tl;dr: bf doesn’t want a portable standing ac because bugs could get in through the vent or cracks in the window, I am extremely prone to heat exhaustion due to medical reasons and collapsed before, wtf do I say to convince him I need this despite his bug phobia
Hey everyone. My boyfriend and I have lived together for a year. We recently moved into a new house with no central AC (northeast US problems). We have a window unit in the bedroom upstairs, but nothing else. Our house has 2 floors — first floor is an open concept living room and kitchen, second floor is bedrooms.
So here’s the problem. It has been getting unreasonably hot, and what’s worse is that our house is built to keep in heat. I did have a fan pointed against an open window downstairs to circulate hot air back outside, and combined with the window unit upstairs, it was working ok. On days where it was 95 outside, it would only be around 83 inside. Which is still hot, but livable. However, our neighbor owns a huge garden including fresh vegetables and a rice paddy, and it attracts a lottt of bugs, mostly flies and ants. Ants began coming inside via the open window downstairs. My boyfriend is unfortunately very afraid of bugs.
He found out today that I’ve been keeping that downstairs window open on purpose and shut it. Well, immediately the temperature started climbing. It is 73 outside right now since it’s midnight, but it’s 84 inside the living room. This creates multiple problems. First, the hot air downstairs rises up and our tiny window unit in our bedroom has to work overtime. It was a cheap unit, and it’s unfortunately struggling to keep up. Second… when it’s 85 during the day, it could get up to 95 inside.
I am on SSRIs and therefore am at an elevated risk for heat exhaustion. I know this firsthand because I suffered heat exhaustion last year which caused me to collapse suddenly in my kitchen (this was my old apartment).
The kicker is, I literally have a portable (standing) AC laying around downstairs. It’s just not plugged in. He has two reasons for why I can’t plug it in. One, it costs money— our landlord requires us to get the maintenance guy to install any major appliances, and there’s a $35 fee. I am willing to pay it entirely myself. Second, he’s still worried about bugs. I assured him that much less bugs will get in through the tube of the AC vs how many got in from the open window, but he said the only acceptable amount of bugs is NO bugs. This feels unreasonable since we live next door to a giant garden.
I guess my question is: how can I bring him over to my side on this? It’s untenably hot and I’m actively worried about heat exhaustion. He thinks I’m being dramatic and that I should just drink more water, despite how he saw me collapse from the heat last year. He also said I should just go driving or to Walmart if the house is too hot for me, which feels unfair— I pay half of our rent just like he does, I deserve to use my home.