3 days to save on inspiring gift experiences. Ah, New York City in the summer! Generally, we really do love it, despite the on-the-way-to-work sweatiness and fish-in-an-old-sweat-sock smells. But with summer comes air conditioners, and with air conditioners come inept installations into apartment windows, and with inept installations come the occasional, every so often, reports that an air conditioner has fallen from the sky and bashed someone in the head. Which would be awful. So, how much should we worry about this, really? We took to the Internet, place of great knowledge, to find out./2006/06/14/... , which happened back in 2006. Given that I only had one hit, and that that was only for someone injured by a falling air conditioner, I'm going to say that the number of people killed by a falling air conditioner is statistically insignificant, and most likely does not occur on a yearly basis. But should we be so easily placated? After all, it's only THE INTERNET. So, we carried on with our research.

The 2006 post on Gothamist reveals that a woman was indeed hit by an air conditioner unit falling out of a window on East 104th Street, as reported by the Post. Her "right leg was crushed, the bone shattered. She also suffered broken ribs, a broken pelvis, fractured vertebrae, and internal bleeding." She was, fortunately, expected to recover.Another person, on the mixed martial arts forum of Sherdog, suggests that there might be a greater conspiracy at work with regard to plummeting air conditioners. There has got to be some NYC government cover up on this.... And lo, we recall that in September of last year there was another air-conditioning incident, near Village Voice HQ, in fact. We even wrote about it. 67-year-old Tony Franzese was just walking his Shih Tzu down 2nd Avenue at 3rd Street when he got bonked on the head with the errant A.C. He reportedly suffered a head wound and was taken to Bellevue, where we're told he's in stable condition. The NYPD also told us that the A.C.'s fall had been determined an accident, with no charges against the tenant -- a/k/a, "It was not pushed."

According to the New York Post, building inspectors have already ordered air conditioner brackets be installed immediately and given citations to the building's owner But! The awning of the Wine Bar, which generously took the brunt of the initial impact, may have saved his life, says the Wine Bar's owner, Raymond Azzi. (Franzese later sued for $21 million.)Just a couple of months later there was another A.C. plummet, this one in West New York. As reported by the Jersey Journal, 24-year-old New Jersey man Esidra Valles was hit by an air conditioner that fell 15 stories and struck him in the head. central air conditioner unit review"His injuries required a one-hour surgery and about 50 staples and stitches across his head and face." best home hvac systemHe had this to say: "I feel like, if your air conditioner is falling, yell something," Valles said, "I heard nothing."us air handling units

The New York Times was worried about air conditioners falling out of windows and hitting people back in 2004, as related to co-op liability. Earlier this year, EV Grieve reported on a piece of an air conditioner that had fallen on East 10th Street, prompting a response from the FDNY. Air conditioners have also struck people in London and Chicago (they -- the people, that is -- survived).In fact, in our admittedly unscientific search, we found zero confirmed cases of death by air conditioner, and only a few mentions. A child was critically injured when he fell from a window (that lacked bars, which had been removed to put in an air conditioner) and landed on another air conditioner unit. But, air conditioners can save lives, too. So what's the deal? Has anyone in New York City ever been killed by a falling air conditioner?According to Jennifer Gilbert, press secretary for the NYC Department of Buildings, Accidents involving air conditioners are rare in New York City, but property owners of buildings seven stories and higher must submit façade reports to the Department every five years to ensure that the buildings' exteriors are properly maintained.

All property owners are responsible for the maintenance of their buildings and are encouraged to follow the Department's installation tips.But what is RARE?We checked with the NYPD. Detective Cheryl Crispin of the Office of the Deputy Commissioner said, succinctly, "We do not compile data on those accidents."Yahoo Answers, meanwhile, has its own questions to ask about air-conditioner-icide. If a portable air conditioner falls from window (killing someone, is that manslaughter? Scenario 1: The owner of the apartment unit was too lazy to secure the air conditioner in the unit and was just desperate for cool air and did an inferior job putting it in the upstairs window. Sadly, the air conditioner was slowly and steadily rolling more and more outside, and eventually it fell out the window, hitting a street pedestrian and killing the person. (Is the owner liable? Is the owner guilty? if Guilty, of what crime?) Scenario 2: The owner installs the portable air conditioner and does an inferior job.

Then the owner paints the outside of the window with the message "I am PURPOSELY making sure the air conditioner falls out the window." And it kills someone. What would the charge be in scenario 2? New York Red Bulls vs. Philadelphia Union New Jersey Devils vs. New York Rangers New York Jets vs. Seattle Seahawks New York Red Bulls II 2016 USL Cup Playoffs Round 1 The more we know, the more we want to know. But, going back to our original question: How worried should we be about Death by Air Conditioner? Since there seem to be few of these incidents, and fewer still reported by the cops or Department of Buildings, and zero on historical record that have actually killed anyone, we say...This is exactly the sort of thing that takes our mind off being struck by lightning as we pass by a light post in a sudden thunderstorm while barefoot and on our cell phones.It sure is hot these days, isn’t it? Statistically speaking, a good portion of the continental US and Canada has its hottest average day of the year right around now.

So I thought it was a good time to share some thoughts on the modern household’s biggest energy consumer in July – the Air Conditioner. See, normally I’d assume that we’re all adults and we’re able to decide for ourselves how to run our own appliances. But after being on my current summer vacation for over three weeks and visiting a large number of family and friends throughout the not-overly-hot Great Lakes region, I’ve noticed that most people leave their goddamned air conditioners running 24 hours a day, whether it is warm or cool outside, with their houses at a stupidly low temperature. Yes folks, it has become obvious that America and Canada both need a lesson from Mr. Money Mustache on how to use their Air Conditioners. I recently measured the power consumption of the central A/C system in my own house. Mine is a “3-ton” (36,000 BTU/hr) system which dates back to about 1998, when my house was built. At the time, it was considered fairly efficient with a seasonal energy efficiency rating (SEER) of 10.

Newer units, thanks to EPA rules, are now much better with ratings of 14 and higher – changes the SEER rating translate almost directly into similar percentage decreases in your cooling costs. When in full operation, my system uses 3,000 Watts (3kW) of electricity, about 500 of which is my furnace blower pumping the cool air around the house (and adding its 500 watts of heat back into the cool air stream, by the way). For those without electrical engineering backgrounds, 3,000 watts is an Absolute Shitload of electricity. It’s enough to run 230 modern light bulbs simultaneously, and it’s equal to having about 15 monster-legged tour-de-France-level cyclists hooked up pumping at race level on bike generators continuously in your basement. At the national average price for electricity of 12 cents/kWh, my air conditioning system burns 36 cents per hour, or $86 per month if used for 8 hours per day. With a three-month cooling season, this would compound to SEVERAL THOUSAND dollars of wasted electricity every ten years.

Yet my TOTAL average electric bill in summer, despite an average daily high temperature of almost 90 degrees in Colorado, is really only about $35. How could this be? The answer of course is that I have just cut out the waste, without sacrificing any real happiness or comfort. Here’s how comfort works. Your body generates heat just by being alive. It needs to maintain its internal temperature at around 98 degrees F, and it depends on the skin surface temperature being lower than this to dump extra heat into the surrounding air. Producing sweat helps you cool the body faster, since the sweat sucks up heat as it evaporates. Humid air cannot evaporate your sweat as quickly, which is why it feels hotter. All basic elementary school science, right? This is why the Southeastern United States is a sucky place to be in summer even at 85 degrees F, while the desert states can feel quite comfy and invigorating at that temperature. Finally, your body becomes more efficient at cooling itself the longer it spends at higher temperatures and humidities.

Every summer as I drive from Colorado down into Nebraska and beyond, I break out into a great sweat and need to crank the car A/C. Even at midnight when the temperature drops into the sixties, I still can’t stand the humidity and need to continue the air conditioning. But within two days, I am comfortable with the higher humidity and I enjoy a regular Eastern summer with no difficulty. As July progresses and things get hotter, I am usually visiting a portion of my family with no A/C, so my body continues to adapt. There are a few days when the temperature is so high that I get uncomfortable, but then I spray myself with the garden hose and drink a gallon of water with ice cubes and all is well. I also take advantage of the natural cycle of the environment. In the US Northeast and Canada, and even more in the Western desert areas, the temperature usually drops at night. So non-A/C users take advantage of this fact to open all their windows, and use large fans (100 watts) to exhaust heat and draw in cool air to chill the entire interior contents of their homes.

A 100 watt fan blowing outwards from your highest window is pulling in night air from all other windows that is 10+ degrees cooler than your house. By sucking in thousands of cubic feet of cool air per minute, this fan is doing almost as much cooling as the 3,000 watt air conditioning unit that does the same job during the day time. The Naturally Cool crowd also makes a point of enjoying more outdoor food cooking and clothes drying on hot days, to further reduce indoor heat sources. This is to be contrasted with the behavior of Air Conditioning addicts, who set their thermostats to a silly temperature below 80 and let that baby run, night or day. They might turn it off at night, but forget to open the windows, so they miss out on the free night-time cooling. I remember staying over at one friend’s house in June and heading out for a midnight errand. It was so cool outside that I needed a sweater. Yet his air conditioner was still running, pumping out the remaining heat from the 90-degree sunny day that had just passed.

Meanwhile his body was not bothering adapt to summertime heat and humidity, because his house was always refrigerator-like inside. All of this is completely unnecessary! The Mustachian Way is to think of Air Conditioning as a pleasant luxury to be used when all other efforts fail. Much like a car. It should be an exciting moment in your household, when every one is drinking their gallon-sized containers of icewater, wearing comfortable and summery outfits of bare feet and tanktops, and the ceiling fan is running, when you proclaim, “God Dammit it is hot today!! Let’s turn on the AIR CONDITIONING!! Then you run it for an hour or two, and the sun goes behind a tree, and you shut it back off again. And you open the windows that night and run the fan and go on with your lives. If this sounds like too much hassle to you, grow some Frugality Muscles, punch yourself in the face, and try again. This is my Earth you are messing with, and your own Money Mustache you are burning off in the boiler of your local Coal-fired power plant.