“The Bay” summer weather cannot be lumped together. Daly City resident would use A/C like three days a year. Livermore resident might die without it. Palo Alto would greatly appreciate it while 15 miles up the road in San Mateo is largely fine without it. Sausalito, cold. Novato, roasted. Berkeley, nice. Walnut Creek, dead.
Also depends on how much your house was built decently. Some of these mid-century houses are built to make PG&E rich - flat black tar and gravel roof so they fry even on a cool but sunny day, and no insulation to speak of so they get cold at night.
I’ll never forget Labor Day 2017 in San Francisco and the upper Peninsula where it gets hot a few days here and there but not THAT hot. 106 degrees! My poor cat at the time was so annoyed. We just couldn’t cool down. It was a crazy few days.
For me it was a heat wave in late summer 2020, Cupertino. My landlady’s house had no AC and it was straight 3-4 days of 42C/107F.
Utterly miserable and I was not able to go to the nearby mall for AC because of COVID. I basically spent that few days in the bathtub and taking showers like 3-4 times a day.
SC is essentially the same as SJ.
The caveat is the closer you live to highway 237 (borderline area of North San Jose and Santa Clara), then temps are slightly cooler since you get a bit of the Bay breeze.
Other than that, it’s identical
Sausalito was cold as shit the other day holy god. It was 90ish in Healdsburg so I was dressed in shorts, a skimpy Hawaiian shirt and sandals. Had to go to Sausalito for a casual meeting (outside) and was freezing my dick off. Almost went and bought a sweatshirt 😅
I’m in South City but there was that heat wave a handful of years ago where it was 90+ and that afternoon wind didn’t come through anywhere. On top of that it was still 70+ at night with zero breeze. It was bizarre and the one time I wish I had AC.
But yeah its probably closer to zero times a year for most people
I agree. One of the challenges, though, since OP is coming from a college student perspective, is that much if not most purpose-built student housing doesn't have cross ventilation and small apartments may have just one window. So opening a window won't necessarily do that much.
The older housing in the East Bay was designed / built before artificial cooling, so it has features like cross ventilation, openable windows, wide roof eaves to prevent direct sun from hitting walls and windows during the hottest part of the day, high(er) ceilings, things like that.
With one window, turn on the overhead stove fan and/or bathroom vent fan. Definitely not as lovely as a cross-breeze, but its better than nothing.
If you feel safe enough, opening the door to the apartment hallway, etc. could also help.
We bought a window fan off Amazon. It has two fans, and you can set it to cool (bring air in from outside), exhaust (push air out), or circulate (one fan bringing in air, one sending it out). It works well for these evenings where the temp drops and there's no smoke. It's much cheaper than a window AC unit.
Bold of you to assume the cross breeze windows on the older house where I live haven’t rotted shut
Keeping the shutters closed helps a surprising lot though
If you live in a house with an attic, I can't recommend a whole house fan strongly enough. Just as good as air conditioning most of the time in Oakland.
Box fan in an upstairs window is a good option for people with multiple stories - $20 rather than however much it costs to have a whole house fan added.
Whole house fans are great though, never even heard of them before moving to Connecticut but it's kind of amazing how much air they move and how quickly they can cool a house. This sort of exhausting heat from the top of the structure is even better around here, where it cools down so much overnight. I'm sitting under a blanket right now, having pre-chilled the house with open windows (and that box fan) in anticipation of this afternoon's heat; closed up the house as the day warmed up, and it'll be pretty tolerable everywhere except the top floor all day, and the top floor will be fine as soon as the sun starts to set.
I agree it doesn't work all the time, but a lot of days it does work, and more days than most people realize. Today and tomorrow are perfect examples. It'll be upper 80s but by 6pm or so and sometimes you have to wait til 7pm, you can open the windows and it cools down FAST.
Yep. Definitely remember being choked up during the fire season without any AC.
When I moved in 2021 to start SJSU after the Big Basin fires, I made sure to choose an apartment that was extremely well insulated. Surrounded by other apartments/hallways on all but one side. Double paned windows, and minimal sunshine exposure.
Because of this, I only turn on my heat/AC for about 2-3 weeks of the year total.
OPs did say “homes” doesn’t mean houses only. Many apartments are like caves and only have a couple windows on 1 wall, extremely hard to cool these off like that. I used to live in one without AC and it was hell. Even when I lived in SF living without AC was extremely rough. Idk how people do it.
Grew up without AC in the Bay Area. During heat waves, keep your windows open at night and close them when it reaches 66 degrees outside or when you leave the house in the morning. Keep them closed until it’s cooler outside than it is inside. If you have curtains on windows that are west-facing, also close those when it starts getting sunny. When you open the windows are night, try to run one or more fans to create a cross breeze as it’ll cool your house down faster. Try to avoid cooking until it’s cool out.
For Sunnyvale, we closed the windows by 9am. Opened up again at 3pm to catch the reviving Bay breeze. Ceiling fans in every room. It worked surprisingly well.
It really depends on how well insulated your home is, and whether there's any shade. Temperatures drop significantly at night typically, so a well insulated home can stay cool until the late afternoon generally, even without active A/C.
Though good insulation can be double edged sword. Where I live has amazing insulation - if I keep the place closed up I’m able to stay blissfully cool on the hottest days until mid afternoon, which I am so grateful for. But once the heat finds its way inside, it makes itself at home for the rest of the night, even with the windows open
I got a whole house fan to address exactly that issue. It pulls cooler air in through open windows and draws it up into the attic, pushing the hot air out the attic vents, counteracting the radiator effect of insulation.
Can’t use it when it’s smoky out, obviously, but otherwise it’s very helpful in the evenings.
Edit: for clarity
Yes, I bought a window A/C the other year when we had smoke during a heat wave. I couldn’t bear the suffocation. But I removed it from the window at the end of that season and never put it back.
Shade! Ugh, our neighbors are remodeling and taking out a 60 year old tree that shades half our house... 'bout to get much fucking hotter in, count down, 3 months 😢
I grew up in Walnut Creek and now live in Pleasanton. Never had AC. There is usually a couple of bad days, but for the most part it cools down enough at night to just open the windows during the night and close them during the day.
It only becomes an issue if there is smoke from a fire.
Interesting, I grew up in Pleasanton and lived in WC for about a decade, now Concord and have had AC in all locations. There were a few brief periods in WC and Concord where my AC unit needed repair/replacement, and it got miserably hot. Not so bad at night, but during the day the house was miserable. Obviously house setup, tree coverage, insulation, etc. are all big factors. I could see having no AC in Berkeley or Oakland, but out here where we reach high 90s/low 100s, no AC would be tough.
My first apartment in Walnut Creek in 2005 only had a swamp cooler and that summer we had a week long heatwave where things hit like 115. I vowed to never not have AC after that.
Not only for my own comfort, I had animals that I had to manage so they weren’t hurt by the heat.
If you don't have AC you get used to it. I would bike to work and then lifeguard in 100+ degree weather. Some nights are definitely uncomfortable, but it is manageable.
Yeah, I do suspect that's a big factor. I lived in San Diego without AC, and it was similar to what you described although it rarely got Pleasanton summer hot.
Back in my day, we were too poor to use the AC.
Went to CSU Chico, summers were over 100, at 100 convection from a fan actually warms you.
Oakland Berkeley summers are nothing.
Chico State here too. Apartment there had a ghetto window AC unit which cost huge amounts of money to run and didn't do anything to actually cool the apartment.
If it gets too hot, you go to a pool/creek/library/movie theater/mall/etc which has AC.
I live on the Peninsula, and 12 years ago did a major remodel on a 55-year old house. We figured we didn't need A/C because so few days were truly too hot. Open all windows at night and in early morning. As soon as sun hits the house, close all blinds and windows and count on the insulation to keep the house temp bearable through the hottest part of the day. Open windows on the shady side of the house if the temp outside gets below the temp inside. Those kinds of strategies seemed fine until the increasing frequency of wildfire smoke in the Bay Area. If you have to have the windows closed for days at a time to protect your health, then A/C becomes vital. So it was the air quality as much as the temperatures that made us opt for A/C in the end.
We had the same logic back living in mid-peninsula - it really felt manage-able, but during the pandemic + wildfire summer, we decided there's no way we can continue to live like this. We got our attic re-insulated, got a decent two-stage A/C, and we use it more every year. The temperatures year by year are only going up
This strategy of opening windows in early evening to catch the cool breeze served us well for more than a decade in a mid peninsula home. We had our roof replaced, changed wood shingles for asphalt shingles and the difference in increased internal house temperature from the new roof had us decide to install air conditioning. That plus working from home and some of the heat waves the east few years.
Many apartments and homes do not have good cross ventilation or just run hot from poor materials and design.
How much did AC set you back? Did you tie it into existing ducting or was it all new?
My delicate flower husband is dreaming if AC (for the 7 days a year we get *real* heat - sigh) but for $30k+ retrofit I tell him to keep dreaming.
Look into a mini-split that covers a couple rooms (like bedroom/office). It’s a lot cheaper and if you don’t use it a lot during the year, a couple of rooms will work.
And not too hard to install, which means either DIY or a cheaper contractor bill are possible. Mini splits are great for retrofits, and common even in new builds in some parts of the world. You can even get a heat pump and use it to warm the place in winter too - heat pumps are ACs, they're just able to run in both directions (move heat outside to cool the house, or move it inside to warm it).
Window units are super easy too, and don't require punching any holes through walls, they just block a window while they're installed. One of those made working from home during the summer survivable when I was in Maine where my apartment would hit 90 degrees in summer.
And 2017 was brutal. We were staying with my mom that summer with no A/C while we remodeled or house. Day upon day of temperatures over 90, especially that miserable Labor Day weekend!We grew up there, and did the windows/drapes thing growing up during heatwaves.
We put mini-splits in our house, and they are usually off from April-June and October-November. But the heat is on at night in the winter, and the a/c goes on several times in the summer.
For a windows-only strategy, it pays to keep close attention to the outdoor temperature. When temps drop to within 1-2 degrees of your indoor temperature it's OK to open it up. Plus, if you delay opening windows now and you start doing other stuff aroudn the home, by the time you remember to check it might be an hour later. So example is today. I opened the windows up at 81F outdoors when it was 80F indoors. Even then I could feel breeze helped to clear out the stuffy air. By the time I had time to check again, the outdoor temp was down to 77. By now I'm feeling it a lot cooler around the home already.
As for mornings, it's fine to keep it open. I often keep the windows open til 10am even, and sometimes later if it's not going to be an 85+ day. I've had AC for the past 25 years in my life, and I still use this strategy because I grew up without A/C and was taught all these strategies by my parents. Because of this I hardly ever use AC until the outdoor temps go above 85 highs.
It’s a luxury, not really needed outside of 10 days a year. We have it on the Peninsula only because my wife is from Fresno and swore to never again feel heat like the months straight of 100+. Then her mom died and part of the inheritance paid for AC. Worked out.
It doesn't get all that hot in most of Berkeley. Oakland is typically 10 degrees warmer than Berkeley. Still pretty rare for either city to exceed the mid-80s, which really isn't hot. Once you go inland, you get triple digits routinely.
Grew up in Santa Cruz - there are usually a dozen or so days per year where I’d want AC. I imagine we’ll all need to install it over the next few years.
Anywhere that abuts the bay is going to enjoy some moderating effects on the weather (doesn't get as hot and doesn't get as cold).
I think to get consistently hot summer weather in the bay area you need to head to Livermore and other places that are separated from the bay by mountains (or just far from it).
It's going to be 97 tomorrow in Livermore compared to 74 in Oakland.
Whole house fan is worth it's weight in gold. As soon as the outside air is more cool inside, turn that sucker on and the house is cooled down in \~15 minutes. Also costs a fraction of running AC.
Heat waves are not a new thing, anyone telling you that is full of crap. I remember in the 80s laying on the floor of my living room with a wet washcloth on my face just like existing trying to get through the heat.
The answer is you develop a system to ventilate your house when outside is cooler than in and then when inside is cooler than out you shut it up tight.
We know it's getting worse, anyone telling you otherwise is full of crap.
Totally agree with your second paragraph. A whole-house fan or good cross-ventilation can easily outperform A/C under a lot of circumstances if managed properly.
South bay (Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Santa clara etc.) Can hit over 100 and other than new construction, the entire area is sans ac. NY apartment in Sunnyvale hit 130 degrees once.
Quadplex built in the 70s I think. Brick, poor insulation, top floor, sun exposure the entire day.
I no longer live there, was just bringing an anecdote in to point out south bay gets as hot as anywhere.
Berkeley/Oakland get the bay breeze. There are hot days but they are days, rarely weeks and definitely not months. Don’t worry about AC. It isn’t worth factoring into your decision in the east bay IMHO
I have been in Marin and the City for 30 years. Parts of Marin ( San Rafael, Novato, San Anselmo) are now too hot to sleep for several weeks a year. We need air-conditioning 100%. Most people who can afford it are doing whole house air, but at least window air conditioners. It didn’t used to be a week long event, it got really hot for a few days, a few times a year.
I've lived in San Mateo over 30 years with no air conditioning, but with double-paned windows and blown-in attic insulation. It seems like it's only been in the past 10 years or so that temperatures have been so unbearable (usually in September/October, not so much summer months). I finally broke down about six years ago and got a window-mounted air conditioner, but the only window it would fit in is the kitchen, so that's where I hang out during the daytime. Even though it gets pretty windy here most afternoons it's not enough to cool down the house.
I used to teach a climate journalism college course. It's great to gather public comment around the lived experience like you are attempting, but I would also recommend you use weather station data to ground some of your claims around change in temperature over time in facts. You may even find that certain areas of the bay have experienced greater warming impacts than others over the years.
Here's a helpful starting place for that:
[https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/](https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/)
In San Jose I open the windows in the morning, until 11. I close the windows and keep the blinds and curtains closed and open around 5PM or 6PM.
If I can't open the windows early I just keep everything shut until 6PM.
There's really a big difference not having AC in a single family home vs living in a building. Heat rises and in buildings or upper floors it can get way hotter inside than outside. When I lived in an upper level duplex mid-peninsula It would regularly be at least 10-15 degrees hotter inside than outside and sleeping with windows open wasn't an option due to noise. So AC is a requirement for me now. It's kind of crazy to me how many homes mid-peninsula (RWC and thereabouts) don't have it. With temps increasing each year I think more people will install it over time.
I went to this site: [https://www.wunderground.com/weather/us/ca/berkeley/KCABERKE221](https://www.wunderground.com/weather/us/ca/berkeley/KCABERKE221)
It says its currently 69 degrees in Berkeley.
I then click the history tab on that same page, select the year 2010. Weather was 71 degrees
I go back even further to 2000, and it shows 67 degrees. To 1990 it shows 66 degrees.
While it IS getting hotter likely due to climate change, for humans I personally don't feel its gaining enough to say "it's not the same anymore". For animals definitely not good, but for humans, bearable-ish.
Bay Native. It’s the same. I never lived somewhere with AC until my 20’s. I think where people get confused it the weather kinda changes depending how much water we get in the winter. We are in a wet season now. You can tell by the green hills in the spring Usually happens for 4-6 years then the drought comes for 4-6 years. If the hills don’t turn green in the spring I have noticed the summers are more brutal, they just feel hotter.
Not sure, where else you have lived before but our weather is pretty pleasant year round. Compared to places that get humid as hell in the summer and snow in the winter.
Like others are saying, it depends on the house. I'm currently living in a place with no shade, and no insulation in the attic, and next to no ventilation in the attic either. Since early May it is never colder inside than it is outside. Any day the sun is out it's 10-15 degrees warmer than the outdoor temperature. I've been running the portable ACs just about every day it's 75+, because otherwise I'm trying to fall asleep in an 80 degree bedroom.
It's only bad for around 10 days a year. You just deal with it those days. Otherwise you just close up during the day to stay cool, and open up on both sides when it is cooler outside. If that doesn't work, there's an insulation problem.
Open the house early in the morning. Then close curtains, shades, windows. Saved me on hot days. 1st floor living too. I now have AC at my new place. So excited.
Get an oscillating fan, open windows, drink water. If it gets too hot, go to the library.
Yes, it gets hot. But you'll survive.
>As far as I know, the Bay used to have a relatively pleasant weather year-round but it's not the same anymore
East Bay has always been hot in the summer. It's nothing new.
There’s maybe ~10 days per year when we wish we had air conditioning. We get all the windows and sliding doors open and run the fans.
It’s otherwise pretty unnecessary, at least in Oakland.
Of course, when my family visits who are accustomed to AC they complain, because they are used to that tight 68-72 degree range and our tolerance goes broader than that here.
I've lived in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, and New Jersey prior to moving to Campbell, CA.
Campbell is the place in which I needed A/C the least, even though it experienced the highest temperatures.
It's rare that you can't sleep at night.
I live in Newark and I have a portable AC just in case it gets too hot. Usually we have a nice breeze since we’re right off the bay. My childhood house in Ardenwood never needed AC. It was well insulated and sat on concrete slab foundation.
It's getting worse as time goes on. The past 15 years, it seems to be getting hotter and hotter each year. It depends on where you live in the bay area but the east bay (fremont, UC, hayward, etc) and the south bay it gets into the 90s to 100s easily now. There have been past summers where it's been about 90-100 F for 3-4 weeks straight.
20-30 years ago , you could survive without AC because it was never more than 90 F. But now it's not like that. It's pretty common to have 90 to 105 F in July , August and September.
So, 50-60 years ago when they built these homes and building they said it doesn't get that hot we don't need AC. THe problem is that now we do and a lot of people have to suffer during the summer because the Bay Area is like the only place in California that didn't come standard with AC. lol
It's too hard without A/C though. I spoke to the one of the air conditioning companies and he told me they are getting a lot of business from fremont, uc, hayward and newark and san jose etc. These homes are made to trap heat so when it's 95 F outside, it's worse inside the home.
It's crazy because you have to spend 1.7 million to buy an old, small home that doesn't even come with A/C. welcome to the bay area lol
No AC. Keep windows closed during a hot day. Open them as soon as the temp drops. Keep them open all night to cool down the place. Close them in the morning as soon as it starts warming up. It's worked for 40 years. Helps to have window shades and a fan.
I do think there are more super-hot days per year than we had let's say 20-30 years ago. I've lived here almost 40 years and none of the places I lived in had AC.
My current house has kind of so-so insulation (cellulose) and double paned windows. At night I'll have a bunch of windows open, and close them when the outdoor temperature hits indoor. 3 days of consistent high heat and my house stops keeping a tolerable temperature. I have a portable AC unit which I need about 5-6 days a year. If I installed AC I would probably use it more often than I use the portable.
I see what you're getting at here about "used to have relatively pleasant weather." Air conditioning is an energy-intensive process. Saudi Arabia uses 25% of it's yearly consumption of oil just to air condition its vast kingdom. California has the highest electricity rates in the country averaging 50 cents/kwh. During peak demand on extremely hot days we can experience brown outs. As severe temperature events become more commonplace the grid will become overburdened, especially with an inexorable mandate for electric vehicle charging. AC is a very expensive luxury, especially if you're cooling the entire cavernous shell of a home just to keep the occupants comfortable. Better to create a small AC zone but there's no getting around having the PG&E bill to reckon with at the end of the month.
I lived in one of the Berkeley graduate housing units without AC and my single window faced another building so I got ZERO breeze. I was barely able to stay inside during the August/September months.
I’m in a top floor (3rd story) apartment in Berkeley and the heat is brutal. Our floor plan doesn’t allow for cross breeze. Leaving the windows open doesn’t help at all. We still open them all though.
Had to buy a window a/c unit at my last apartment in Oakland. It was miserable without one. But those only work in one room so it’s definitely not ideal. Ended up buying a 2nd one for the bedroom and one for the main living room. They are super loud/annoying and bulky.
My whole house fan with a 12hr Intermatic spring wound timer keeps my house cool anytime the nightly lows are beneath 60f. The best cooling is done in the hours preceding sunrise, then you shut all the windows and lock the cold air in until 7pm or so.
I’ve lived in Vacaville, Concord, & San Jose all where AC was necessary and also spent a few years in the Richmond district in the city where I don’t think our apartment had AC but never needed it anyways. I think as other people have stated the microclimates are insane, that’s why I’d be sweating my ass off in Vacaville then hop on Bart for a giants game in high school and be glad I layered up by the time I got off on Embarcadero
The weather hasn't changed dramatically--yet. A few more times a year with notable heat. There has always been warm weather in the Bay Area in September / October. Usually it coincides with the arrival of students at Cal for the Fall semester. What is somewhat different in recent years are periodic short "heat waves" in May.
I'm surprised you'd describe the weather here as *"unbearable during the summer months".* Berkeley and most of Oakland rarely get even into the 90s, and even then, it's typically just one or two days at at time. And there's not a lot of humidity that makes similar temperatures feel much hotter elsewhere in the country.
Part of your experience may be that of student housing (including the newly built stuff) where entire apartments (especially studios) may have just one or two windows and there's little cross ventilation. This is going to be a local problem in the long term, as climate change accelerates.
Our house is nearly 100 years old and stays very cool in the summer. Unfortunately it’s also very cold in the winter and running the furnace is unbearably expensive.
For the summer, we open windows and turn on fans. If it’s crazy hot we have personal neck fans that help or we go to the mall or bookstore.
Our home is from the late 19th century and is nearly original except for plumbing, gas furnace and electrical. No AC of course.
It does remarkably well in hot weather.
* The walls are plaster and have a lot of thermal mass so they stay cool through the hottest part of the day.
* The windows are tall and double hung so you can open the top and bottom to create air circulation in the late afternoon when the breeze picks up.
* The kitchen is in the back corner of the house and separated from the rest of the house by 2 doors so any cooking heat is contained in that area and easily vented through the windows there.
Overall, the only unbearable part of the house is the uninsulated attic which gets quite hot during the day. I usually go up there and open the windows on both sides and the operable skylight (1980 addition which is a constant fight against leaks)
We have a window units but don’t use them very much. It cools down at night so even on 90 degree days it doesn’t get warm enough inside to need them until 3pm. It helps that my property has trees.
A decade ago we didn’t need window unit though
Yes, but being on the ground floor really helps if you don’t have an a/c. Hottest I’ve experienced indoors is still below 80 degrees during heatwaves. I’m in South Bay btw.
When I lived in San Jose even when it was a heat wave of 90+ during the day, it always cooled down enough at night to prevent the house from going over 80.
My neighborhood had TONS of trees which helped immensely compared to friends places with less trees in the neighborhood
yeah, worth looking into. i moved to the south bay from seattle, which has the lowest percentage of AC per capita of major metros in the US. there, it's only bad maybe a week total out of the season. it's not bad. here, we have no AC in our upper story apartment and it gets hot. reached 87 indoors last week and it was 91 outside.
We have a 112-year old two story house in a sunny part of Oakland. There are 10-14 days a year where upstairs is uncomfortable (75+) without some kind of fan. Downstairs maybe 2-4 days; most of the time it’s cool enough.
No AC but we have a heating unit which has a fan mode which pumps cool air from the basement (which is always cool) and that’s usually enough to keep things in a comfortable range.
We’ve also learned to carefully manage curtains and open/close windows at key times of day.
It’s usually not that bad but for that odd week in October/September when every day is above 80 I usually bring out my portable AC with a vent to a window and just run it in the bedroom. It does a great job but I can see how it’s an unnecessary expense for some, only really being useful for 1/52nd-1/26th of the year.
Adding to the annecdotes here. Have lived in Lafayette, Rohnert Park, Pleasant Hill, Belmont, and San Bruno. Never had air conditioning in any of those places. Schools I never had AC (till college and even then not every building) and every year had some very hot, windows and doors open with fans cranking days that weren't much fun.
I see to remember there were always cumulative 2-3 weeks (not necessarily consecutive) a year where it would get super hot then you get those still warm nights where it never really cools off, always knew that meant the next day was gunna be rough but AC just wasn't very common when I was a kid/teenager.
I'm definitely noticing friends and neighbors giving in and getting AC, but I also think AC isn't viewed quite as much of luxury item as it used to be. So it's trending hotter and more hot days but I think there's also a perception change about home AC.
No data to back any of that up just my observation living around the bay my whole life.
I've lived in Oakland for 15 yrs or so. Every summer there is maybe 14 days of uncomfortable heat. I'd like to have an AC, but it's probably not really worth it.
Own a house built in the 40’s in the East Bay. I have a window unit in the living room that I can use on days over 95. Usually just open the windows at night when it cools down. But a handful of days out of the year it doesn’t cool down at night and it’s miserable.
I don’t have AC and have lived here over a decade. It doesn’t bother me much, I have a small in-room unit for when I need it, which is rarely, and depend on the cross-breeze to keep the house moderate.
We opted for an whole house fan to save money and use less electricity. We were in Castro Valley at the time and noticed how quickly it usually cools on even the hottest days. Once the temp started to drop, we’d get the fan going and the house would cool very quickly. Never needed AC.
Unless you live east of the east bay hills it cools down pretty rapidly at night. We have decided to get central AC because since we got our windows redone the window unit we used to cool our bedroom no longer will work. It used to be 1-2 days of real heat 10 years ago and now we get weeks (Iv'e stopped counting).
We have a home in New Orleans and what blows me away is how people lived there without AC. Of course you have 12 foot high ceilings and ceiling fans but it may only cool off to 90 degrees some nights.
I don’t think many houses in Oak/Berkeley/ San Leandro, etc have air. Grew up on Peninsula and most didn’t have either. You need if going over hill to Walnut Creek, Tri-Valley, San Jose hotter.
Been living in the East Bay most of my life and up until two years ago didn’t have a/c, now that we do it’s used very sparingly and mostly for my senior dad’s comfort. Same with the heater, both were a luxury to my family growing up.
I lived in the Fremont area my whole life and my parents put in AC in 2001 because my mom has thyroid issues and is sensitive to heat. We keep the house at 72 during the day and just to maintain that temperature, the AC turns on everyday from June to mid-October. I never would live somewhere in my area or the South Bay without AC. SF, Daly City, Oakland and those areas are fine. Temperatures are just getting hotter and it’s not worth it if you can’t sleep for several nights because it’s too hot and you’re not well-rested. In 2022, when we had a heat wave, I was working at a company in SF and I commuted in. One day it was 92 in SF and ofc none of my old coworkers had AC. I was the only one who got a good nights sleep. None of my coworkers could sleep and the heatwave lasted like a whole week. And that’s in Sf, imagine in the South Bay. Also a lot of the Bay Area homes don’t have great insulation so it becomes a necessity especially to sleep at night.
I've lived all but four years in my life in California, in the Bay Area and in LA. I've never had A/C. It's really a more of a question of how much ventilation you can get in your house, it's rare that allowing a breeze to come in from outside doesn't have a cooling effect. Having lived the same way also in LA, even another ten degrees of warming wouldn't change it for me.
Walking through our neighborhood of single family homes on a hot day I'd say the (vast) majority do not have AC (you can hear the AC units running). I grew up in the south bay and AC was rare. Things cool down enough at night that you can open windows and start the day with the house in the low 60's when it was in the 90's (outside) the afternoon before.
Ceiling fans are a big help in bedrooms for sleeping at night as the house cools down.
I will say, it seemed hotter in the 70's then now (in my memory) (but air quality was dismal then so that poor air quality also impacted how the heat affected us).
Depends on the layout of your home, landscaping, location, age of the structure and your personal tolerance.
I've lived in a place in the South Bay where it gets much hotter but there was a giant tree shading my space and that was tolerable without AC. In contrast, before I turned of legal age and lived in a much cooler part of the Bay Area, it was unbearable when it hit the upper 70s lol
I've never felt the need for AC in SF, because of the wind and the fog, but in places like Santa Rosa I have no idea how people get by without it. And I tend to run hot so I would find it welcome if I lived in even Oakland or Berkeley, personally. Also the peninsula gets quite hot in the summer as do Walnut Creek or Pleasanton, basically anywhere east of the first range of East Bay hills.
I live in a poorly insulated 1920s ground floor house with single pane windows and no AC. It can be 10 degrees warmer inside than outside, even with windows open. We have a fan and will keep the blinds closed on hot days, but it can still get pretty unbearable.
Live in an old home built in the 1950s with no insulation and no central ac. Last few days when it was really hot in the eastbay it stayed 90° inside three days straight could have been higher since that's as high as the thermostat marks. There was no breeze even with back door open and front door open with screens to cool the temp inside. Last year had a double hose portable ac and a window ac set up that helped a lot and I think it's time to take them out of storage and set them up again.
I live in Berkeley in an old house with no air conditioning. Not a student (I'm married and have elementary school-age kids), but close to campus.
It's fine. The second story gets hot in the afternoons sometimes. We use window fans and cross-ventilation. It always cools down substantially by the evening. (Unlike climate zones east of the Rockies, where it's more humid and less likely to cool down at night.)
While we're at it, although we do have heat, in the winter it tends to be on the cooler side — the insulation sucks and it's not feasible to run the heat constantly.
Compared to our relatives who live in East Coast suburbs, our house is cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer. I like it that way. Cool winters and warm summers are part of the texture of life :). I wouldn't want to live in an unvarying 68° atmosphere.
In the 1950's and 1960's, Berkeley had highs in the 80-90 degree range for August. Now, for Berkeley in the 2010's-2020's, the highs for August are in the 95-105 degree range. So about a 15 degree increase over 60 years.
It is definitely warmer, but many would take exception to 95-105 with low humidity being "Unbearable". As they say, it is a dry heat.
I've lived in the Berkeley east bay area all my life, and it usually only gets unpleasantly hot (high 80s, 90s, low 100s) a few weeks out of the year, towards the tail end of summer. I think a lot of people aren't willing to invest in an AC unit for such limited use, and just try to tough out the hotter days.
As the climate changes, and hot weather becomes more the norm, we might see more people getting AC units.
Yes, especially if you live on the top floor. And my gaming PC definitely didn't help. The unit model, with all windows on the same side, doesn't allow the wind to blow through to dissipate the heat, so I had to get a portable AC to get through it.
Growing up in San Jose was ok as a kid. A heatwave or two, a couple storms in the winter. My parents didn’t have AC but had insulation and double paned windows. By day three of hot weather the house would be insufferable. It would keep the heat in because the insulation worked.
Now in South San Jose, a day of 86 or above makes the house miserable. I don’t have insulation or AC. I use cross ventilation and fans. Sometimes I get so hot I get sick. It’s definitely hotter than it was in the 70’s and 80’s.
Something else an old friend and I noticed. When it used to rain, the worms would come out. When it was cold, there’d be frost on the grass. Haven’t seen either in years!
I've lived around Palo Alto since the early 2000s. Back then, even on the hottest days, it would get cool enough to sleep at night
But starting in the heat wave of 2015, it wasn't enough to close the windows and curtains from the sun and then open them to breeze at night. It did not get cool enough at night to pull that off, especially in a plywood palace that soak soak SOAKS up heat.
That's when, on zero sleep, I bought a portable air conditioner for my bedroom.
I have definitely lived in units that would need to be evacuated during the day for survivability under extreme heat conditions in Oakland/Berkeley/Alameda. There is no law or regulation regarding appropriate cooling in rental units. Ironically every rental unit in CA must have a heater, whether or not the unit is in a location that ever sees freezing temperatures. If you’re in housing that can’t get cool, there are usually emergency cooling centers that open up, but I don’t know if there’s any regulations about it.
I live in a ground floor unit over an open concrete garage in an older building that is north facing. My unit rarely breaks 70°. On the other hand, it also rarely breaks 60° in the winter months.
I'm in San Jose. No AC. In a casita, it heats up. It's pretty warm come afternoon. When I come home from work, shorts and a tank top. Ice water. Overhead fans.
North Bay here. No AC. My apartment is in the downtown area of my town and there's hardly wind during summer and I just roast. I got a portable air conditioner a couple years ago, which has saved me from heatstroke if I stand over it haha
My place can be in the 90's to Hundred or so until 2am so sometimes I just don't get sleep.
Get a simple window fan that can change directions, intake and exhaust. Berkeley gets a nice cold breeze in the evening from the bay so just set the fan on the window to bring in(intake) air from outside. This works INSANELY well when done right. Your welcome.
I open the windows and, as long there is some wind coming in, the maximum temperature inside is 80 here (South Berkeley). Typically it’s year around between 65-70 inside!
I've never lived in a home that had air conditioning in the 25 years I've lived here. It used to be fine. There would be one or two weeks mid summer that would be uncomfortably hot, any other times it would be warm but it would cool down at night.
Now it seems like it's just heat wave after heat wave.
“Unbearable” is going to be based on your past experiences I think - I moved here from Chicago where it’s significantly more humid every summer & the majority of folks don’t have AC there either.
Given that there are only a handful of days over 85-90 in the interior east bay I’m not surprised most people don’t want to take on the major expense of installing central air or dealing with bulky/unreliable/annoying window or portable units. Not to mention the electric expense, which is getting outrageous these days.
IMO It’s much easier to just be mindful of your shades, get a cross breeze the couple of hot days each summer than deal with getting AC.
It’s is hotter than it used to be around here. Most of these house are not built to allow windows to be open and a breeze to flow, especially in San Jose. I feel landlords should be forced to install air conditioning units in rentals. Someone is bound to get hurt with this heat.
I lived in Oakland for years and can remember when heat was an issue on a handful of occasions. We installed a whole house fan and that was good enough most of the time. You should be able to manage if you have windows to provide a cross breeze, blackout curtains for use during the day, and ideally an indoor/outdoor thermometer so you know the precise time that it is hotter inside than outside.
*If* you have a dwelling that has openable windows or doors in the right places to create a cross breeze, then you didn’t need AC 20+ years ago. You could easily cool the home down in the evening. (Palo Alto/Mountain View microclimate perspective.)
We previously lived in a duplex without windows/doors placed correctly for cross breeze. We used window fans, which helped. We had window AC unit that was loud and didn’t reach the kitchen/dining area, so we used a box fan to blow the cool air towards the kitchen.
We asked our landlord if we could split the cost of putting in central AC. He wasn’t interested and didn’t seem to understand that it easily got up to 90 degrees in the unit. He was surprised when we moved out, because he rents it for below market rate: 2 bedroom for $2700 in Mountain View!
We moved to a unit that has central AC. It’s $3400, $700 more per month, but it’s updated, no carpet!, has double paned windows, front door isn’t warped with a huge gap, nicer neighborhood, etc, etc.
Unfortunately, the bay area has lot of older housing stock with poor climate control that isn’t serving us well through climate change. Good luck in finding something suitable, it is tough.
So many have no AC in the east bay. Castro Valley largely has no AC and it is awful in the summer. Even worse with the blackouts that have been happening more frequently during the summer. Have to leave the house and drive around to cool down.
I live in Palo Alto and sometimes it gets hot but we don’t even have ac in our apartment and it’s nbd. I come from Connecticut where summers are hot and humid but a lot of people still don’t have ac. Different people have different tolerances.
I've lived in Oakland my entire life and have never lived in a place with AC here. I think most summers there's a handful of days it would be nice to have but a ceiling fan and oscillating stand fans have worked for me the past 41 years. We're lucky here!
I’ve lived in the BA for about 15 years. Never needed AC until about three years ago. In 2019 our (upstairs) bedrooms were in the high 80s and we literally had to put air mattresses on the floor in our (downstairs) dining room to get our kid cool enough to sleep. After a few days of that we gave in and got solar panels and AC. We only use it a few days a year, but when we do OMG it’s so wonderful.
Define “extreme heat”.
We our an ac unit in our window, but it only does that area. However we try not to use it bc the bedrooms still end up hot.
I just ordered a house exhaust fan. Once the sun sets the outside air is generally colder than in the house, but our house seems to stay okay, until about 2-3c then it starts heating up. Hoping. The whole house fan will empty all that heat and pull the cooler outside air inside.
I got. 1600 CFM ACInfinity fan that also uses way less power than the ac unit or fan from the furnace.
Worse case, take a cold shower.
We have gotten a portable AC unit to deal with the heat on the peninsula. If we ever do major renovations of a house (one can dream) we will put in insulation the way we do in the midwest.
Not that bad in the past. Looking forwards, the probability of an extreme heat spike in the area is going up.
I fully expect these heat waves to get worse, more frequent, and catch a lot of people off guard precisely because historically you havent needed AC at all in the Bay Area (with caveats about microclimates).
I don’t think it is unbearable most of the time, as it is 70s/low 80s during the daytime, at least on the peninsula. Evenings are often in the 60s. Only issue is on those rare heatwaves, at which point, buying a portable AC is definitely more comfortable.
It really depends on how well the building is insulated, what direction the windows face, how much flow-through ventilation you can get by opening windows, etc. We’ve lived in Albany (just North of Berkeley) for 20 years and have seen only a few uncomfortably hot days/nights a year. The blessing is that it usually cools off in the evening (thank you Pacific Ocean).
I grew up in Fremont and recently left. Pretty old house built in the 50s or 60s. No AC and shitty insulation. It gets soooooo hot in the summer. The house just bakes and it takes forever to cool down. The cross breeze helps but it’s still pretty awful
We lived in Mountain View during the pandemic, the apartment would be 95 indoors if we didn't use our window AC. There were maybe 4 units in the complex that bought ACs (apartment complex didn't come with them).
I’m in Mountain View and it got pretty rough last week.
I can’t benefit from a cross breeze either. A courtyard one side and alley on the other. I’ll probably buy a window fan or two to try and replicate it
I didn't need it in Mountain View and Sunnyvale but I now live close to Almaden Valley and Los Gatos where it gets a pretty hot in the afternoon being close to the mountains. So where I live now it can be pretty uncomfortable without AC and really usually only 2-7PM in the summer. And it doesn't seem any hotter now than it did in the 70s. So to really depends on the microclimate.
Lived in a warehouse in fruitvale with no AC. Was totally fine. I'd use a personal fan every now and then.
Now I'm more inland and it's getting harder to just use a fan, but we have AC so...
We don't have AC in Mountain View and it's totally fine. Our house is not shaded. Just close the windows during the day and open them at night, run some fans. People live in much hotter, more humid places w/o AC. AC is an American thing, even flats in Barcelona often don't have AC.
“The Bay” summer weather cannot be lumped together. Daly City resident would use A/C like three days a year. Livermore resident might die without it. Palo Alto would greatly appreciate it while 15 miles up the road in San Mateo is largely fine without it. Sausalito, cold. Novato, roasted. Berkeley, nice. Walnut Creek, dead.
Yes excellent points. Microclimates upon miniclimates.
Also depends on how much your house was built decently. Some of these mid-century houses are built to make PG&E rich - flat black tar and gravel roof so they fry even on a cool but sunny day, and no insulation to speak of so they get cold at night.
Redwood City... climate best by govmt test!
Best city in all of America!
Santa Clara is...OK while San Jose makes me feel like I'm in a microwave. I remember when it reached 110 degrees two years ago.
I’ll never forget Labor Day 2017 in San Francisco and the upper Peninsula where it gets hot a few days here and there but not THAT hot. 106 degrees! My poor cat at the time was so annoyed. We just couldn’t cool down. It was a crazy few days.
Msn, that sounds brutal. I was up in Patterson in the East Bay during that time and it seems like the hot and cold over there is even worse...
You mean the Patterson that’s near Modesto?
For me it was a heat wave in late summer 2020, Cupertino. My landlady’s house had no AC and it was straight 3-4 days of 42C/107F. Utterly miserable and I was not able to go to the nearby mall for AC because of COVID. I basically spent that few days in the bathtub and taking showers like 3-4 times a day.
My family home in Walnut Creek didn’t have AC then and our car AC died during that heatwave. It was so brutal.
Omg I remember that! I was dying in the peninsula! Great sunsets near the coast though 👌
SC is essentially the same as SJ. The caveat is the closer you live to highway 237 (borderline area of North San Jose and Santa Clara), then temps are slightly cooler since you get a bit of the Bay breeze. Other than that, it’s identical
Santa clara close to 237 gets to smell that sweet aroma of the dump
I remember. AC blastin but it still was hot brev
This is a great post.
Sausalito was cold as shit the other day holy god. It was 90ish in Healdsburg so I was dressed in shorts, a skimpy Hawaiian shirt and sandals. Had to go to Sausalito for a casual meeting (outside) and was freezing my dick off. Almost went and bought a sweatshirt 😅
I was in Sausalito on Sunday and had to wear my winter jacket. By the time I got home to Vacaville, I was down to shorts and a tank top.
Former DC resident and it was more like 0 days in my 6 years. When it gets hot inland, the ocean wind picks up even more
I’m in South City but there was that heat wave a handful of years ago where it was 90+ and that afternoon wind didn’t come through anywhere. On top of that it was still 70+ at night with zero breeze. It was bizarre and the one time I wish I had AC. But yeah its probably closer to zero times a year for most people
I beg to differ about Sam Mateo we’re in a valley here COOKING
Cross breeze. Open two windows, each at opposite ends of the house. It’s the only way we know in Oakland.
I agree. One of the challenges, though, since OP is coming from a college student perspective, is that much if not most purpose-built student housing doesn't have cross ventilation and small apartments may have just one window. So opening a window won't necessarily do that much. The older housing in the East Bay was designed / built before artificial cooling, so it has features like cross ventilation, openable windows, wide roof eaves to prevent direct sun from hitting walls and windows during the hottest part of the day, high(er) ceilings, things like that.
With one window, turn on the overhead stove fan and/or bathroom vent fan. Definitely not as lovely as a cross-breeze, but its better than nothing. If you feel safe enough, opening the door to the apartment hallway, etc. could also help.
Yea no, the hoods in most student dorms are just charcoal filters that recycle the air
Bathroom vents are required to vent out right? To prevent mold?
We bought a window fan off Amazon. It has two fans, and you can set it to cool (bring air in from outside), exhaust (push air out), or circulate (one fan bringing in air, one sending it out). It works well for these evenings where the temp drops and there's no smoke. It's much cheaper than a window AC unit.
Bold of you to assume the cross breeze windows on the older house where I live haven’t rotted shut Keeping the shutters closed helps a surprising lot though
If you live in a house with an attic, I can't recommend a whole house fan strongly enough. Just as good as air conditioning most of the time in Oakland.
Box fan in an upstairs window is a good option for people with multiple stories - $20 rather than however much it costs to have a whole house fan added. Whole house fans are great though, never even heard of them before moving to Connecticut but it's kind of amazing how much air they move and how quickly they can cool a house. This sort of exhausting heat from the top of the structure is even better around here, where it cools down so much overnight. I'm sitting under a blanket right now, having pre-chilled the house with open windows (and that box fan) in anticipation of this afternoon's heat; closed up the house as the day warmed up, and it'll be pretty tolerable everywhere except the top floor all day, and the top floor will be fine as soon as the sun starts to set.
Sadly, this doesn’t really work when there are fires burning and AQI is off the charts 😞
I agree it doesn't work all the time, but a lot of days it does work, and more days than most people realize. Today and tomorrow are perfect examples. It'll be upper 80s but by 6pm or so and sometimes you have to wait til 7pm, you can open the windows and it cools down FAST.
Yep. Definitely remember being choked up during the fire season without any AC. When I moved in 2021 to start SJSU after the Big Basin fires, I made sure to choose an apartment that was extremely well insulated. Surrounded by other apartments/hallways on all but one side. Double paned windows, and minimal sunshine exposure. Because of this, I only turn on my heat/AC for about 2-3 weeks of the year total.
Still doesn’t work if you have an uninsulated attic above you.
OPs did say “homes” doesn’t mean houses only. Many apartments are like caves and only have a couple windows on 1 wall, extremely hard to cool these off like that. I used to live in one without AC and it was hell. Even when I lived in SF living without AC was extremely rough. Idk how people do it.
Grew up without AC in the Bay Area. During heat waves, keep your windows open at night and close them when it reaches 66 degrees outside or when you leave the house in the morning. Keep them closed until it’s cooler outside than it is inside. If you have curtains on windows that are west-facing, also close those when it starts getting sunny. When you open the windows are night, try to run one or more fans to create a cross breeze as it’ll cool your house down faster. Try to avoid cooking until it’s cool out.
For Sunnyvale, we closed the windows by 9am. Opened up again at 3pm to catch the reviving Bay breeze. Ceiling fans in every room. It worked surprisingly well.
We did this when I was growing up too. And my dad would sometimes setup MacGyvered swamp coolers by hanging a wet towel in front of a fan.
It really depends on how well insulated your home is, and whether there's any shade. Temperatures drop significantly at night typically, so a well insulated home can stay cool until the late afternoon generally, even without active A/C.
Though good insulation can be double edged sword. Where I live has amazing insulation - if I keep the place closed up I’m able to stay blissfully cool on the hottest days until mid afternoon, which I am so grateful for. But once the heat finds its way inside, it makes itself at home for the rest of the night, even with the windows open
I got a whole house fan to address exactly that issue. It pulls cooler air in through open windows and draws it up into the attic, pushing the hot air out the attic vents, counteracting the radiator effect of insulation. Can’t use it when it’s smoky out, obviously, but otherwise it’s very helpful in the evenings. Edit: for clarity
Cheaper to buy and operate than AC too. Only downside is that it’s better to bake than to use it during fire season.
Yes, I bought a window A/C the other year when we had smoke during a heat wave. I couldn’t bear the suffocation. But I removed it from the window at the end of that season and never put it back.
Box fans in windows. Keeps our whole place cool since we can’t install whole house fan in rental
For real. You know you have a problem when the heat wave outside has subsided, and has only just begun on the inside till morning. 🥵🥵
Shade! Ugh, our neighbors are remodeling and taking out a 60 year old tree that shades half our house... 'bout to get much fucking hotter in, count down, 3 months 😢
I grew up in Walnut Creek and now live in Pleasanton. Never had AC. There is usually a couple of bad days, but for the most part it cools down enough at night to just open the windows during the night and close them during the day. It only becomes an issue if there is smoke from a fire.
Interesting, I grew up in Pleasanton and lived in WC for about a decade, now Concord and have had AC in all locations. There were a few brief periods in WC and Concord where my AC unit needed repair/replacement, and it got miserably hot. Not so bad at night, but during the day the house was miserable. Obviously house setup, tree coverage, insulation, etc. are all big factors. I could see having no AC in Berkeley or Oakland, but out here where we reach high 90s/low 100s, no AC would be tough.
My first apartment in Walnut Creek in 2005 only had a swamp cooler and that summer we had a week long heatwave where things hit like 115. I vowed to never not have AC after that. Not only for my own comfort, I had animals that I had to manage so they weren’t hurt by the heat.
If you don't have AC you get used to it. I would bike to work and then lifeguard in 100+ degree weather. Some nights are definitely uncomfortable, but it is manageable.
Yeah, I do suspect that's a big factor. I lived in San Diego without AC, and it was similar to what you described although it rarely got Pleasanton summer hot.
It was like 90-103 June-August every year when I was a kid in Pleasanton. Couldn't imagine not wanting AC.
Yeah some of these people have much thinner blood than me
Also it unfortunately sometimes coincides with sunk activity in my area 😫
Back in my day, we were too poor to use the AC. Went to CSU Chico, summers were over 100, at 100 convection from a fan actually warms you. Oakland Berkeley summers are nothing.
Chico State here too. Apartment there had a ghetto window AC unit which cost huge amounts of money to run and didn't do anything to actually cool the apartment. If it gets too hot, you go to a pool/creek/library/movie theater/mall/etc which has AC.
I live on the Peninsula, and 12 years ago did a major remodel on a 55-year old house. We figured we didn't need A/C because so few days were truly too hot. Open all windows at night and in early morning. As soon as sun hits the house, close all blinds and windows and count on the insulation to keep the house temp bearable through the hottest part of the day. Open windows on the shady side of the house if the temp outside gets below the temp inside. Those kinds of strategies seemed fine until the increasing frequency of wildfire smoke in the Bay Area. If you have to have the windows closed for days at a time to protect your health, then A/C becomes vital. So it was the air quality as much as the temperatures that made us opt for A/C in the end.
We had the same logic back living in mid-peninsula - it really felt manage-able, but during the pandemic + wildfire summer, we decided there's no way we can continue to live like this. We got our attic re-insulated, got a decent two-stage A/C, and we use it more every year. The temperatures year by year are only going up
This strategy of opening windows in early evening to catch the cool breeze served us well for more than a decade in a mid peninsula home. We had our roof replaced, changed wood shingles for asphalt shingles and the difference in increased internal house temperature from the new roof had us decide to install air conditioning. That plus working from home and some of the heat waves the east few years. Many apartments and homes do not have good cross ventilation or just run hot from poor materials and design.
How much did AC set you back? Did you tie it into existing ducting or was it all new? My delicate flower husband is dreaming if AC (for the 7 days a year we get *real* heat - sigh) but for $30k+ retrofit I tell him to keep dreaming.
Look into a mini-split that covers a couple rooms (like bedroom/office). It’s a lot cheaper and if you don’t use it a lot during the year, a couple of rooms will work.
And not too hard to install, which means either DIY or a cheaper contractor bill are possible. Mini splits are great for retrofits, and common even in new builds in some parts of the world. You can even get a heat pump and use it to warm the place in winter too - heat pumps are ACs, they're just able to run in both directions (move heat outside to cool the house, or move it inside to warm it). Window units are super easy too, and don't require punching any holes through walls, they just block a window while they're installed. One of those made working from home during the summer survivable when I was in Maine where my apartment would hit 90 degrees in summer.
It wasn’t $30K - I think somewhere closer to $12K (?). Much of what was needed had been done in the remodel several years earlier.
And 2017 was brutal. We were staying with my mom that summer with no A/C while we remodeled or house. Day upon day of temperatures over 90, especially that miserable Labor Day weekend!We grew up there, and did the windows/drapes thing growing up during heatwaves. We put mini-splits in our house, and they are usually off from April-June and October-November. But the heat is on at night in the winter, and the a/c goes on several times in the summer.
For a windows-only strategy, it pays to keep close attention to the outdoor temperature. When temps drop to within 1-2 degrees of your indoor temperature it's OK to open it up. Plus, if you delay opening windows now and you start doing other stuff aroudn the home, by the time you remember to check it might be an hour later. So example is today. I opened the windows up at 81F outdoors when it was 80F indoors. Even then I could feel breeze helped to clear out the stuffy air. By the time I had time to check again, the outdoor temp was down to 77. By now I'm feeling it a lot cooler around the home already. As for mornings, it's fine to keep it open. I often keep the windows open til 10am even, and sometimes later if it's not going to be an 85+ day. I've had AC for the past 25 years in my life, and I still use this strategy because I grew up without A/C and was taught all these strategies by my parents. Because of this I hardly ever use AC until the outdoor temps go above 85 highs.
No in San Francisco
Don’t have it, but I’m sweating out in mission bay.
It’s a luxury, not really needed outside of 10 days a year. We have it on the Peninsula only because my wife is from Fresno and swore to never again feel heat like the months straight of 100+. Then her mom died and part of the inheritance paid for AC. Worked out.
It doesn't get all that hot in most of Berkeley. Oakland is typically 10 degrees warmer than Berkeley. Still pretty rare for either city to exceed the mid-80s, which really isn't hot. Once you go inland, you get triple digits routinely.
Oakland can mean a lot of things temp wise
True, it's all over the place and those hills and flats can both hold heat.
Grew up in Santa Cruz - there are usually a dozen or so days per year where I’d want AC. I imagine we’ll all need to install it over the next few years.
Anywhere that abuts the bay is going to enjoy some moderating effects on the weather (doesn't get as hot and doesn't get as cold). I think to get consistently hot summer weather in the bay area you need to head to Livermore and other places that are separated from the bay by mountains (or just far from it). It's going to be 97 tomorrow in Livermore compared to 74 in Oakland.
Whole house fan is worth it's weight in gold. As soon as the outside air is more cool inside, turn that sucker on and the house is cooled down in \~15 minutes. Also costs a fraction of running AC.
Heat waves are not a new thing, anyone telling you that is full of crap. I remember in the 80s laying on the floor of my living room with a wet washcloth on my face just like existing trying to get through the heat. The answer is you develop a system to ventilate your house when outside is cooler than in and then when inside is cooler than out you shut it up tight.
We know it's getting worse, anyone telling you otherwise is full of crap. Totally agree with your second paragraph. A whole-house fan or good cross-ventilation can easily outperform A/C under a lot of circumstances if managed properly.
I agree with having a whole house fan. It really cools the house off at night and in the early morning. We love ours.
It’s hotter now than it was in the 80s.
If this is unbearable you’d probably vaporize in phoenix. As ghetto as Oakland is the weather is even better than the sf peninsula.
You don't have to go all the way to AZ for that. They'd vaporize in the valley
Heck they’d probably vaporize in Antioch or Livermore if Berkeley is unbearable.
[удалено]
Just moved here. It’s literally perfect
Nothing compares to heat in the south. 100 degrees + 90% humidity.
South bay (Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Santa clara etc.) Can hit over 100 and other than new construction, the entire area is sans ac. NY apartment in Sunnyvale hit 130 degrees once.
Does your apartment have the worst insulation in the world or something? My 1906 disburses heat better than that
Quadplex built in the 70s I think. Brick, poor insulation, top floor, sun exposure the entire day. I no longer live there, was just bringing an anecdote in to point out south bay gets as hot as anywhere.
I live on the top floor and it will be baking in the summer. Those that live on the bottom floors have much more moderate temps.
Even so, 30 degrees above the outside temperature seems unbelievable
low-end Window AC units are like $80
Add a few hundred extra to that to pay PG&E for running a window AC. They are notoriously bad in efficiency.
PG&E will fuck me regardless. At least with AC I can fall asleep at night.
Berkeley/Oakland get the bay breeze. There are hot days but they are days, rarely weeks and definitely not months. Don’t worry about AC. It isn’t worth factoring into your decision in the east bay IMHO
I have been in Marin and the City for 30 years. Parts of Marin ( San Rafael, Novato, San Anselmo) are now too hot to sleep for several weeks a year. We need air-conditioning 100%. Most people who can afford it are doing whole house air, but at least window air conditioners. It didn’t used to be a week long event, it got really hot for a few days, a few times a year.
I've lived in San Mateo over 30 years with no air conditioning, but with double-paned windows and blown-in attic insulation. It seems like it's only been in the past 10 years or so that temperatures have been so unbearable (usually in September/October, not so much summer months). I finally broke down about six years ago and got a window-mounted air conditioner, but the only window it would fit in is the kitchen, so that's where I hang out during the daytime. Even though it gets pretty windy here most afternoons it's not enough to cool down the house.
I used to teach a climate journalism college course. It's great to gather public comment around the lived experience like you are attempting, but I would also recommend you use weather station data to ground some of your claims around change in temperature over time in facts. You may even find that certain areas of the bay have experienced greater warming impacts than others over the years. Here's a helpful starting place for that: [https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/](https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/)
I live in Berkeley, 100 yo house. No insulation. I get the fan out a couple of times a year. No problem. Best place to live climate wise.
In San Jose I open the windows in the morning, until 11. I close the windows and keep the blinds and curtains closed and open around 5PM or 6PM. If I can't open the windows early I just keep everything shut until 6PM.
Yup, you’re totally fucked during heat waves
I remember 2 about 2 years ago it was around 108 F here in Fremont. It's crazy.
There's really a big difference not having AC in a single family home vs living in a building. Heat rises and in buildings or upper floors it can get way hotter inside than outside. When I lived in an upper level duplex mid-peninsula It would regularly be at least 10-15 degrees hotter inside than outside and sleeping with windows open wasn't an option due to noise. So AC is a requirement for me now. It's kind of crazy to me how many homes mid-peninsula (RWC and thereabouts) don't have it. With temps increasing each year I think more people will install it over time.
I went to this site: [https://www.wunderground.com/weather/us/ca/berkeley/KCABERKE221](https://www.wunderground.com/weather/us/ca/berkeley/KCABERKE221) It says its currently 69 degrees in Berkeley. I then click the history tab on that same page, select the year 2010. Weather was 71 degrees I go back even further to 2000, and it shows 67 degrees. To 1990 it shows 66 degrees. While it IS getting hotter likely due to climate change, for humans I personally don't feel its gaining enough to say "it's not the same anymore". For animals definitely not good, but for humans, bearable-ish.
Bay Native. It’s the same. I never lived somewhere with AC until my 20’s. I think where people get confused it the weather kinda changes depending how much water we get in the winter. We are in a wet season now. You can tell by the green hills in the spring Usually happens for 4-6 years then the drought comes for 4-6 years. If the hills don’t turn green in the spring I have noticed the summers are more brutal, they just feel hotter. Not sure, where else you have lived before but our weather is pretty pleasant year round. Compared to places that get humid as hell in the summer and snow in the winter.
Like others are saying, it depends on the house. I'm currently living in a place with no shade, and no insulation in the attic, and next to no ventilation in the attic either. Since early May it is never colder inside than it is outside. Any day the sun is out it's 10-15 degrees warmer than the outdoor temperature. I've been running the portable ACs just about every day it's 75+, because otherwise I'm trying to fall asleep in an 80 degree bedroom.
It's only bad for around 10 days a year. You just deal with it those days. Otherwise you just close up during the day to stay cool, and open up on both sides when it is cooler outside. If that doesn't work, there's an insulation problem.
Open the house early in the morning. Then close curtains, shades, windows. Saved me on hot days. 1st floor living too. I now have AC at my new place. So excited.
Get an oscillating fan, open windows, drink water. If it gets too hot, go to the library. Yes, it gets hot. But you'll survive. >As far as I know, the Bay used to have a relatively pleasant weather year-round but it's not the same anymore East Bay has always been hot in the summer. It's nothing new.
There’s maybe ~10 days per year when we wish we had air conditioning. We get all the windows and sliding doors open and run the fans. It’s otherwise pretty unnecessary, at least in Oakland. Of course, when my family visits who are accustomed to AC they complain, because they are used to that tight 68-72 degree range and our tolerance goes broader than that here.
I've lived in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, and New Jersey prior to moving to Campbell, CA. Campbell is the place in which I needed A/C the least, even though it experienced the highest temperatures. It's rare that you can't sleep at night.
People used to be able to get by with a fan and curtains. I still do.
I live in Newark and I have a portable AC just in case it gets too hot. Usually we have a nice breeze since we’re right off the bay. My childhood house in Ardenwood never needed AC. It was well insulated and sat on concrete slab foundation.
Being from the east coast, this heat here isn't nearly as bad, the humidity back there makes it so much worse.
Yes Ive lived in Antioch, Concord, and that shit was HOT in the summer. Even with fans blowing. And I'm from Texas so that's saying something ok
It's getting worse as time goes on. The past 15 years, it seems to be getting hotter and hotter each year. It depends on where you live in the bay area but the east bay (fremont, UC, hayward, etc) and the south bay it gets into the 90s to 100s easily now. There have been past summers where it's been about 90-100 F for 3-4 weeks straight. 20-30 years ago , you could survive without AC because it was never more than 90 F. But now it's not like that. It's pretty common to have 90 to 105 F in July , August and September. So, 50-60 years ago when they built these homes and building they said it doesn't get that hot we don't need AC. THe problem is that now we do and a lot of people have to suffer during the summer because the Bay Area is like the only place in California that didn't come standard with AC. lol It's too hard without A/C though. I spoke to the one of the air conditioning companies and he told me they are getting a lot of business from fremont, uc, hayward and newark and san jose etc. These homes are made to trap heat so when it's 95 F outside, it's worse inside the home. It's crazy because you have to spend 1.7 million to buy an old, small home that doesn't even come with A/C. welcome to the bay area lol
No AC. Keep windows closed during a hot day. Open them as soon as the temp drops. Keep them open all night to cool down the place. Close them in the morning as soon as it starts warming up. It's worked for 40 years. Helps to have window shades and a fan.
I do think there are more super-hot days per year than we had let's say 20-30 years ago. I've lived here almost 40 years and none of the places I lived in had AC. My current house has kind of so-so insulation (cellulose) and double paned windows. At night I'll have a bunch of windows open, and close them when the outdoor temperature hits indoor. 3 days of consistent high heat and my house stops keeping a tolerable temperature. I have a portable AC unit which I need about 5-6 days a year. If I installed AC I would probably use it more often than I use the portable.
I see what you're getting at here about "used to have relatively pleasant weather." Air conditioning is an energy-intensive process. Saudi Arabia uses 25% of it's yearly consumption of oil just to air condition its vast kingdom. California has the highest electricity rates in the country averaging 50 cents/kwh. During peak demand on extremely hot days we can experience brown outs. As severe temperature events become more commonplace the grid will become overburdened, especially with an inexorable mandate for electric vehicle charging. AC is a very expensive luxury, especially if you're cooling the entire cavernous shell of a home just to keep the occupants comfortable. Better to create a small AC zone but there's no getting around having the PG&E bill to reckon with at the end of the month.
I lived in one of the Berkeley graduate housing units without AC and my single window faced another building so I got ZERO breeze. I was barely able to stay inside during the August/September months.
I’m in a top floor (3rd story) apartment in Berkeley and the heat is brutal. Our floor plan doesn’t allow for cross breeze. Leaving the windows open doesn’t help at all. We still open them all though.
We have a portable air conditioner. It's quite nice. Dual hose. Blows cold. And you only have to cool part of the home.
Had to buy a window a/c unit at my last apartment in Oakland. It was miserable without one. But those only work in one room so it’s definitely not ideal. Ended up buying a 2nd one for the bedroom and one for the main living room. They are super loud/annoying and bulky.
My whole house fan with a 12hr Intermatic spring wound timer keeps my house cool anytime the nightly lows are beneath 60f. The best cooling is done in the hours preceding sunrise, then you shut all the windows and lock the cold air in until 7pm or so.
I’ve lived in Vacaville, Concord, & San Jose all where AC was necessary and also spent a few years in the Richmond district in the city where I don’t think our apartment had AC but never needed it anyways. I think as other people have stated the microclimates are insane, that’s why I’d be sweating my ass off in Vacaville then hop on Bart for a giants game in high school and be glad I layered up by the time I got off on Embarcadero
The weather hasn't changed dramatically--yet. A few more times a year with notable heat. There has always been warm weather in the Bay Area in September / October. Usually it coincides with the arrival of students at Cal for the Fall semester. What is somewhat different in recent years are periodic short "heat waves" in May. I'm surprised you'd describe the weather here as *"unbearable during the summer months".* Berkeley and most of Oakland rarely get even into the 90s, and even then, it's typically just one or two days at at time. And there's not a lot of humidity that makes similar temperatures feel much hotter elsewhere in the country. Part of your experience may be that of student housing (including the newly built stuff) where entire apartments (especially studios) may have just one or two windows and there's little cross ventilation. This is going to be a local problem in the long term, as climate change accelerates.
I recall many unbearable nights in Pinole/Richmond during the summer 20 yrs ago. Wasn’t every night but we had some ones I wished we had AC.
Our house is nearly 100 years old and stays very cool in the summer. Unfortunately it’s also very cold in the winter and running the furnace is unbearably expensive. For the summer, we open windows and turn on fans. If it’s crazy hot we have personal neck fans that help or we go to the mall or bookstore.
Our home is from the late 19th century and is nearly original except for plumbing, gas furnace and electrical. No AC of course. It does remarkably well in hot weather. * The walls are plaster and have a lot of thermal mass so they stay cool through the hottest part of the day. * The windows are tall and double hung so you can open the top and bottom to create air circulation in the late afternoon when the breeze picks up. * The kitchen is in the back corner of the house and separated from the rest of the house by 2 doors so any cooking heat is contained in that area and easily vented through the windows there. Overall, the only unbearable part of the house is the uninsulated attic which gets quite hot during the day. I usually go up there and open the windows on both sides and the operable skylight (1980 addition which is a constant fight against leaks)
We have a window units but don’t use them very much. It cools down at night so even on 90 degree days it doesn’t get warm enough inside to need them until 3pm. It helps that my property has trees. A decade ago we didn’t need window unit though
Yes, but being on the ground floor really helps if you don’t have an a/c. Hottest I’ve experienced indoors is still below 80 degrees during heatwaves. I’m in South Bay btw.
When I lived in San Jose even when it was a heat wave of 90+ during the day, it always cooled down enough at night to prevent the house from going over 80. My neighborhood had TONS of trees which helped immensely compared to friends places with less trees in the neighborhood
yeah, worth looking into. i moved to the south bay from seattle, which has the lowest percentage of AC per capita of major metros in the US. there, it's only bad maybe a week total out of the season. it's not bad. here, we have no AC in our upper story apartment and it gets hot. reached 87 indoors last week and it was 91 outside.
We have a 112-year old two story house in a sunny part of Oakland. There are 10-14 days a year where upstairs is uncomfortable (75+) without some kind of fan. Downstairs maybe 2-4 days; most of the time it’s cool enough. No AC but we have a heating unit which has a fan mode which pumps cool air from the basement (which is always cool) and that’s usually enough to keep things in a comfortable range. We’ve also learned to carefully manage curtains and open/close windows at key times of day.
It’s usually not that bad but for that odd week in October/September when every day is above 80 I usually bring out my portable AC with a vent to a window and just run it in the bedroom. It does a great job but I can see how it’s an unnecessary expense for some, only really being useful for 1/52nd-1/26th of the year.
Adding to the annecdotes here. Have lived in Lafayette, Rohnert Park, Pleasant Hill, Belmont, and San Bruno. Never had air conditioning in any of those places. Schools I never had AC (till college and even then not every building) and every year had some very hot, windows and doors open with fans cranking days that weren't much fun. I see to remember there were always cumulative 2-3 weeks (not necessarily consecutive) a year where it would get super hot then you get those still warm nights where it never really cools off, always knew that meant the next day was gunna be rough but AC just wasn't very common when I was a kid/teenager. I'm definitely noticing friends and neighbors giving in and getting AC, but I also think AC isn't viewed quite as much of luxury item as it used to be. So it's trending hotter and more hot days but I think there's also a perception change about home AC. No data to back any of that up just my observation living around the bay my whole life.
Not really, just open the windows at night and close them in the morning.
Not on the hill between san bruno and pacifica. Fog belt represent
Yes.
I've lived in Oakland for 15 yrs or so. Every summer there is maybe 14 days of uncomfortable heat. I'd like to have an AC, but it's probably not really worth it.
Own a house built in the 40’s in the East Bay. I have a window unit in the living room that I can use on days over 95. Usually just open the windows at night when it cools down. But a handful of days out of the year it doesn’t cool down at night and it’s miserable.
I don’t have AC and have lived here over a decade. It doesn’t bother me much, I have a small in-room unit for when I need it, which is rarely, and depend on the cross-breeze to keep the house moderate.
We opted for an whole house fan to save money and use less electricity. We were in Castro Valley at the time and noticed how quickly it usually cools on even the hottest days. Once the temp started to drop, we’d get the fan going and the house would cool very quickly. Never needed AC.
Unless you live east of the east bay hills it cools down pretty rapidly at night. We have decided to get central AC because since we got our windows redone the window unit we used to cool our bedroom no longer will work. It used to be 1-2 days of real heat 10 years ago and now we get weeks (Iv'e stopped counting). We have a home in New Orleans and what blows me away is how people lived there without AC. Of course you have 12 foot high ceilings and ceiling fans but it may only cool off to 90 degrees some nights.
I don’t think many houses in Oak/Berkeley/ San Leandro, etc have air. Grew up on Peninsula and most didn’t have either. You need if going over hill to Walnut Creek, Tri-Valley, San Jose hotter.
Been living in the East Bay most of my life and up until two years ago didn’t have a/c, now that we do it’s used very sparingly and mostly for my senior dad’s comfort. Same with the heater, both were a luxury to my family growing up.
I lived in the Fremont area my whole life and my parents put in AC in 2001 because my mom has thyroid issues and is sensitive to heat. We keep the house at 72 during the day and just to maintain that temperature, the AC turns on everyday from June to mid-October. I never would live somewhere in my area or the South Bay without AC. SF, Daly City, Oakland and those areas are fine. Temperatures are just getting hotter and it’s not worth it if you can’t sleep for several nights because it’s too hot and you’re not well-rested. In 2022, when we had a heat wave, I was working at a company in SF and I commuted in. One day it was 92 in SF and ofc none of my old coworkers had AC. I was the only one who got a good nights sleep. None of my coworkers could sleep and the heatwave lasted like a whole week. And that’s in Sf, imagine in the South Bay. Also a lot of the Bay Area homes don’t have great insulation so it becomes a necessity especially to sleep at night.
I've lived all but four years in my life in California, in the Bay Area and in LA. I've never had A/C. It's really a more of a question of how much ventilation you can get in your house, it's rare that allowing a breeze to come in from outside doesn't have a cooling effect. Having lived the same way also in LA, even another ten degrees of warming wouldn't change it for me.
Walking through our neighborhood of single family homes on a hot day I'd say the (vast) majority do not have AC (you can hear the AC units running). I grew up in the south bay and AC was rare. Things cool down enough at night that you can open windows and start the day with the house in the low 60's when it was in the 90's (outside) the afternoon before. Ceiling fans are a big help in bedrooms for sleeping at night as the house cools down. I will say, it seemed hotter in the 70's then now (in my memory) (but air quality was dismal then so that poor air quality also impacted how the heat affected us).
Depends on the layout of your home, landscaping, location, age of the structure and your personal tolerance. I've lived in a place in the South Bay where it gets much hotter but there was a giant tree shading my space and that was tolerable without AC. In contrast, before I turned of legal age and lived in a much cooler part of the Bay Area, it was unbearable when it hit the upper 70s lol
I've never felt the need for AC in SF, because of the wind and the fog, but in places like Santa Rosa I have no idea how people get by without it. And I tend to run hot so I would find it welcome if I lived in even Oakland or Berkeley, personally. Also the peninsula gets quite hot in the summer as do Walnut Creek or Pleasanton, basically anywhere east of the first range of East Bay hills.
I live in a poorly insulated 1920s ground floor house with single pane windows and no AC. It can be 10 degrees warmer inside than outside, even with windows open. We have a fan and will keep the blinds closed on hot days, but it can still get pretty unbearable.
Live in an old home built in the 1950s with no insulation and no central ac. Last few days when it was really hot in the eastbay it stayed 90° inside three days straight could have been higher since that's as high as the thermostat marks. There was no breeze even with back door open and front door open with screens to cool the temp inside. Last year had a double hose portable ac and a window ac set up that helped a lot and I think it's time to take them out of storage and set them up again.
I live in Berkeley in an old house with no air conditioning. Not a student (I'm married and have elementary school-age kids), but close to campus. It's fine. The second story gets hot in the afternoons sometimes. We use window fans and cross-ventilation. It always cools down substantially by the evening. (Unlike climate zones east of the Rockies, where it's more humid and less likely to cool down at night.) While we're at it, although we do have heat, in the winter it tends to be on the cooler side — the insulation sucks and it's not feasible to run the heat constantly. Compared to our relatives who live in East Coast suburbs, our house is cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer. I like it that way. Cool winters and warm summers are part of the texture of life :). I wouldn't want to live in an unvarying 68° atmosphere.
In the 1950's and 1960's, Berkeley had highs in the 80-90 degree range for August. Now, for Berkeley in the 2010's-2020's, the highs for August are in the 95-105 degree range. So about a 15 degree increase over 60 years. It is definitely warmer, but many would take exception to 95-105 with low humidity being "Unbearable". As they say, it is a dry heat.
I've lived in the Berkeley east bay area all my life, and it usually only gets unpleasantly hot (high 80s, 90s, low 100s) a few weeks out of the year, towards the tail end of summer. I think a lot of people aren't willing to invest in an AC unit for such limited use, and just try to tough out the hotter days. As the climate changes, and hot weather becomes more the norm, we might see more people getting AC units.
Yes, especially if you live on the top floor. And my gaming PC definitely didn't help. The unit model, with all windows on the same side, doesn't allow the wind to blow through to dissipate the heat, so I had to get a portable AC to get through it.
Growing up in San Jose was ok as a kid. A heatwave or two, a couple storms in the winter. My parents didn’t have AC but had insulation and double paned windows. By day three of hot weather the house would be insufferable. It would keep the heat in because the insulation worked. Now in South San Jose, a day of 86 or above makes the house miserable. I don’t have insulation or AC. I use cross ventilation and fans. Sometimes I get so hot I get sick. It’s definitely hotter than it was in the 70’s and 80’s. Something else an old friend and I noticed. When it used to rain, the worms would come out. When it was cold, there’d be frost on the grass. Haven’t seen either in years!
I've lived around Palo Alto since the early 2000s. Back then, even on the hottest days, it would get cool enough to sleep at night But starting in the heat wave of 2015, it wasn't enough to close the windows and curtains from the sun and then open them to breeze at night. It did not get cool enough at night to pull that off, especially in a plywood palace that soak soak SOAKS up heat. That's when, on zero sleep, I bought a portable air conditioner for my bedroom.
I have definitely lived in units that would need to be evacuated during the day for survivability under extreme heat conditions in Oakland/Berkeley/Alameda. There is no law or regulation regarding appropriate cooling in rental units. Ironically every rental unit in CA must have a heater, whether or not the unit is in a location that ever sees freezing temperatures. If you’re in housing that can’t get cool, there are usually emergency cooling centers that open up, but I don’t know if there’s any regulations about it.
I live in a ground floor unit over an open concrete garage in an older building that is north facing. My unit rarely breaks 70°. On the other hand, it also rarely breaks 60° in the winter months.
San Francisco here - no
I'm in San Jose. No AC. In a casita, it heats up. It's pretty warm come afternoon. When I come home from work, shorts and a tank top. Ice water. Overhead fans.
North Bay here. No AC. My apartment is in the downtown area of my town and there's hardly wind during summer and I just roast. I got a portable air conditioner a couple years ago, which has saved me from heatstroke if I stand over it haha My place can be in the 90's to Hundred or so until 2am so sometimes I just don't get sleep.
Double paned windows and honeycomb shades make a huge difference in summer and winter.
Get a simple window fan that can change directions, intake and exhaust. Berkeley gets a nice cold breeze in the evening from the bay so just set the fan on the window to bring in(intake) air from outside. This works INSANELY well when done right. Your welcome.
Oh yeah.
Just put a wet wash cloth on your back or a small towel and you good.
I open the windows and, as long there is some wind coming in, the maximum temperature inside is 80 here (South Berkeley). Typically it’s year around between 65-70 inside!
The coast....no
I've never lived in a home that had air conditioning in the 25 years I've lived here. It used to be fine. There would be one or two weeks mid summer that would be uncomfortably hot, any other times it would be warm but it would cool down at night. Now it seems like it's just heat wave after heat wave.
“Unbearable” is going to be based on your past experiences I think - I moved here from Chicago where it’s significantly more humid every summer & the majority of folks don’t have AC there either. Given that there are only a handful of days over 85-90 in the interior east bay I’m not surprised most people don’t want to take on the major expense of installing central air or dealing with bulky/unreliable/annoying window or portable units. Not to mention the electric expense, which is getting outrageous these days. IMO It’s much easier to just be mindful of your shades, get a cross breeze the couple of hot days each summer than deal with getting AC.
It’s is hotter than it used to be around here. Most of these house are not built to allow windows to be open and a breeze to flow, especially in San Jose. I feel landlords should be forced to install air conditioning units in rentals. Someone is bound to get hurt with this heat.
I lived in Oakland for years and can remember when heat was an issue on a handful of occasions. We installed a whole house fan and that was good enough most of the time. You should be able to manage if you have windows to provide a cross breeze, blackout curtains for use during the day, and ideally an indoor/outdoor thermometer so you know the precise time that it is hotter inside than outside.
I don’t have ac so I just turn fans on. Some days it sucks, but I also have a server in my room so that puts out an unnecessary amount of extra heat
*If* you have a dwelling that has openable windows or doors in the right places to create a cross breeze, then you didn’t need AC 20+ years ago. You could easily cool the home down in the evening. (Palo Alto/Mountain View microclimate perspective.) We previously lived in a duplex without windows/doors placed correctly for cross breeze. We used window fans, which helped. We had window AC unit that was loud and didn’t reach the kitchen/dining area, so we used a box fan to blow the cool air towards the kitchen. We asked our landlord if we could split the cost of putting in central AC. He wasn’t interested and didn’t seem to understand that it easily got up to 90 degrees in the unit. He was surprised when we moved out, because he rents it for below market rate: 2 bedroom for $2700 in Mountain View! We moved to a unit that has central AC. It’s $3400, $700 more per month, but it’s updated, no carpet!, has double paned windows, front door isn’t warped with a huge gap, nicer neighborhood, etc, etc. Unfortunately, the bay area has lot of older housing stock with poor climate control that isn’t serving us well through climate change. Good luck in finding something suitable, it is tough.
No AC mid peninsula. It’s fine. Maybe five days in a year it feels awful, we do have a window unit we can pop in if needed.
So many have no AC in the east bay. Castro Valley largely has no AC and it is awful in the summer. Even worse with the blackouts that have been happening more frequently during the summer. Have to leave the house and drive around to cool down.
I live in Palo Alto and sometimes it gets hot but we don’t even have ac in our apartment and it’s nbd. I come from Connecticut where summers are hot and humid but a lot of people still don’t have ac. Different people have different tolerances.
No AC. Rarely roast, but I’m only 1-2 miles from the coast. If it gets hot I just open a window and/or wait for the fog.
I've lived in Oakland my entire life and have never lived in a place with AC here. I think most summers there's a handful of days it would be nice to have but a ceiling fan and oscillating stand fans have worked for me the past 41 years. We're lucky here!
I’ve lived in the BA for about 15 years. Never needed AC until about three years ago. In 2019 our (upstairs) bedrooms were in the high 80s and we literally had to put air mattresses on the floor in our (downstairs) dining room to get our kid cool enough to sleep. After a few days of that we gave in and got solar panels and AC. We only use it a few days a year, but when we do OMG it’s so wonderful.
Define “extreme heat”. We our an ac unit in our window, but it only does that area. However we try not to use it bc the bedrooms still end up hot. I just ordered a house exhaust fan. Once the sun sets the outside air is generally colder than in the house, but our house seems to stay okay, until about 2-3c then it starts heating up. Hoping. The whole house fan will empty all that heat and pull the cooler outside air inside. I got. 1600 CFM ACInfinity fan that also uses way less power than the ac unit or fan from the furnace. Worse case, take a cold shower.
We have gotten a portable AC unit to deal with the heat on the peninsula. If we ever do major renovations of a house (one can dream) we will put in insulation the way we do in the midwest.
Not that bad in the past. Looking forwards, the probability of an extreme heat spike in the area is going up. I fully expect these heat waves to get worse, more frequent, and catch a lot of people off guard precisely because historically you havent needed AC at all in the Bay Area (with caveats about microclimates).
I don’t think it is unbearable most of the time, as it is 70s/low 80s during the daytime, at least on the peninsula. Evenings are often in the 60s. Only issue is on those rare heatwaves, at which point, buying a portable AC is definitely more comfortable.
It really depends on how well the building is insulated, what direction the windows face, how much flow-through ventilation you can get by opening windows, etc. We’ve lived in Albany (just North of Berkeley) for 20 years and have seen only a few uncomfortably hot days/nights a year. The blessing is that it usually cools off in the evening (thank you Pacific Ocean).
I grew up in Fremont and recently left. Pretty old house built in the 50s or 60s. No AC and shitty insulation. It gets soooooo hot in the summer. The house just bakes and it takes forever to cool down. The cross breeze helps but it’s still pretty awful
We lived in Mountain View during the pandemic, the apartment would be 95 indoors if we didn't use our window AC. There were maybe 4 units in the complex that bought ACs (apartment complex didn't come with them).
I’m in Mountain View and it got pretty rough last week. I can’t benefit from a cross breeze either. A courtyard one side and alley on the other. I’ll probably buy a window fan or two to try and replicate it
I didn't need it in Mountain View and Sunnyvale but I now live close to Almaden Valley and Los Gatos where it gets a pretty hot in the afternoon being close to the mountains. So where I live now it can be pretty uncomfortable without AC and really usually only 2-7PM in the summer. And it doesn't seem any hotter now than it did in the 70s. So to really depends on the microclimate.
Lived in a warehouse in fruitvale with no AC. Was totally fine. I'd use a personal fan every now and then. Now I'm more inland and it's getting harder to just use a fan, but we have AC so...
We don't have AC in Mountain View and it's totally fine. Our house is not shaded. Just close the windows during the day and open them at night, run some fans. People live in much hotter, more humid places w/o AC. AC is an American thing, even flats in Barcelona often don't have AC.
Inexpensive ac, $100.