Mark, 76, an adjunct professor from Austin, Texas, was looking with unease towards a further week with temperatures between 102F (39C) and 105F (41C), after weeks of relentless, record-setting heat in the state.
“Living here feels like being a prisoner in your own home. It’s too hot to be outside,” he said.
“These over-100F days are a recent thing and are becoming common. This penetrating sun reminds me of my time in Vietnam; it feels like you’re under a magnifying glass. I can’t imagine what the population would be like here without air conditioning. That’s what keeps this place going, but it isn’t cheap.”
Mark was one of scores of Guardian readers who got in touch via a callout to share how malfunctioning AC units in their homes have affected their ability to cope with unrelenting heatwaves this summer, and how costly it has become to stay cool in many parts of the US. Most respondents only wanted their first name used.
“Our AC failed a couple of weeks ago when it was very hot. It leaked all over our bamboo flooring, which will have to be replaced,” Mark said. “It wasn’t that old, just 13 years, I didn’t expect it to fail this quickly. The cost for a new AC system was about $15,000. That’s a lot of money, a big blow for me as it ate up a huge chunk of my retirement savings, but it’s necessary for survival here to have an AC, so I didn’t have much choice. I can’t afford to do this a second time, but it may break again – they said possibly in 10-15 years.”
On top of the high installation costs of a new AC system, paying for increasingly “outrageous” electricity bills in the hotter months is becoming financially unsustainable.
“Even an energy-efficient system runs constantly all day to keep up with this heat,” Mark said.
“I sometimes spend $400 a month on electricity. I’m doing as much as I can to insulate my home better against the heat, but on my limited income it’s tricky, so I’m doing some of that work myself.
“I’m very concerned about the future. It’s extremely hot down here, and it’s gonna get hotter and hotter. This won’t be a fluke year, and there are people who don’t have air conditioning.”
Many people in the US who responded said they were currently unable to leave their homes after mid-morning due to the heat, with residents of states such as Texas, Arizona, California, New Mexico and Florida saying temperatures in their areas were hotter now than they were a few years ago.
Without air conditioning, many of them said, living in their states would be either unbearable or outright impossible now, highlighting that what was once primarily considered a comfort-enhancing feature in many US homes is becoming an essential requirement.
Nearly 90% of US households used air conditioning in 2020, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).
In Texas, a record-breaking heatwave caused energy demand to soar to record levels and put the power grid under such strain that the solar energy supply is believed to have helped prevent power outages.
Some respondents living in areas of the country with extreme heat said they could only afford using air conditioning because they had installed solar panels, among them a 70-year-old retiree from Sierra Madre, California, who said he considered himself “fortunate” to be able to afford his electricity bills in the current heat.
Julia, a 32-year-old project manager from Gaithersburg, Maryland, says her household decided to invest in a new eco-friendly heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) unit earlier this month, which came with a $9,000 price tag.
Julia, who lives with her parents, was among a number of respondents who said their air conditioning system did not survive the recent period of sweltering temperatures.
“There are two levels in our house and luckily it was just the downstairs AC that broke a couple of weeks ago during the big heatwave,” she said. “It was unbearable at times to go downstairs. It took a week and a half to get people to come take a look, get some quotes, and finally an entire Saturday to get it all replaced.
“It should hopefully last 10 years,” she said. “I am lucky that my dad has the means to pay for this. If I was not living at home, I would not be able to afford this. Although Maryland is not an area that’s considered particularly hot in the US, it feels like, over the years, that summers have gotten hotter, and when I was looking at houses, the first thing the real estate agent was looking at was how old the HVAC was.”
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Seth Follansbee, a residential real estate agent and small business owner in his 40s from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said keeping cool is costing more every year.
“The cost of maintaining and repairing AC has measurably increased over the years, without a doubt, from the minimum service charges to just come on site, the hourly labor rates, to the parts, materials and AC units themselves. Electricity bills this time of year are very high, around $400 a month for our single-family home, which is rather shocking,” Follansbee said.
“But you’ve also got to be proactive and pay for AC maintenance regularly, which we’re doing at last once a year now. If you don’t, it’s going to break, which is very expensive. The cheapest AC bill I’ve paid this year was $200, the most expensive $1,600.”
Follansbee, who also owns and manages two rental units, believes that the blistering temperatures of the past few weeks may have affected many AC systems.
“This kind of heat really attacks these units, puts a lot of pressure on them and makes them break down more frequently,” he said.
Going without an AC, Follansbee said, is not an option.
“Not having a working AC can mean not being able to stay in the house overnight. AC is a necessity in south-east Florida, without, it’s torturous”.
For Daive, 53, from Bullhead City, Arizona, living in a house without air conditioning in one of the hottest areas of the country has been an inescapable struggle for over a year.
Temperatures in the community of about 40,000 people are forecast to hit 118F (48C) on Friday.
“My AC doesn’t work, and I can’t afford to fix it,” said Daive, who used to have a car wash but is currently unemployed after giving up work to care for his elderly parents during the pandemic.
“It looks like it would cost $3,000 to $4,000 for a new compressor, or $6,000 or $7,000 for a whole replacement unit. In the daytime, temperatures inside my house can reach between 125 and 130F,” he said.
“I have to wait till 10am when the library opens to be able to cool off, where I stay all day, until they close at 6 or 7pm. That’s all I can do right now.”
