Programmable thermostat 82* all day when no one is home and 78-79* when we are home. You folks with the 74* houses must wear long sleeves at home and sleep under a friggin' blanket all summer. Put a ceiling fan over the bed and learn to sleep under just a sheet.

Turbo4, these guys are right about blocking the direct sunlight coming in. A cheap-ass trick that works well is taping aluminum foil up on the inside of any direct sun exposed windows. It works like Joe Perez's setup but is much cheaper. Yes, it's ghetto, but "Any port in a storm!"

Too bad you rent. I'd be insulating the attic like a madman. Did you know that they rent insulation blowers at Lowe's?

Well, the thing is I already did all those things. I've had blackout curtains since May. About 2 months ago I did the whole aluminum foil thing. That definitely helped a little but for some reason it is still miserable upstairs. They finally got the maint. guy out here and the actual filter was inside the unit itself(weird) and it looked like it hadn't been touched in years. It was literally covered with a cm of crap. He also cleaned the coils, replaced the fan motor, and checked the freon. It has defiitely helped too. We've been keeping it on 85 downstairs at night and putting the portable on 80 upstairs, seems to be working. He said everyone in this model unit have been paying 3-400. It's problem something to do with it being a 1200sqft, 2 story home with an a/c unit that's about the 1/3 of the size it should be. It's seriously like 12" tall by 3 feet wide. It's tiny.

Regarding the house though...sucks because it ended up having asbestos! Then we found a perfect home but it had foundation problems. So the search contiues...