If you’re in the right place, the heat pumps [reverse cycle] are very efficient. Most have a resistive electric back-up if the temperature gets too cold, but that rarely happens.

Don’t care about cost! Need sleep! 😉

The ceiling fans help a lot with air conditioning, but you can’t get the cleansing effect of outside air.

You know, Melbourne was regarded for years to be *THE* place to live. One of the reasons was the mild climate we enjoyed. Summer rarely went above low 30’s C, and winter rarely went below 5C. And the changes were gradual. Not any more. One day can be 24, and the next 46! And we rarely had high humidity also, a few days in Jan/Feb was a bout it. Now we get high humidity from Dec to Feb for a few days to a week at a time. The biggest problem is the nights now. We have had several nights with temp’s above 24C. One night a couple weeks ago, the temp was 31C and very humid.

Body no sleep, gets grumpy! Bad!

We never really needed an A/C unit before. We have ceiling fans and they were good enough. We just ordered an A/C a couple weeks ago. They are hard to find, everywhere is sold out. And the Gov is going nuts over the power drain! They just raised the cost of electricity here 6% because we have to buy power from interstate to handle the Summer load.

The body doesn’t like that.

Seeing as how I’m a gentleman… no comment! 😉 LOL

@ Bryan: I live in Melbourne, which is the southern coast of mainland Australia. We have had temps in the mid 40’s in early Jan. And the humidity here is classed as sub-tropical. We are a LONG way from the tropics! The weather bureau says this is the hottest, driest Jan on record for us. And our winters are warmer. The UV here is classed as ‘extreme’ (LadyMin can tell attest to that from when she came for a Holiday a couple years ago). 🙂

This is a trend that has been growing over the past decade roughly. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like in a few more years! May have to migrate to Tasmania or Finland. 🙂

We also seem to be getting huge swings in temperature. Was 65F two weeks ago. A few days ago it was -6F when I left for work.

And it’s true, I complain a lot about the weather. 🙂

It doesn’t get as cold as it did when I was a child, but the rain and cold hang around around now for extended periods. I’m assuming the jet stream is coming further South and pulling these storms into the area, which is sucking water out of the Gulf and dumping it on us.

There’s a La Niña off the coast of Peru, which used to mean a warmer, dryer winter, but that’s definitely not what we have.

I noticed that the typhoons seem to be stronger down in your area.

Things are messed up.

37-40°C is not unusual for our summers, so you guys are having a nice spring.

Oh well… There’s NO global warming you know! This is all a dream…

…can I wake up now? Please??!

LOL

Let’s hope it doesn’t get as messy as occurred in Britain – what a sewer.