Our Summer Place

We decided to try something different this Summer! We're staying home in Sète instead of escaping the heat like last year (trips to Oslo and Glasgow). While the high temperatures here generally stay in the 80s, the humidity can be brutal. Sleep is an impossible dream...

We took drastic measures, and they are paying off! The living room has a good window for our air conditioner exhaust, and it's big enough (just) for all our important furniture. We effectively turned it into a studio apartment 😎

We moved the bed in, and a big chair and the table out. We used the pool-noodle exhaust gizmo from last year, but got serious about blocking the roll-down shutter. We got some wood from Bricorama (like a Home Depot here), cut a hole for the exhaust, slid it into the shutter rails, and bolted it in place - now we can close the shutter right down to the board, and block that hot (and bright) sun 🌞. One improvement not shown here - that exhaust hose is not only hot from the air, it acts just like a light tube (which, believe me, is no fun in the morning! I made a screen for it - much better...

We've had it in place for about a week now, and I've been tracking our electricity cost against the A/C usage. Our base cost, when we're not home (the refrigerator is only thing running) is 70¢/day. Normal good weather living raises that to 1.15€/day. With fans and the A/C in place, set to 27°C (80°F), and usually running from 9 or 11 PM to 8 or 9 AM, it bounces around 2€/day. We did have one big outlier - 4.50€ for a day that was *very* humid; we ran the A/C almost the entire day! 

So far, so good - we're comfortable, and we can sleep!