Hardware stores get lift from heat wave
A heat wave lit up sales of fans and air conditioners at Bay Area hardware and home goods stores this week, as temperatures torched decades-old records.
Stores in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley said they sold out of units as early as Sunday morning, when thermometers reached the mid-90s in parts of the Bay Area.
“The only time we really move fans is when it gets like this, into the 90s, and everyone loses their mind and buys fans,” said Eric Stephens, a manager at Grand Lake Ace Hardware in Piedmont. “We cleaned out.”
The store sold a two-month supply of fans, about 200 units, according to Stephens. It emptied the supply in the on-site warehouse storage.
Connie Zhang, an assistant store manager at the Cole Hardware store on Fourth Street in San Francisco, said she sold more than 200 floor fans, window fans and air conditioners over the past few days. After checking the weather report last Friday, she ordered more. But the shipment that arrived Tuesday had only 20 units, with more on the way.
Oakland native Amar Saini, who works in
tech, said he obtained the last air conditioner at the Home Depot in Emeryville early Monday, after a sticky, sleepless night. He woke up every half hour and sprayed his face with a water bottle. The air-conditioning unit cost $320 before tax, but, Saini said, “It was necessary.”
Only 4 in 10 dwellings in the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metro area have some form of air conditioning, according to U.S. census data. Most of those homes have central air. The rest have a portable or window air-conditioning unit.
That makes the Bay Area a fog-chilled outlier. In California, 73% of homes have air conditioning, and across the nation, more than 90% of homes have it.
Charmae Martin’s family struck out at three Home Depot stores before a customer service associate at the corporate office put her on hold and got a manager at the Santa Clara store to set aside a $319 unit. Martin, who blogs about raising a family on a budget in East Palo Alto, said she told her neighbors to come over to her living room if they need a break from the heat.
“I mostly felt bad for my dog,” Martin said.
Anne Carpenter, an owner of an Ace Hardware store in Berkeley, said the retailer doesn’t usually stock air conditioners. After getting about a half a dozen calls from customers wanting them, she placed an order Monday.
The store has only small desk fans left on shelves. Carpenter said customers are finding other ways to beat the heat.
“The other thing that people wanted was kiddie pools. We sold out,” Carpenter said. There’s also DIY. Phil Richardson, a retiree in San Francisco, has been staying cool by watching college baseball and sitting by the “redneck air conditioner” of his own making. He drilled holes into a 10gallon bucket, inserted a Styofoam cooler and filled it with ice. A fan faces his contraption, circulating cool air around the bedroom.
“We moved here specifically for the good weather,” said Richardson, 49, a Mississippi native who has pain, fatigue and nausea from his multiple sclerosis diagnosis. “If I don’t have this little bit of relief, I am a basket case.”