hot in PA

Bed & Breakfast / Short Term Rental Host Forum

Help Support Bed & Breakfast / Short Term Rental Host Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

ummie

New member
Joined
Jul 29, 2011
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
greetings
so what do you do when you cannot control "mother nature". i have an old victorian 1897 inn with NO central air. I bought these portable air conditioners 4 years ago and have little problem keeping the house cool except for this season! Its has been so hot the rooms are not cooling as cool as some guests like. I had a guest who didnt call me to tell me she couldnt figure out the unit - works on remote which I stated but... she left - demanded her monies back which I did - how do you handle the "negative" - not use to unhappy guests .... should I put on my website warning guests that though i do have indivuidal units - NO central air?
 
If I stayed somewhere without proper cooling I would probably leave. You can control mother nature, in the hvac realm. I say this as the room should be cooled when they arrive. Right? Sorry to be devil's advocate here but I can't handle the heat!
 
No central air is not a problem. Just make sure they understand how to work the room air conditioners. Everyone knows it is extremely hot and there is just not much we can do about it.
Edited to add: I can't stand the heat either and if my room wasn't cooled properly, then I too would complain and maybe leave....if I could find a place that was cool :)
 
The heat is not going anywhere in your area for the foreseeable future, so I'd make sure guests know how to use the AC's, even if you have to put the dreaded note up somewhere in the room. Most people are understanding, these are record breaking type temps and humidity, but being hot makes me crabby too, I can't sleep if it's too hot. Maybe you need larger window units if they're not keeping up?
 
We don't have central A/C, either. What we do when the weather is horrid (like it was here last week) is run one A/C unit upstairs and one downstairs with the guest room door open to cool upstairs and down. (Has to be an unoccupied room!)
We've found this keeps the inn cool enough to allow guests to then adjust the temp on their own A/C to their liking. We even left the units on during the day as it was not cooling down at night enough to turn them off. When we cleaned the rooms we left the A/C on low (same as we would do in the winter with the heat).
We tell them the A/C unit is adjustable, to just read the dials and adjust where they like. (Does not stop the dopes who open the windows and turn the A/C on.)
 
ummie said:
should I put on my website warning guests that though i do have indivuidal units - NO central air?
All you need to say is you have A/C in the guest rooms. If you do not hace A/C in the common rooms you should consider an additional A/C unit or 2 to cool those areas.
 
We have room airconditioners in this Inn and its HOT here in summer being in the middle of the delta..so we absdolutely have to have the two units working 24-7 in the parlors and our quarters. We turn the airconditioners on in the rooms the morning that they are to arrive full blast-some rooms cool and stay cool, others are harder to cool and keep cool and we have one room eventhough it has central air which is on the third floor and the most expensive and largest in the Inn that you cannot keep cool in middle of summer no matter what. We tell our guests that when they call that this room is just not cool enough in summer and would they prefer another one on the same floor...most agree; but depending on the individual no one can say that they can't be cool if its around 70 degrees in their rooms-sorry-thats just crazy and you cant please all the people all the time.
 
Good news here, it is 99 degrees and "feels like 99 degrees" this is huge, since it has been "feels like 105" when it is 98, all week.
 
Since our place is at 8,700 feet in the Colorado Rockies, our problem is one of perception more than reality, which is a struggle when it comes to marketing. We get phone calls all the time asking us if we have air conditioning. "No," we reply, "we have ceiling fans, and we also have extra blankets in the room in case you get chilly at night." Convincing folks from Houston or Dallas that they don't need an air conditioner is something of a challenge.
I had a wonderful call from a woman in Memphis last July. "Haow hot is it at your place raght naow?"
I checked. "The thermometer says 85, but a lot of that is reflected heat from the deck. The air temperature is probably in the upper 70s," I said.
"Well, it's hotter'n hell in Memphis right now! It's 104, and I'm about to die!"
"Sounds like you need to come visit us."
"I'll do that, boah!" she said. She booked a four-night stay, dragged her husband to the airport, flew to Denver, rented a car, and we saw them a few days later. They were a delightful couple (he was a little quiet), and we had a fantastic time talking and recommending places for them to visit.
When they checked out, she confided, "I didn't need that extra blanket, either," but I noticed it was folded differently when we went in to turn the room.
Tom
 
Good news here, it is 99 degrees and "feels like 99 degrees" this is huge, since it has been "feels like 105" when it is 98, all week..
Joey Bloggs said:
Good news here, it is 99 degrees and "feels like 99 degrees" this is huge, since it has been "feels like 105" when it is 98, all week.
The weatherman predicted it will reach 107º by Thursday. No rain in sight. Tropical storm Don was a dud.
This is getting very very serious. ALL the ranchers around here are having to sell off their livestock because there is no hay to feed them. Normally, the cattle would be grazing and the hay would be stockpiled for the winter. Extreme drought = no grass. No grass= no hay.
The deer have been coming out of the woods and eating our landscape because everything else has dried up.
We've been lucky that business hasn't slowed down, but it's a drag in this heat.
 
Good news here, it is 99 degrees and "feels like 99 degrees" this is huge, since it has been "feels like 105" when it is 98, all week..
Joey Bloggs said:
Good news here, it is 99 degrees and "feels like 99 degrees" this is huge, since it has been "feels like 105" when it is 98, all week.
The weatherman predicted it will reach 107º by Thursday. No rain in sight. Tropical storm Don was a dud.
This is getting very very serious. ALL the ranchers around here are having to sell off their livestock because there is no hay to feed them. Normally, the cattle would be grazing and the hay would be stockpiled for the winter. Extreme drought = no grass. No grass= no hay.
The deer have been coming out of the woods and eating our landscape because everything else has dried up.
We've been lucky that business hasn't slowed down, but it's a drag in this heat.
.
Every time they mentioned "Don" on the news I was keeping my fingers crossed for you, but no dice it sounds like. Major bummer.
 
it is rarely hot enough here that we have a problem plus we are stone which helps a lot. however we have had an exceptional streak of hot weather and was asked for the first time if we have air con. She was comming for a conference so had to come to harrogate that that there was no place to stay in the whole of Harrogate that did have air con so she was better off with us where we have fans in every room than in a lot of other places.
 
We have central downstairs and window units in each room. I turn it on low in the morning of an arrival and depending on temps sometimes will turn it on the other rooms with doors open to help make the upstairs cooler. We have actually had the A/C on a lot the last 2 weeks (downstairs) because DH who at one time was labeled Nanook of the North can no longer tolerate heat (or cold).
 
it is rarely hot enough here that we have a problem plus we are stone which helps a lot. however we have had an exceptional streak of hot weather and was asked for the first time if we have air con. She was comming for a conference so had to come to harrogate that that there was no place to stay in the whole of Harrogate that did have air con so she was better off with us where we have fans in every room than in a lot of other places..
it is rarely hot enough here that we have a problem ...
The UK can have beastly hot spells, though. While back, we were in Edinburgh for festival staying at a Victorian B&B and the temps climbed to over 90Fin the day but a little cooler at night. Innkeeper feared burglers so had ancient hardware preventing the room's one window from opening more than a few inches, and only at the bottom, so no circulation. DW sees this and starts to melt down - physically and mentally - quickly I grab the family Swiss Army knife and essentially remove the interior window trim so I can get it open for full outside air. In the morning, I put it all back. Did this for four days. Only evidence was the slots on the screws were now clean of paint.
 
Good news here, it is 99 degrees and "feels like 99 degrees" this is huge, since it has been "feels like 105" when it is 98, all week..
Joey Bloggs said:
Good news here, it is 99 degrees and "feels like 99 degrees" this is huge, since it has been "feels like 105" when it is 98, all week.
The weatherman predicted it will reach 107º by Thursday. No rain in sight. Tropical storm Don was a dud.
This is getting very very serious. ALL the ranchers around here are having to sell off their livestock because there is no hay to feed them. Normally, the cattle would be grazing and the hay would be stockpiled for the winter. Extreme drought = no grass. No grass= no hay.
The deer have been coming out of the woods and eating our landscape because everything else has dried up.
We've been lucky that business hasn't slowed down, but it's a drag in this heat.
.
Nagadoches lake is so low...........they found a fuel tank from the space shuttle Challenger.
 
Good news here, it is 99 degrees and "feels like 99 degrees" this is huge, since it has been "feels like 105" when it is 98, all week..
Joey Bloggs said:
Good news here, it is 99 degrees and "feels like 99 degrees" this is huge, since it has been "feels like 105" when it is 98, all week.
The weatherman predicted it will reach 107º by Thursday. No rain in sight. Tropical storm Don was a dud.
This is getting very very serious. ALL the ranchers around here are having to sell off their livestock because there is no hay to feed them. Normally, the cattle would be grazing and the hay would be stockpiled for the winter. Extreme drought = no grass. No grass= no hay.
The deer have been coming out of the woods and eating our landscape because everything else has dried up.
We've been lucky that business hasn't slowed down, but it's a drag in this heat.
.
Nagadoches lake is so low...........they found a fuel tank from the space shuttle Challenger.
.
Wow!!!!
Our lake is low, too. We were in challengers path, too. Maybe something will become exposed here. I'm hoping for dinosaur bones though.
 
Back
Top