When I really consider what it would be like to not have residential HVAC, it sort of makes me wonder.
I’m lucky to live in a region where the winter doesn’t require constant heating to survive. So I think that if I had to do without the HVAC unit in the winter, I could probably make it. However, managing a summer without HVAC cooling is an entirely different equation. The heat and humidity of this area makes doing without modern HVAC technology pretty tough to manage. Of course, people like my grandparents never had residential HVAC and they got through it. Still, I have heard about what they had to go through to manage that heat. Let’s just say it involves lots of pre-dawn work and no movement during the heat of the day. For me, I rely on the best appliance in our house to take care of all the heating and cooling for me. And that would be the heat pump. It’s ultimately designed to move heat energy from one place to another. So HVAC cooling is the main thing. A heat pump moves out heat energy and exhausts it outside. That makes room for cooler air to take the place of the heat. However, the heat pump is so awesome that as it’s exhausting that heat outside, it’s also exhausting lots of moisture indoors as well. And this balances the humidity levels so we don’t have to worry about getting inundated by mold and mildew. Of course, when there is a cold snap, all the heat pump does is reverse the refrigerant flow and bring heat energy inside the house. It’s just an amazing pairing of engineering and physics.