning system, or heating and cooling system, installed, you will probably have to pay for all of those new ducts to be professionally cleaned and sealed. And if the problem is bad enough, and there’s enough dirt in the system, you might have to have them replaced and rehung altogether before you can get your air conditioning system.

I think that the best solution for me might just be to get one of the newer window-mounted air conditioning systems. They have become less costly and cheaper, and they use less energy than ever before, as I have heard. It seems like a more economic solution all around, because I can just spend my time in that room when I want to be cool, without having to pay to run the air conditioning system to cool the whole house, which is a gigantic expense. I think that central air will have to wait at least another year at this point. I would rather spend my money on trips to the beach.