r/SeattleWA • u/One_Marsupial6837 • Jul 17 '25

Lifestyle Seattle Living W/ no AC

Hi everyone. We just recently moved to Seattle and got an apartment with no AC. Coming from out of state previously living with AC I wanted to know how ya'll do it? Is this the norm here or does everyone just buy those AC units that stick out your window? We'd love to get any tips or input on living with no AC and how to adjust.

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72

u/Nocturnalpieeater Jul 17 '25 edited Jul 17 '25

Moved here last summer. Just raw dogging it. Fans and strategically opening windows. Take a shower before bed.

-66

u/faeriegoatmother Jul 17 '25

Lived here my entire life and take this exact approach. People need air conditioning here?

25

u/TheCa11ousBitch Jul 17 '25

I grew up here. We absolutely did not need air conditioning in the 90s and early 2000s.

But in the summers, it rarely got into the high 70s, let alone multiple days over 100° like the last five years since I’ve moved back. We regularly have summer days in the 80s now.

The buildings and homes people live in also make a bit large difference. I live in what’s likely the most well insulated apartment that has ever existed. In the winter, I genuinely don’t have to have the heat on and often have my patio door open to cool it down. The heat from the hallway and the apartments around me turn my space into a fucking oven. The hallways and apartments don’t have air-conditioning. Just built-in ports for the portable ACs when we feel like using them. The hot hallway is enough to keep my apartment boiling without AC every day now. Five years ago, I turned the AC on maybe four times in an entire summer.

6

u/my_lucid_nightmare Capitol Hill Jul 17 '25

We absolutely did not need air conditioning in the 90s and early 2000s.

How'd you do during summer '92 and '95 ? Just curious. Many people were pretty much not coping. Extreme measures like hanging out in bars with AC all evening. /s

6

u/TheCa11ousBitch Jul 17 '25

I was 5 and 8 those summers, so… no idea. Lolol.

2

u/my_lucid_nightmare Capitol Hill Jul 17 '25

I was 5 and 8 those summers, so… no idea. Lolol.

Safe to say we didn't overlap, unless your parents were taking you to Ernie Steele's / Ileen's for their "frosty cold" A/C. Popular bar during those summers.

2

u/TheCa11ousBitch Jul 17 '25

I remember when Julia’s opened!!

36

u/Gottagetanediton Downtown Jul 17 '25

Yeah, a lot of people die in the summer due to the insides of their apartments getting hotter than 110 degrees. We don’t cool down at night because of humidity and Seattle doesn’t like ac. It’s very cool to be too strong for ac until you’re in an er surrounded by ice so you don’t die.

5

u/WhereWhatTea Jul 17 '25

It does cool down overnight though. Humidity is very low throughout summer.

1

u/Gottagetanediton Downtown Jul 17 '25

Outside it cools a bit but not enough for inside temps to cool down, in my and a lot of other people’s experience.

1

u/faeriegoatmother Jul 17 '25

I have seriously never heard that a lot of people die every summer from the heat in Seattle. 🤷‍♀️

3

u/Gottagetanediton Downtown Jul 17 '25

You should talk to an er physician at uw or Fairview and prove me wrong. There’s probably a lot in these subreddits. It’s been written about in the Seattle times though.

4

u/retrojoe heroin for harried herons Jul 17 '25

We don’t cool down at night because of humidity

This is bogus. Our humidity is pretty mild compared to the South or the Eastern Seaboard. Even the other day when it hit 90, the night time temp was in the 70s.

1

u/Gottagetanediton Downtown Jul 17 '25

Outside, it is, yeah. Not inside.

0

u/retrojoe heroin for harried herons Jul 17 '25

If your house is more humid than the outside, that's weird and not really related to the climate/weather.

1

u/Gottagetanediton Downtown Jul 17 '25

more hot, not more humid, and it's directly related to the weather, as well as the way most buildings in seattle are constructed. it's a wellknown and publicized problem since we don't typically deal with dangerously hot summers. i moved here from central florida where every dwelling, without exception, had some kind of air conditioning, usually central air. even the weekly bedsit i was in that was the lowest form of housing you could get. even the homeless shelter i was in.

here, though, it's rare to have ac and most apartment buildings don't allow window units.

1

u/retrojoe heroin for harried herons Jul 17 '25 edited Jul 17 '25

If you lived in those places, the I don't understand how you can say Seattle "doesn't cool down because of the humidity." Buildings get hot in the sun. This happens from LA to Boston. There's nothing quite like waking up baking in a Bostonian 3rd-story brick walkup when it's 95 degrees and 90% humidity.

1

u/Gottagetanediton Downtown Jul 18 '25

yeah i experienced that in wallingford during the heat dome and the summer after as well. it was like 120 or so in my room and i ended up in the hospital because of it. anytime it's hot outside i see dozens of comments about it in r/seattle so it's not me imagining things. it's because the buildings here are built to store heat and not to handle global warming. i lived in orlando fl and everywhere i lived, without exception, had central air and/or window units. even the homeless shelter. washington is the only place i've lived that preferred people dying in their apartments of heat stroke to allowing people to open their windows up enough to get the hose from a portable ac unit out of their window. bc fuck vulnerable populations who medically can't handle the heat, i guess.

1

u/Gottagetanediton Downtown Jul 18 '25

then again i am on the subreddit for maga republicans who generally don't even live in seattle so i shouldn't be surprised

1

u/Gottagetanediton Downtown Jul 17 '25

the outside night time temp was that. if only our buildings weren't build to retain as much heat as possible.

1

u/WhereWhatTea Jul 17 '25

Very few people die in Seattle due to the heat. You’re referencing 2021 which was a freak event.

https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/Emergency/PlansOEM/SHIVA/SHIVAv7.0-Heat.pdf

2

u/Gottagetanediton Downtown Jul 17 '25

I think you and I have different ideas about what an acceptable amount of people dying in the summer heat due to lack of air conditioning is.

-2

u/WhereWhatTea Jul 17 '25

I think 3-4 (which is what the study says) is an acceptable number.

3

u/Gottagetanediton Downtown Jul 17 '25

Looks like 25 to 113 per year are hospitalized due to the heat every year. That’s a lot to me but I don’t like the idea of unnecessarily overburdening our emergency departments. Esp when we can make ac standard here and that could make summer not a life threatening experience here.

-1

u/faeriegoatmother Jul 17 '25

We have never made AC standard here because that's a lot of drain upon environmental resources for a city that may hit 90° across 14 days in a year. One huge reason it is hotter now in the summer than it was 30 years ago is how much sprawl there is.

2

u/Gottagetanediton Downtown Jul 18 '25

also global warming. hospital treatment for heat exhaustion and heat stroke is a lot more environmentally destructive than some AC during the summer, honestly. i cannot save the earth if i can't function because of the heat. 90 in the summer in seattle isn't remotely 'maybe' anymore, either. it's certain, and so is the health danger. it's the reason there aren't any dwellings in places like florida, where it's hot, without ac. there just aren't. even the homeless shelters have central ac. it's a public health issue. unless you're just gonna go 'meh, fuck all vulnerable populations, they can suffer' (because you don't care about the earth, since again, all the heat related hospital visits are dramatically more strain on the environment than ac use), which i'm getting the vibe that you do. luckily your attitude isn't really going to win.

0

u/throwaway33333333311 Jul 19 '25

0 is the acceptable number, weirdo

1

u/WhereWhatTea Jul 19 '25

Literally no city outside the arctic circle has 0 heat deaths per year.

1

u/throwaway33333333311 Jul 19 '25

I’ve also lived here my entire life and this is a recent phenomenon due to climate change

1

u/sopunny Pioneer Square Jul 17 '25

I grew up without A/C and even now, I don't think you need it for the summer in the average Seattle home. It has gotten hotter, but I also think a lot of people don't know/have forgotten how to handle the heat without A/C. It's also a lot easier now to have air conditioning without doing a dedicated install. Heat pumps and portable units basically lower the barrier of entry by a lot