You must log in or # to comment.
It’s not the AC that are incredible. Modern heat pumps are incredible. They are the best thing since the sliced bread. I could talk for hours about heat pumps. They’re just so efficient.
Heat pumps - they pump my heat.
Did I mention I like heat pumps?
It’s literally the same machine
Non-native English speaker, but I looked it up the other day and it seems that pedantically an A/C only cools things down and heat pumps can both heat and cool.
ACs are just heat pumps where they forgot to install the reversing valve.
Heat pumps running in heating mode are basically ACs that are trying to cool down the outside. The fundamental technology just moves heat from one place to another, leaving one place warmer and one place colder.
This is also how fridges and freezers work - they have heat pumps that pump out the heat from inside their box and as such make the room they are in warmer.
It’s why it’s so annoying that dual function AC/Water CH don’t seem to exist (or at least, they don’t qualify for government subsidies).
In the summer, I’d like 3KWH of cooling. And in the winter, maybe 15KWH of heating. But to do that, I have to buy two boxes.
Most ACs nowadays can do both. And are actually more efficient at heating.
Yes, an air conditioner is a heat pump with a fixed orientation, what basically equates to a handful of valves to switch the direction of the refrigerant. The actual expensive parts that generate the temperature difference are identical between the two machines.
In my country, air conditioners can condition air that’s too cold. Sounds like American air conditioners can only condition in one direction. Our air conditioners do all of the air conditioning.
No we have both, and they’re still heat pumps. The direction the heat pumped is irrelevant; the fundamentals are the same.
Yes, air conditioners and heat pumps are indeed the same thing. Americans just don’t call the two-directional heat pumps air conditioners for some reason. I guess they don’t believe you can condition air by making it hotter. In my country, we consider heating part of conditioning.
We call it HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning), and so do other countries that speak English for a reason. It’s different from heating in that air conditioning can also involve controlling air humidity/quality.
Heating gets its own because until reversible heat pumps, it was a separate system that only heated the building (sometimes not even the air directly in the case of heated floors).
Nope AC at least where I have been can do both. Heat pumps are for water.
Probably a local nomenclature thing. Heat Pump is the most common name for phase change cooling/heating system. (No matter the medium(s) being heated/cooled)
Yet I have never seen a food refrigerator called a heat pump. Air-to-air always seems to be called AC to differentiate it from the air-to-water the UK government wants to push.
I never see refrigerators being called AC either, and they’re air-to-air heat pumps too. People just call things what they want regardless of the technical details.
Because at some point society decided to call them refrigerators or AC. The thing *inside the refrigerator or air conditioner" that makes it work is called a “heat pump” – that’s the unambiguous name of the device. Just like the bit inside a car that provides motive force is called the “engine” or the “motor”.
The device that uses a heat pump to both heat and cool a building is actually called an Air source heat pump, but since that’s a mouthful most people simply call it a “heat pump” to distinguish it from traditional AC that only works to cool an area. Sure, maybe you get that odd area the calls it something different (my region calls soft drinks “pop”) but that’s not the norm.
There are also heat pumps that only heat. It takes a second valve or so to enable it to switch directions.
I could just mount it backwards in my window!
Colloquially, “air conditioner” often refers to a centralized system with ducting, while a “heat pump” usually refers to a ductless mini split.
At least in North America, the term “Air conditioner” means a device designed to cool a room, where a “heat pump” can cool or heat that room. They work by the same exact principle (all the compressing, condensing, evaporating stuff) but a “heat pump” has a method of running in both directions. You could probably contrive one that could run the pump in either direction but I think most use a valve to switch which is the high pressure/hot side and which is the low pressure/cold side.
I grew up in a house with a heat pump, I currently live in one with an air conditioner and a furnace. When it’s time to replace my air conditioner (or do other heavy maintenance to the system) I’m going to look into a heat pump, with the furnace as a backup heater in lieu of strips.
Nope AC does both. What the word heat pumps means seems to vary on where you live. Here it’s mostly things that only heat water for radiators or hot water tank.
Arguably they should all just be called refrigerators as they all use the refrigeration cycle.
Well… Kind of. Heat pumps are a more modern iteration, which can both heat or cool a room. And they’re not like a traditional central AC system, where you have a central compressor and ducts running to each vent. Instead, you run refrigerant lines to each room, then the individual room unit actually does the cooling locally. It’s the same basic principle (using refrigerant to move heat outside, thus cooling the air,) but heat pumps are a more modern take.
And as an added bonus, a heat pump can also be used as a heater (and be much more efficient than a traditional heating coil.) Because it’s just moving heat around from the interior and exterior, and that can include moving heat indoors to warm the interior. And since they’re just moving heat (instead of using a coil to generate it) they can be over 100% efficient when you’re measuring wattage consumed vs heat produced.
My HP is central ducted. You’re talking mini splits, one kind of HP.
And some companies even install AC only mini splits.
AC is a version of heatpump that cools your house. Refridgerator is a heatpump that keeps your food cool. Freezer is a heatpump wäthat freezes things.
AC is not the same thing as heatpump. AC is just one application of an heatpump.
It is the exact same hardware running in different configurations, all that changes is refrigerant flow direction.
That is exactly what I said. I was just trying to say that heatpump is not the same thing as AC just as car is not the same thing as an engine.
Seems like you’re talking about heat pump (technology) and I’m talking about heat pump (commercial product)
But yeah, heat pumps (technology) are used in lots of every day places.
deleted by creator
You’ve surely seen one of the many videos from Technology Connections, then?
Of course I have. Matt Ferrell has some nice videos too.
Im gonna have a nice long wank listening to this user passionately talk about heat pumps
You meant walk, right? Right???
You heard the man.
Did they fucking stutter?
deleted by creator
The refrigeration cycle is humanity’s greatest invention.
I have that ingrained in my brain.
This is the way.
Are the twin of Technology Connections?
We’ve got a ground source heat pump with underfloor heating and cooling since two years. It’s always a comfortable 19-22 degrees Celsius inside (66-72 Fahrenheit) and we’d never want anything else.
Tell that to the vast majority of Germans. They’d rather throw their relatives into the furnace for heating than buying a heat pump. That’s all thanks to far right populism by the way.
They’d rather throw their relatives into the furnace for heating than buying a heat pump.
Sounds more like a german tradition.
Yeah, in hindsight that was some unfortunate wording Ü
Guns are fun as hell, it’s true. Unfortunately as with most things in the world, shit gets ruined because people don’t know how to act right
Hopefully OOP lives in a country that has good gun laws - like Czechia.
I’m Australian and guns are really strictly regulated here, I also believe that guns are FUCKING FUN. Sometimes I get shitty about how hard it is to own a gun for recreational shooting then I see a smackhead at the supermarket screaming at random people and how unlikely it is that they have a gun and I think “Yep, Ill take that trade”.
At 40 cents / kwh you learn to tolerate heat very quickly.
Heat is quickly becoming deadly around the globe. Better figure out how to budget that cost, asap.
Keep yourself cool to worsen the problem? sounds like a great plan! /s
AC users anywhere in the world where temperatures / humidity are in a range that humans can adapt to are morons.
Passive cooling and designing buildings to not overheat during summer in the first place is the way. And phoenix or Las Vegas shouldn’t be much more than a gas station, they’re unlivable hellholes without permanently pumping enormous amounts of energy in.
Absolutely agreed.
I have AC and heating and live in a very human-fiendly climate. I don’t feel like a moron running it off my green power to heat and cool a very well insulated house beyond what the geothermal handles.
Exactly. You can use a kajillion megawatts to power your A/C, who cares if it’s all renewable. Especially if it’s onsite generated (solar).
At 40 cents/kWh I would buy a solar array.
Gotta buy a house first!
You can get solar panels for balconies in your local home supply store
Oh, yeah, I looked at that. I can get a couple hundred watts of panels that will realistically generate about 300 watt hours of power on my balcony on the sunniest days, given that they won’t be mounted at a very good angle. I can have it charge a battery pack that’ll last a few years. Then I get about 90% efficiency if I’m lucky with the inverter. Even at $0.50/kWh, that’s $0.15/day I’m saving or about $50/year if we just assume a cloudless year-round summer. That’ll save me just enough money to buy a new battery when the first one gets old.
Solar power will get there one day. Its great for many purposes but its still not practical for most apartment dwellers.
deleted by creator
These won’t even power a small portable AC, if you have a balcony and it’s on the south side and you have enough m² to angle the panel halfway properly, you’ll be lucky to generate 500 W.
That’s only half the power draw of a small AC unit, and doesn’t even get into the fact that in most places you cannot hook up a solar to your house without an approved inverter with appropriate safety features (otherwise you’d endanger the linemen in case of an outage). Where I live if you still have an old installation with net metering, you also pay a tax based on the inverter capacity (which is good because net metering is bullshit subsidies from the poor to the landowners).
PV energy is good, but apartments are not a reasonable use-case for it. Residential PV is inherently a tool for privileged house owners, and if PV is to help apartment dwellers it’s through grid-scale renewables and dynamic pricing and/or smart grids that provide cheap power for A/C on sunny summer days.
You might not entirely cover the power consumption of an AC, but you can drastically lower the cost of using one by at least partially generating your own electricity. As for the technical aspects I cannot argue at all, as I have no knowledge whatsoever in that regard.
It will take years before you make that money back on the investment though, depending on local taxation and electricity prices. And that’s assuming that you have a decent enough orientation in the first place - some people live on the north side of their apartment block!
Always do the maths on PV for your situation, a 25 year positive ROI does not justify a purchase but a 10 year ROI might.We need more A/C to survive climate change, but the solution can’t be “put PV on balconies” because it’s highly situational (not everyone has an adequately big south-facing balcony) and won’t solve your problems if you could not afford the cooling bills in the first place (the only people who consider a 10 year ROI a good investment are the ones with capital to spare on home improvements). As with all personal renewable tech, it’s a cost-saving tool for the well-off, not a structural solution to anything.
Hello fellow countryman!
I think you grossly overestimate the power consumption of a heat pump (a split heat pump that is). On the hottest period of the year so far, ours used about 1,75kWh for a 40m² space.
One or 2 balcony mounted panels (given the right orientation, even with a suboptimal inclination) will easily deliver that much.
You are however right that most apartments can’t profit much from solar power… The dynamic pricing however can make the cooling really cheap in the summer months. Just switch to non-dynamic pricing before the winter months to get the best year round price.
Two panels on the balcony of a 40m² studio? The 2x1m 400+ W ones? I did not even have a balcony when I lived in a studio lol. Anyways if you only require 1.75 kWh that’s less than a euro of electricity even on fixed pricing. I think the real lesson here is that we haven’t had summer yet this year so the AC barely turned on at all.
I just checked on Hubo, their cheapest portable A/C is 7000 BTU, i.e. 2 kW. That means if you had to use it at full tilt for an hour (not exactly an outlandish scenario in the previous years’ summers), you’d use more electricity in that hour than you’ve had all year this year.
I can barely afford food. a solar array is super luxury. plus i don’t have place for it anyway.
Or get solar on your roof. Usually when it’s hot enough outside to need AC, then that means the sun is shining
That’s fucking nuts; the only time my power bill gets anywhere close to being that high is for three hours a day in June and July (34¢/kwh). For most of the year it’s only 9¢/kwh.
Don’t know how other countries do it, but in the US the home energy sector is highly regulated. Probably one of the only things we do right; but we soon as lawmakers try to propose similar regulations to healthcare and the internet, suddenly it’s “SoCiAlIsM”
Jesus, where is this?
California
Yikes. And my yikes is by Australian standards, where the cost of living compared to most parts of the world is pretty high.
Or, you know, buy a solar array. I hear it’s windy in the UK too. 🙄🙄🙄🙄
I am at this point considered liberal, but I have to say that I do like guns. Range shooting is super fun. If I could I would take up competitive Three Gun as a hobby, but I don’t have a course in my area.
Also, I hike with either my 45-70 ammunition rifle or my .45acp pistol with high grain ammo. Why? I live in Wyoming where we are definitely not on the top of the food chain. Even my pistol is liable to just piss off a bear if it really means business.
Yeah, I would definitely carry a .44 magnum in grizzly country.
Man, if you think target shooting is fun, wait until you go skeet or trap shooting! That’s the most fun shooting there is IMO. Give it a try if you haven’t already. I just bought a really nice Franchi over-under 20 gauge specifically for trap and skeet. It would make a great upland game bird gun too, but I don’t really have any interest in that.
Bear spray is usually a better choice, on account of a whole lot of factors. At the very least you should bring both and issue a warning with bear spray.
Edit: how to use bear spray
Also, be aware that the weather is orders of magnitude more likely to kill you than a bear, and avoiding bear encounters is usually fairly easy to begin with. If you’re carrying a gun but not a compass, your risk assessment is WAY off.
I carry bear spray in black bear country. Thankfully I don’t live anywhere near grizzly bears (although they’re talking about reintroducing them here). I thought I remembered reading somewhere that bear spray isn’t very effective against grizzlies.
sn’t very effective against grizzlies
To be fair, neither is a single round fired center of mass unless it’s like a 12.7×99 mm.
Are you familiar with the .45-70 round?
This is sound theoretical advice but I don’t think most people consider the practical implications of it. Bear spray is only effective out to about 20 feet. A bear can run 30 mph. This means that in order to use that bear spray you need to be close enough for that bear to have its paws on you in less than two seconds. I’m not deluded enough to think I have the balls to stand my ground while a 1200 pound grizzly bear is charging me. I’m reaching for the gun before I reach for the spray which makes it largely useless in practice. I still carry it but it’s not particularly reassuring when you put it in context.
The way bear spray works, you create a big cloud of spicy air in between you and the bear and the bear runs into that cloud. The bear very quickly decides to go do something else with it’s life the second it gets a breath of that air. You don’t wait until the bear is close enough to hit directly with with spray, you spray as soon as the bear starts charging or gets too close. It’s manual or operations is very different from pepper spray for people.
Just like you should be well-trained when carrying your gun, you should have had the training on how to properly use bear spray. This concern you’ve voiced suggests you bought a can and assumed you knew how to use it.
Here’s a fairly decent video to start with.
I hate guns, but alas there’s just no practical alternative for fulfilling my daily quota of wanton destruction.
I do some wonton destruction at the Chinese buffet.
deleted by creator
Bombs aren’t that hard to make. Nor are molotov cocktails.
You’re just lazy.
Get yourself a bat and a hollow core door.
I like the cut of your jib, good sir (or madam).
Lol yeah I’m a Southern progressive, and I love guns just to do range practice. But absolutely understand why they’re hard to get/going away. People suck and it’s why we can’t have nice things.
Guns are hard to get and going away? Clearly there’ve been some changes in the South since I was last there.
I was pretty sure every breakfast in Texas came with a side of biscuits and gravy and a revolver.
Wow, you’re describing use cases we can all agree are legitimate and you didn’t say anything about being careless or reckless, or trigger happy, nor express an impulse to “mag dump” someone. Yeah, that’ll piss off fellow liberals
.357 lever actions are neat.
I love target shooting and do conceal carry, but it does get a bit ridiculous around here. After leaving the Army, it took a lot of training and rigid selfcontrol to call it a “clip” again, just to troll the gravy seals down at the range. I laugh as they correct me, and the owner, who knows me, just shakes his head and calls me an ass.
Guns are amazing when they’re collector items made by Holland & Holland to your custom spec. When they’re mass produced crap, they’re not much different from air soft guns at the shooting range. At least air soft guns don’t kill people.
But America is DC, Europe is already AC!
Australia has AC/DC. Can’t beat that.
That… Explains so many things.
America is AC…
Explain Washington then
He had like 30 goddamn dicks…
He’ll save children, but not the British children
He’s coming
T̵̯̟̭̙̓̈́h̵̫͑͒͋ͅͅe̶͉͎̊́̍͜͝͝ ̴̫̖́͐̅̽͗W̶̨͔̃ą̸̖̭͑͗̃̀ͅs̷̛͙͗̎̓͜ḧ̷̼̣̯͕̓i̸̱͛̈́͆n̷̖̿̐̑ͅģ̴͒͛͆͛ţ̸̖̲̟̜͂o̴̞̓ṋ̵̘̗͔͌̔̈́̚,̷̯͇͛̐͒͛̚ ̸̛̥͑͊̏͝h̷̙̦͕̍̀̍͘e̸̟̜͛̋́́ ̴͇͔̅͐̚͝͝ć̵̡̛͔͓̦ͅỏ̶̱̻̝̜̾ͅm̶͖̗̤̳̏̔̓͗̂ĕ̶̢͔͚̺̞s̷͍̈́.̴̝͇̼́̒̓̈
I heard he could not tell a lie; he gnawed down a cherry tree with his wooden teeth and then threw it all the way across the Potomac, then told everybody about it.
That’s the part before the inverter duh
This is an impossible feat.
We call it an impossible meatre in Europe
Crossed the Delaware
My bad. I only remember something about them using DC to electrocute an elephant to prove how much better it was.
They’ll say “aw, Topsy” at my autopsy, but no one will be more shocked than me.
I think that was Edison using AC. Apparently it was not part of the war of the currents. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocuting_an_Elephant
That was actually to prove how “dangerous” it was. This was when Edison and Tesla were duking it out, trying to get their respective electricity types established as the standard. Edison and JP Morgan decided it would be a good promotion for alternating current if they publicly electrocuted an elephant with direct current to demonstrate how dangerous it was. Obviously they knew that both modes are dangerous with that much current, but when has marketing ever been about honesty?
But the whole idea of electrocuting mammals caught on, so there is that!
It is 60Hz tho (instead of 50) which is stoopid. So you were on the right track.
Why is 60hz stupid? The US was ahead of Europe in terms of electrical development last century and 50hz generators were bigger and more expensive than 60hz generators at the time.
“Imperial existed since before metric and was more usable at the time so we should use it forever.”
Just stop trying to be the “im not like the other girls” of the world and join the blue world.
Seems like a waste of money to replace, and this is coming from someone that wouldn’t mind if we switched to metric here in the states. The Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion is the only one that fucks me up
Oh and Japan uses both 50 and 60, so we’re not even the craziest grid setup
Yeah ofc now its kinda too late. But there was a time where it was easily foreseeable that it would make sense to switch, but wasnt done.
1.0 cycle a second > 0.8 cycles a second.
Also fuck 25fps TV
50Hz is 50 cycles per second, and 60Hz is 60 cycles a second. Nothing is using as slow as 1 cycle per second.
deleted by creator
How is AC being a game changer surprising?? When it is hot I see my contacts in the UK sitting with icepacks in their laps or with fans all around them spraying themselves with water. Imagine if the whole room was just a tolerable temperature, it isn’t hard to picture. Seems odd.
(Yes I get it just isn’t a thing there and they have buildings older than time itself…but still…)
I just got hit by beryl, it is hell on earth here right now. Now power for two days so far with temps arouns 90-95 f andn%100 humidity. Sleeping is now considered a water sport and no ac in sight.
The worst part? You cant cool off even with a fan, there’s too much humidity forntour sweat to evaporate and cool you. I wish i at least had cold drinks
Yeah, some parts of the US recently experienced something called a wet bulb event. Basically, that’s a phenomenon where the heat and humidity are both so high that your body’s natural cooling mechanism (sweating) stops working entirely and people will overheat simply by being outside. No amount of shade or cool drinks will help, because your body’s primary cooling mechanism has been defeated.
Basically, sweat works by evaporating. When water evaporates, it takes heat with it. This allows sweat to cool you down as it dries. To be able to accurately determine what the temperature feels like, you can’t just use a regular dry thermometer. You need to use something called a wet bulb thermometer. This is basically a thermometer with some wet cotton wrapped around it, to simulate sweat. As the wet cotton dries, it creates a more accurate gauge of what the ambient temperature feels like, the same way sweat cools you.
But a wet bulb event is when the wet bulb thermometer reads above 95°F. At that point, it means the cotton isn’t drying fast enough to cool a person down. At this point, the temperatures are dangerous even to fit and healthy individuals in the shade with fans and cool drinks. Because a breeze won’t even cool you down when it’s that hot outside; A fan will actually heat you up even faster, because the air is adding heat faster than evaporative cooling can remove it.
That is basically life down here from may to september lol
Nah, true wet bulb events are pretty rare. With a wet bulb event, you overheat even while sitting still in the shade with a breeze. Because again, you’ve reached the point where a breeze is actually warming you up instead of cooling you down. They’re becoming more common nowadays due to global warming, but they still only happen occasionally. Again, a wet bulb thermometer will typically read significantly lower than the ambient temperature, because it’s being cooled by evaporation.
At wet bulb temps in the 90’s, construction crews start delaying, school athletics aren’t allowed to practice outdoors, cities start setting up pop-up cooling centers for the homeless, etc… Even the army limits outdoor work to 10 minutes per hour, because the risk of heat stroke is too high. Wet bulb temps above ~87 are rare, so when it reaches the 90’s emergency management crews go into full blown crisis mode as people start getting heat exhaustion just from walking around the block.
Leave
Easier said than done for most
The other thing in the UK is that screen doors and windows are non-existent so if you want to open them for fresh air you’re inviting all the bugs in as well
There are nets with velcro tape.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/tesa-insect-net/s?k=tesa+insect+net
They don’t even have screening? Guys wtf get a hardware store that’s worth a shit.
I wish we did in Sweden as well. Parts of the country has a fuck ton of mosquitos during summer.
Inward opening windows are unfortunately not uncommon which makes screens a pain.
Newer windows can usually do that fancy flip trick and a bunch of other fancy stuff though.
Inward opening windows are the standard in Germany and nearly everyone just buys a cheap bug-screen set that you can simply wedge into the window frame. They cost like 20€ a pop. There are all kinds of solutions for this.
My house always is cool anyway - it’s well-insulated so heat doesn’t come in unless I open a window, and I open the windows every evening when it’s cool outside.
Air conditioning would just waste energy and increase humidity
Air condition decreases humidity.
Yeah and that is my problem with them. I often get a sore throat when in airconditioned rooms, especially in smaller rooms. But it is not as bad as it used to be. Don’t know if my body changed or the ACs became better.
Then you can add humidity
Oh? My workplace has one of these that you fill with water that then cools the water and very slowly sprays it into the air, mixed with air of course. Works well to make the room cooler, but even in the manual it says that it shouldn’t be running all the time because the increased humidity can cause mold.
So which kind of air conditioning are you using?
(and even when it decreases humidity the other reasons still stand)
That’s not air con, that’s a swamp cooler. Air-conditioning works by the same mechanism your fridge does. And the cool coils condense water vapour in the air, thus reducing humidity.
Interesting, thanks.
Air-conditioning works by the same mechanism your fridge does.
Boiling-cold)
Haha holy shit…they thought THAT WAS AC?
This right here is the bare minimum as to why education is so important.
Just so you know, there are places where people live differently from you.
Would you expect the same level of knowledge about keeping a house warm at the equator? Because I’d argue you need to better your education if you do.
I’m living in an area where AC is completely unnecessary. About +15°C in warm summer nights (that’s when I open my windows to let fresh air in), +30°C peak but all houses here are well-insulated (they have to be because of winter).
Of course it’s different in the USA, you have higher temperatures and don’t insulate your houses (a well-insulated house keeps its temperature: it stays warm in winter and cool in summer).
Also if room is too humid it stops working
Lots of places in the US don’t even get to a comfortable temperature at night. Right now I’m in Pennsylvania which is pretty far north and the lowest it’s going to get tonight is 80F with 80% humidity. It was 100F today with the same humidity. I actually got sick at work from it.
Honestly, for me a reason why humans shouldn’t live in such places. For the Europeans here (that have not much clue of weird American units):
80 F = 26.667 C
100 F = 38 C
So you’re trying to say most of North America is uninhabitable? I’m in North Carolina, the temperature and relative humidity were in the 90’s yesterday. It’s July.
I mean it’s thanks to modern technology not uninhabitable, but we’re “wasting” a lot of energy to make it habitable, and this is getting worse in the future, because of climate change. I couldn’t imagine living somewhere where, I can’t get out (of AC cooled buildings) because it’s too hot.
25º during summer nights either already was or is going to become normal around gigantic areas of the world. Getting all Indians to just live anywhere else is never going to be plausible.
I didn’t say it’s realistic to move that much people around the globe, it did grow like that historically, but I do think, that migration because of this is becoming a sociodemographic and political problem in somewhere near the future. And is already somewhat in areas that are less wealthy and instable politically (e.g. northern Africa).
People live there for many thousand years now and most of the time without ACs. It is defintly inhabitable. We “waste” the energy to make it comfortable.
Considering the energy we “waste” to make most of Europe inhabitable on the other hand… And here it really is about “inhabitable”, because without heating we couldn’t live in e.g. Germany.
If we only lived in areas where it would be comfortable without heating and ACs we’d have to kill of 90% of humanity.
True, there’s a lot of heating necessary to make life comfortable in Europe (but also in USA btw. probably even more, because I’d say the standards for insulation are better in Europe, and temperatures are more extreme more in the center of the continent).
But it’s absolutely possible to live without (most of) the heating, by:
- Using passive solar energy (even in the winter) + good insulation
- Clothing! There are ways to help with heat too via evaporation chill though (I’m just sitting here with a cooling west, because I easily overheat, and that makes my life quite bit more comfortable in summer without AC, even or especially outside)
Though as you correctly notice, the combination of high temperature and humidity is what potentially creates a dangerous climate for life, even with things such as cooling wests in “low” high temperatures (within 30-40C), because evaporation chill stops working, so there are times and places, and these times and places will get more frequent where humans can’t survive outside (without some serious technological counter-measures) while with cold temperatures you can always wear (somewhat specialized) clothing.
Evaporation chill does work even with quite high temperatures, but at some point (and I do think there are places that reach that point), the quite effective human cooling system is not able to catch up anymore (I think somewhere around 50+C IIRC).
The temperature is not a big problem imo. The humidity though.
Temperature is absolutely a problem. Without getting too deeply technical, a heat index above 99F/37C is dangerous even for healthy adults. Las Vegas this week has seen temperatures up to 120F. The forecast today is for a temperature high of 118F/48C (low of 90F/32C overnight), with a relative humidity of 8%. That works out to be a heat index of 111F/44C.
Where I am, today’s high will be 82F, but humidity is sitting at 90%, which is a heat index of 92F.
You can also look at wet bulb temperatures; at a certain point, your body can’t cool fast enough through evaporative cooling, and you’ll die from heat.
I lived through dry summers around 40°C without ACs without a problem my whole 40+ years of life. But 30°C with a high humidity is a different thing. Much comes down to being accustomed to things though naturally. I have friends who grew up in southern China who get problems when the heat is dry.
But people live in areas that get 35+°C every year for several month since the beginning of humanity itself.
26? It’s pretty warm, but not too hot.
Over night, with 80% humidity? Are you sure? I’d be close to hospital with that temperature without some kind of AC, or at the very least ventilation… (I’m sensitive to heat). And sleeping with that temperature even with ventilation is going to be very uncomfortable and not relaxing…
Also we’re talking about lows, so this is likely not the temperature inside when there’s no AC, more like 30+C
https://meteoinfo.ru/pogoda/russia/moscow-area/moscow
80%, 20°C at 10.07 01:00
I’d be close to hospital with that temperature without some kind of AC, or at the very least ventilation… (I’m sensitive to heat).
Then you certanly need ventilation or AC. I just have window open.
Damn, I didn’t expect it to be that bad outside of the southern states.
I’m currently getting ~30°C peak but about 15°C at night. We only have a few nights every year that reach 20°C. Austria.
deleted by creator
I’m a US electrician who may move to Scotland within a decade. I’ll hook up some mini splits for yall. Just gimme that NHS.
About to move to France, no one has AC there either but EVERYONE is about to buy them in huge numbers. Anyone know what manufacturers have the largest residential AC marketshare? That looks like a Mitsubishi. Definitely going to invest in those companies they’re gonna explode.
I am not a financial advisor
the last time I looked into this I ran into the problem that most of the publicly traded heat pump manufacturers are huge conglomerates that produce just about every appliance under the sun. I don’t want to invest in that. do you have any recommendations?
Japan makes amazing heat pumps and knows how to deal with high humidity and large temp changes. (See Tokyo, winter and summer)
The Mitsubishi ones are really popular and work well from what I know. But lots of folks make em - it’s just a matter of getting them to make enough of them for 220VAC 50hz or whatever
That’s right, a lifestyle trade. Give them a reason to live and the NHS will give you a way to stay alive.
I’m pretty sure that access to guns would instantly end my depression.
AC always gives me a sore throat after couple of days, is that just me?
Air’s dry. Try a humidifier
Fyi it could be filters need changing. Right now if we turn on the aircon at work, I get terribly sore throat that would last for days. Turns out they change/clean the filters only once a year, and it’s even worse in some other rooms where it also smells bad.
Slap a humidifier in your room. Air conditioning is by its nature also a dehumidifier, so some people end up with overly dry and therfore eventually soar throats.
Came to say the same thing. I sleep like a baby next to my humidifier, dreaming of a way out of this hot hellhole
Found someone not living in 100 degree heat 90% of the year…
Not just you. I hate AC. Awful being in hotel rooms where it’s AC all the way and you can’t even really open a window in the room. I get sore throat and usually they’re really noisy too, so I can’t sleep without earplugs. I very much prefer opening a window and airing thoroughly in the evening and then during the night leaving window on kip. Travelling many days or weeks in AC vehicles really makes me sick.
Like someone else mentioned, the cool side heat exhangers condense water out of the air.
They have A/Cs that recycle the condensation that they remove back into the air, but not every unit does this (usually the moisture is just dumped somewhere outside). But yours probably doesn’t do this so like everyone else said, you need a humidifier.
Don’t get one if those crappy little 1 gallon ones that create big clouds of steam; you have to use distilled water or all the junk that’s in your water will get atomized and into your lungs. Buy a basic evaporative humidifier instead (the kind that use a wick), one of those giant 6 gallon ones and set it to 40-50% RH. It’ll keep your entire home nice and comfortable and you can just use water straight from the sink. And you only have to refill them about once a week instead of every single day. Just make sure you don’t skimp out on the bacteriostat cause they will get nasty quick if you cheap out.
Alternatively the budget option is just to take showers with the bathroom door open and the vent off. Just make sure that you’re monitoring the humidity levels in your home should you go this route; keep RH below 65% or you’re going to have mold. If your A/Cs thermostat doesn’t report humidity levels, then you can just buy a cheap meter. They’re under $10 in most parts of the world.
You’re running it too cold. I have the same if I set it to 21/22 celcius. Set it to 24/25. That’s still amazing in summer and yet no sore throat or getting sick.
Honestly it’s not that bad if the building is made right. Especially old stone houses that also happen to be surrounded by trees are absolutely godly in these scenarios (the down side is the heating bill in the winter :P or rather that used to be the downside…). I honestly wouldn’t have ever considered an AC a couple years ago, but now that summer means a constant 30°C I’m reconsidering. Like bro, 30°C used to be a HOT exceptional couple days, not the entire summer!
You are absolutely right about old stone houses. I live in an old stone cottage surrounded by trees and it’s amazing in the summer. We turn our ac on a few weeks to a month after everyone else does(in the US).
The winters aren’t too bad either. We have a tiny wood stove and even when using the oil furnace it holds heat in pretty well.
Side bonus! Home owners insurance gives us a break because the risk of fires goes way down when the outside is made of rocks.
Trees are OP. Please nerf.
We in EU also have AC, what’s the difference?
I wish we did in Sweden.
It’s fairly rare in family homes.
You can’t buy a window unit? I literally don’t get this…explain how you can’t go to a hardware store in your country and buy an air conditioner or order one online
They don’t exist in my country and our windows doesn’t work with one either. We don’t have sliding windows.
You can of course install real air conditioning but that’s expensive as fuck.
A lot of houses were built before window units were a thing, so you get windows that just won’t fit them, and you need slightly to moderately more complicated systems to make it work, like “air conditioner bolted to wall with a hose into the window or through a wall” style.
Their climate is also on average vaguely more forgiving in the heat, with temperature ranges that are comparable but lower sustained highs and generally lower humidity resulting in generally more tolerable conditions even during the warm season.
Remember that Europe is much further north than we typically think. Italy is as far north as new York, and Germany is about as far north as Canada. “Why aren’t air conditioners as popular in nova Scotia as they are in Florida” has a more obvious ring to it.Finally, if you’re used to it it’s not a problem you feel compelled to solve.
The northern most states in the USA also have the same arrangement. It’s (historically) in a cooler climate, where a “heatwave” is anything above 80F, so just open your windows if it’s stuffy indoors. Combine that with fossil-fuel heating, and heat-pumps just aren’t a thing.
It’s pretty much the same here. Fossil-fuel heating is fairly rare though.
Heating is usually done with geothermal heat-pumps, district heating, direct electric heating, or with regular heat-pumps which are actually fairly popular.
Most of my friends in Germany and UK do not have AC, or have such undersized units for their homes it barely makes a difference. Or they don’t want to run it because energy costs to utilize it during the day are ridiculous.
What I’ve learned at least about the houses in the UK is that the homes are old and drafty so it’s not about the size of the unit but the insulation being poor.
Shit insulation is actually more of a pro argument for AC. I mean, the houses in the USA are made out of cardboard and gipsum. They dont insulate a thing. My house has great insulation. In summer I just keep the windows closed and roll down the shutters during daytime and it’s freezing cold inside. At night we get cool wind from either the North or Baltic sea, we then open up the windows to freshen the air up a bit.
In the us, there is insulation in the outer walls to maintenance indoor temperature.
Shit insulation means you have to do a lot more work to heat or cool a sapce.
North vs South. AC is not very common in homes in countries like Netherlands and Germany. Mostly because it’s only really hot for one or two months and those are the months that Germans and Dutch people are on holiday. So it’s either go on holiday or stay at home for one summer and buy AC.
till
American checks out.
Middle English til, tille “(going) onward to and into; (extending) as far as; (in time) continuing up to;” from Old English til (Northumbrian) “to,” and from Old Norse til “to, until,” both from Proto-Germanic *tilan (source also of Danish til, Old Frisian til “to, till,” Gothic tils “convenient,” German Ziel “limit, end, goal”).
A common preposition in Scandinavian, serving in the place of English to, probably originally the accusative case of a noun otherwise lost but preserved in Icelandic tili “scope,” the noun used to express aim, direction, purpose (as in aldrtili “death,” literally “end of life”). Also compare German Ziel “end, limit, point aimed at, goal,” and till (v.).
As a conjunction, “until, to the time that or when,” from late Old English.
Yes. Like that.
Like an engineer told me recently, the image of AC is biased in most of us towards the electricity-sucking devices of the previous century. Contemporary AC tech is to 1980s-90s AC what LED lightbulbs are to incandescent ones.
Moreover, the very same units are often also super efficient heating devices that embarrass their gas/oil burning counterparts.
Assuming the manufacturer has bothered to make the tiny modification necessary to turn AC into a heat pump and then not charge you 50% markup for the privilege.
Heat pumps are still stupid expensive.
https://youtu.be/_hAuKtoRxJI?si=3LO40Ih8XGKmbWmC
Tldr, gouging exists, but people regularly also get systems that are way bigger than they need, which drives costs up by many multiples.
It’s an even bigger problem in countries that don’t traditionally have air conditioning systems because basically no one knows how to size these things.
But even disregarding that, a similarly sized AC, (similar to whatever heat pump you are quoted for, which as you say will probably be too big) will still be more expensive than an AC on its own even though it’s basically the same thing.
Seems minisplits are becoming more popular. Saw a truckload of them on the interstate a while back
they are great.
They are super efficient. They are relatively cheap. and they are super easy to install DIY.
Plus they are super easy to retrofit into older homes that dont have space for duct work.
Plus Plus, while the unit can only be in heating or cooling mode (so no heating one room while cooling another), you can control temperatures and even on/off on an individual room basis so you can have your bedroom at a frosty 61f while keeping the livingroom at a more reasonable 74.
Plus Plus, while the unit can only be in heating or cooling mode (so no heating one room while cooling another)
Some manufacturers are actually working to change that. It’s just a heat pump. Meaning it moves heat from one place to another. That’s how they can be over 100% efficient, because they’re not using power to generate heat; They’re just moving the existing heat around. And that can absolutely include moving heat from one interior room to another.
I’m looking into installing two of these here (southern Europe). There are some models that reach an SCOP of 5. That means that in heating mode for every Kw used they release 5Kw of heat in the room. They are legally considered renewable energy.
