07 | July | 2010 | If By Yes

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I don’t do heat. I grew up in the Caribbean, and am therefore not used to it.

Stay with me, here.

Air conditioners are pretty ubiquitous on places like Curaçao. We had air conditioning in every room of our house, and some people had open-plan houses… with an air conditioner in every bedroom. In the Caribbean, once you can afford food for your family and a roof over your head, the next thing you buy is an air conditioner.

When we moved back to Canada my parents were like “Pfft, who needs an air conditioner in Nova Scotia?”

…We survived one summer.

That fall saw a heat pump being installed into our house, and my parents have had air conditioning ever since.

My new best friend. He ain't pretty, but he's COOL.

When Perfect Husband and I bought this house, we knew we couldn’t survive another summer without air conditioning, especially now that we had a two-story house with absolutely no air circulation system. So before HST kicked in we went out and spent money we didn’t have on an air conditioner.

Because we didn’t have much money, and because our Strata bylaws prohibit window air conditioners for aesthetic reasons (never mind that all of our fences lean crazily and the slats blow in the breeze, but anyhoo), we picked up a portable unit which blows the hot air out of the window via a massive hose which is invisible from the outside but ghastly from within.

It’s complicated. It’s hideous. It’s our new best friend. We’ve discovered that the dehumidifier function alone works to cool the room nicely, since it still blows hot air outside in this mode, and for really severe nights we turn it to full air conditioning and shiver under the duvet delightedly.

But possibly our favourite thing about this air conditioner is its instruction manual. Remember how we didn’t have much money? Well, we got what we paid for, which was an English translation so fantastic that Babel Fish would be put to shame: