Air Conditioning--Don't ever buy a home without it

When we bought our 1919 house, its only climate control was the hot water heating system that had been in the house since the beginning (boiler replaced in the 1970's). Our first summer in the house was the hottest of my life. Every day out here in the high desert (despite being next to higher mountains), the sun would bake the brick and stucco all day long, and it would take until about 1 am for the house to cool off. Absorb heat all day, release heat all night. Mornings were the only "pleasant" time in the house.

I vowed that was the end, and bought a whopper window AC unit. One of my nicer neighbors put in the 220 wiring for it, and our kitchen became a deep freeze each summer for the next 3 years. We stationed fans at each of its doors to blow air into other rooms. What can I say, it made life tolerable. In the spring of 2004, we had finished two of the necessary tasks to add central air. First we had to figure out where to put all the ductwork. The only answer was the attic. Then, after looking around the attic, in the midst of the mineral wool insulation covered in soot, we could see that there was ancient wiring running all over the place to all the ceiling lights and other things. I hired an unemployed electrician to redo all of it--the best value I ever got in electric work. He put in ceiling fans in the bedrooms, added electrical outlets on interior walls, and it made a "quality of life" difference.

After looking at the bids, and different options, we chose a Trane system, with a nice air handler, and chose against the high velocity systems. No need for it. We had plenty of room for ductwork. We did sacrifice one corner of a closet to run the AC down into two basement bedrooms. After a week of work, the system was on--and blessing us with wonderfully cool air. Almost too cool. It looks like a metal octopus with all these plastic tentacles streaming off in multiple directions in our attic.