We’re too cool for air conditioning, until it gets too hot

We like to tell people we don’t need air conditioning. We are the land of the Instagram-perfect Northwest summer, right?

That is until an “excessive heat warning” comes across our smartphones and The New York Times points out how ill-equipped our area is for this, in terms of air conditioning.

For more context, there’s this:

A PEMCO Insurance survey in 2015 showed 59 percent of Washington and Oregon residents live without air conditioning.

Of the 39 percent who have central air, only 51 percent of that group say they use it regularly, according to the survey.

And, no surprise, homes in Oregon are more likely to have air conditioning than in Washington: 46 percent and 32 percent, respectively.

Those south of our state are about on par with us, though, in how often they use their homes’ AC.

“Maybe AC is like umbrellas in the Northwest — true locals don’t need them!” Jon Osterberg, PEMCO spokesman, said in a news release announcing the results at the time.

Tell that to the “true locals” this week.

Expected highs in Tacoma on Wednesday and Thursday are in the 90s, while the forecast for Salem, Oregon, for Wednesday called for 109 degrees, and 107 on Thursday.

HOTELS

Many people apparently have no problem leaving their sweltering hot-box homes for hotels.

By Tuesday afternoon, rooms were hard to come by in Tacoma based on an informal round of calls to hotels’ front desks.

Silver Cloud had one room left, whereas Courtyard by Marriott Tacoma Downtown said it was busy, but with its normal amount of visitors and conference traffic. It anticipated a full house most of the week.

Sue Braaten, manager of the Best Western Wesley Inn & Suites in Gig Harbor, said the hotel “absolutely had seen more people, quite a few older people,” seeking rooms to beat the heat.

Best Western Lighthouse Suites Ocean Shores said its traffic still was normal for this time of year, with “August always being the busiest and hottest,” according to a guest representative who declined to be identified.

Ocean Shore’s Shilo Inn reported being at 85 percent capacity, and vacancies disappearing quickly through rest of the week, with the first slowdown in booked rooms not until Sunday.

INSTANT AC AT HOME

In the PEMCO survey, 24 percent of residents said they avoided getting too used to air conditioning because of the cost.

That goes out the window, though, when we start to see see triple digits and “cooling centers” amid the heat warnings.

Pinching pennies when trying to stay cool at this point could land you in serious health trouble in a heat wave of this proportion.

A check of area stores Tuesday showed a few air conditioning units still available at places such as Home Depot, but several models were marked out of stock.

Tacoma’s Walmart was sold out of its stock by Tuesday morning. Gig Harbor’s Target was down to just a few window units, which could be out the door by the time you read this.

Tacoma Public Utilities, braced for this week’s increase in power usage, said it has enough electric supply to meet the increased demand of all those newly purchased window units.

Same with Peninsula Light.

“We will see just a little bit of uptick but the vast majority of our customers are residential and most do not have AC,” said Jacqueline Goodwill, Peninsula’s communications/public relations manager.

“We see far bigger power loads during winter from heaters,” she added.

LONG-TERM INVESTMENT?

Any chance new housing, with high ceilings, plentiful windows and skylights, will suddenly have AC like every home in Texas?

Depends on the asking price.

Michael Orbino, managing broker with John L. Scott, said that in the new construction in higher priced areas around Seattle, he’s seeing more air conditioning as a standard feature.

On the resell side, adding air conditioning “is more of a personal preference, but not a standard retrofit,” based on what he’d seen.

A survey earlier this year showed millennials in our area inclined to add AC.

For many builders, with the costs rising for land, labor and materials, the margins aren’t as good for making an initial AC investment, but in the $900,000 to $1.4 million construction range, “people expect it as standard.”

“Look, we’ve always had three miserable days in summer here, and we used to deal with it like, ‘It’s fun. It’s like camping,’ ” Orbino said Tuesday.

California transplants, buying these higher-priced homes, aren’t down with that coping mechanism.

“These people are used to (air conditioning),” he said, “and they’re not just asking for it, but expecting it.”

This story was originally published August 1, 2017 at 3:37 PM with the headline "We’re too cool for air conditioning, until it gets too hot."