What do you do when you battle the Texas heat but want to live in an igloo?
You buy mini-splits.
The battle for the thermostat has been all the rage for a while in our house. I am a lizard, born from the fires of Texas summers and do my runs in the afternoons. On the other hand, my husband has Canadian blood that runs through his veins, and its icy touch causes him to sweat when it’s in the 60s.
In the previous house we lived in, he secretly set the thermostat to be about 5 degrees colder than whatever it was set to, so if we compromised at 70, it was actually 65. I didn’t know this until years later after we had moved out.
But the new house we moved into came with an AC that couldn’t keep up with the size of the house. So when mini-splits became available, my husband got himself HVAC certified and thus began our adventures of installing mini-splits into every room in our house.
Every. room.
We started with the bedroom, as that was the main source of issue. He went cheap on the drill bit—because it was made for wood and not brick it smoked up the room and basically became a one-time-use bit. After that he spent the money and purchased the monster drill bit.
Then it was the sunroom, the offices, the shed, and finally, the guest room. Currently, the shed and guest ones are waiting to be hooked up, but the ones that are up and running are highly efficient. When we got them I thought I was in for the long haul of great coldness, ready to swaddle with electric blankets in the summertime.
But did you know, you can have the heat up in one room while chilling another room in the house? So the Snowman gets his snow and the Lizard lives in her desert. It’s lovely. I’m not going to say that mini-splits save marriages, but it might be cheaper than being miserable for the rest of time warring over the weather.
Something to consider.