COLUMN: Don’t Mind the Mess – Homemade air conditioning

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/07/2024 (331 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I grew up in a turn-of-the-century farmhouse.

The story of that house goes back to when I was a baby. When their tiny, two-bedroom home was bursting at the seams, my parents were in search of a larger one they could move to their yard.

One day, my mom received a package wrapped in a few old newspaper pages. She spied a small, classified ad on one of the pages, offering a house to be moved for $100. Not only was it an answer to prayer, but it was also affordable, and it turned out that my great-grandfather had helped with its construction.

The house was not new by any means, but my mom said with three big bedrooms and room to grow in the attic, it felt like a mansion. It even featured a few closets, which was almost unheard of in houses of that era.

Like many old homes, it was drafty in the winter and as hot as a sauna in the summer. The old oil furnace took care of the heating issue. It had its inefficiencies, for sure. We learned to find the warm spots in each of the rooms, and my baby sister and I loved to curl up beside the floor vents when we watched our favourite TV shows.

I remember my dad’s dismay at the rising cost of fuel, and how carefully he guarded the thermostat on the wall. Every late fall, he would spend a few evenings stapling plastic to the storm windows to keep most of the cold wind out. But there were still a few windowsills that couldn’t keep a candle burning. The frosted windows made great canvases for works of art, created with our fingernails.

It was summer that really tested our ability to climatize. After the storm windows came down, there was still the problem of getting the original windows to open. Many had been painted shut over the years, or had warped with moisture and age, and you had to use a bit of muscle to get them to budge. Others wouldn’t stay open, and a few empty Mason jars came in handy to prop them up.

For the hottest summer nights, my parents had devised a complex network of fans, placed strategically in front of some of the windows, with the intent of directing any hint of a cooler breeze to the inhabitants sweltering in their beds.

It was a small relief, at best, so all of us kids sought our own solutions. After the tell-tale snoring would start in my parents’ bedroom, we would tiptoe through the house, carefully and silently relocating the fans to perch right beside our beds. Ah, the delicious breezes felt like heaven. Talk about simple pleasures.

Legend has it that we had our own mischievous ghost in that house, who would move things like shoes and car keys, so we had to hunt for them the next day. We called him Phillip. Phillip also had a fondness for the baked goods my mom made for company every Saturday. By Sunday morning, a good chunk of the cookies and pineapple squares had been devoured by this greedy being.

Phillip also apparently loved to move fans around.

On hot summer days, my early experiences in that old farmhouse make me doubly grateful for my central air conditioner. It came with my house and looks like something from the 70’s. A diehard model according to a guy I spoke to.

So far, in spite of habitually hiding my cell phone, car keys and glasses, Phillip hasn’t messed with it.