Thermostatic heating and cooling in old-time Phoenix



Other than for a few years, in my twenties, I've always lived with thermostatic heating and cooling. That is, I lived where you could tell your thermostat to never let it get below, or above, a certain temperature. I grew up in Minnesota, and I just took it for granted. Even though our house was old, it had a forced air furnace (we really didn't need air conditioning there, but it would have been nice on hot, humid days in the summer).

I've know quite a few people who have always seemed unable to grasp the concept of a thermostat. They're the ones who are always fiddling with it, turning it up and down. But maybe it's just because they're uncomfortable, and doing something like that does help a bit.

When I lived in California, where the weather is always nice, except when it's not, I lived without a thermostat. One of the apartments where I lived had nothing at all, no heat or A/C, and another one had an old-fashioned gas wall heater, which just went "bang-bang!" so I never used it. I slept under an electric blanket when it was cold. When it was hot I'd open the windows. But I remembered thermostatic heating and cooling, and when I moved back to Phoenix that's what I wanted.

Anyway, something that has always puzzled me about where I set my thermostat is that it's different in the summer than in the winter. I set it for my comfort, and there's almost a ten degree difference between the summer setting and the winter setting. It seems as if one temperature, kept consistent, would be perfect for me, but it's not.

I got a good lesson this when I worked downtown, and was one of the nerdy people who accepted the invitation to see the new installation of the central heating and air conditioning system in the tallest building in Phoenix, which then was the Bank One Building, and is now Chase Tower. It's on Central between Van Buren and Monroe, by the way.

The temperature in that building was kept at 75 degrees year 'round. And since it seemed uncomfortable to everyone, it made me wonder about space ships. Because the building itself was kind of like a space ship, completely sealed, 35 stories of it. The windows were never designed to open. This building had been built, in 1973, with thermostatic heating and cooling.

I found 75 degrees to be a comfortable temperature to work in, but I was always wearing a shirt and tie, with dress slacks. Many of the women found it to be painfully cold. And just between you and me, some of the ladies brought in little space heaters that they kept hidden below their desk. It was against policy, so don't tell anyone!

And now that I'm thinking about it, my best guess is that a lot of people remember living, and working, in Phoenix in a building without thermostatic heating and cooling. And when thermostatic heating and cooling became the norm, it seemed to puzzle them. Just set a number, and leave it? What?
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