My hubby Bob and I have lived our whole lives way up north.
For most of the year, the local part experiences extreme cold, feet of snow and brutal wind chill.
Temperatures down to twenty below zero are not unusual. Our house is outfitted with a heating system that runs at max capacity week after week. Our bi-weekly heating bills are consistently a concern. There’s no need to invest in central a/c. Both of us spent almost thirty years in the north, shoveling snow, scraping ice and being stuck inside due to the weather. Both of us got entirely tired of it and decided to buy a minute home in a warmer location where all of us could spend the winters. It didn’t take long to realize that houses are much unusual in the south. Both of us toured quite a few houses and none of them included basements or insulated windows. Most of the structures were constructed of stone blocks and the lawns mainly sand. The house all of us chose is surrounded by palm trees. The biggest difference between our 2 houses is the way all of us handle temperature control. Our house in the south is equipped with a packaged unit that is located outside, exposed to the elements. The single unit provides both heating and cooling. It actually handles the excessive heat and humidity over the long summer time weeks. In heating mode, the idea is effective until the outside temperature drops below freezing. Fortunately, all of us rarely experience that severity of cold. Both of us now stay in our southern home from early November until sometime in May. Then all of us head north to get away from the humidity and appreciate the milder temperature.