No infrastructure for air conditioning

Our house is very old, which is great in some ways and awful in others.

  • First let’s talk about all the good stuff we have here.

It is over 200 years old, and most of the wood is still original, so the craftsmanship is out of this world. Some rooms just feel like history to me, and that is something a modern duplex can never offer. We have an amazing porch along two sides of the house, a big yard, a big attic and an even bigger basement, with more room than we will ever need. Now the bad — the place is so old it never had a central HVAC system, nor is it prepared to have one installed anytime soon. The problem is one of infrastructure, because there are no air vents in the house. Well, to be proper is there is one air vent for the whole house, the one that leads from the furnace in the basement to the main sitting room. I guess back in the day they could have one really nice warm room, and the rest had to get by without heating, I don’t know. At least there is a furnace there, and since heat rises we have something to work with. The air conditioning, on the other hand, may be a complete impossibility for a place like this. Aside from using a portable or window mounted AC unit, there is no way for the house to support a cooling system. So that will mean that one room will be nice and cool, just like with the old furnace.
Heating device