Where I live, spring starts really early.
And that’s fine by me.
Having dabbled with real winter, I’ll stick to the southern variety. For us, winter is a time to celebrate the best weather. Sure, we get a few days that get chilly and maybe have to bring in the plants a handful of nights. But the heat pump doesn’t really get much work in the winter. Again, that’s fine by me. I spent 4 consecutive winters that were the coldest, harshest months of my life. There wasn’t enough gas furnace heating to keep me really cozy during that time. So I know just how fortunate I am to live where I do. That said, there is a weather balance as part of the deal. And spring is the first indicator that the balance will be due soon. I love having these awfully mild winters for sure. But it comes with a level of heat and humidity during the summer months that is oppressive. And that’s why the heat pump is king around here. For many folks, they crank the air conditioning about now and leave it cranking until November. God bless them because that just has to be so expensive. In our house, we start our HVAC cooling savings now. Instead of hitting the thermostat for HVAC cooling, we open the windows and the doors. Getting acclimated to the rising temperatures is a major part of the plan when it comes to saving on HVAC cooling. By resisting the urge to just go straight into a bunch of HVAC cooling, we wait. So when the temperatures do hit that phase where they are hovering around a hundred degrees for four months straight, some HVAC cooling is great. However, we don’t have to keep the thermostat setting to where the air conditioning runs non stop either.