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The far-reaching effects of air conditioning

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Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning

#51

Post by vacri »

tyng wrote: post #33

The same goes for washing machine: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing... "What was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? Hans Rosling makes the case for the washing machine. With newly designed graphics from Gapminder, Rosling shows us the magic that pops up when economic growth and electricity turn a boring wash day into an intellectual day of reading."

A while back a friend of mine told me how her (great-?)grandmother in Malta used to do the laundry down the river as a young woman, and her and her friends used to dream about having a magic box that you could just throw the laundry in, press a button, and it'd be done!

Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning

#52

Post by projectorlochsa »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #28
projectorlochsa wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

24-25 Celsius on lowest fan settings should be cold enough for practically everyone.

My office space in china would keep the temperature around 24-26C in the summer. My arms would literally sweat to the desk when typing (I'm not a completely in the air tyoer, as a programmer I don't need to be). I had to hit a cooler Starbucks with a laptop to get things done it was so annoying. I much would have preferred it being a bit colder, around 20C is best, even if I would wear a light jacket at that temp...a…

It sounds very weird. If the space is closed, the AC makes the air dryer, so sweating should be minimal on these low temperatures (dampness is hell).

Are you sitting next to a window that is blasting its rays over your body?

Is the building badly designed?

Are you protected by a layer of fat cells?

Sweating at 24-26C without sunlight blasting at you is very anomalous.

Lowering the AC to 20C or below is such an insanely wasteful thing to do it ought to be forbidden. The biggest CO2 footprint is us, the first world, heating and cooling.

Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning

#53

Post by h20sdvaid »

Wow, it has to be 35c/95f before it is hot. Living in Australia on one mine site the daily temperature was 45c/113f at night 32 c/90f

Amazing how you get used to the temperature. Joys of working in a desert in Summertime. Never use air conditioning no good for my health. And yes termites are pretty smart in keeping things cool

Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning

#54

Post by Xylakant »

TomK32 wrote: post #43

Why did no one mention the Romans yet? They came up with the frigidarium where you could literally cool down with your friends and some private houses even had water running inside their walls to cool it down (or hot air in the colder months). Temperature control in buildings is 100% architecture and technical add-ons like AC are a poor choice. Look at termites how they use architecture to cool their hives.

> Temperature control in buildings is 100% architecture and technical add-ons like AC are a poor choice.

AC is not only temperature control. Running water through the walls or evaporation cooling only work in moderately dry climates but will not help much in humid climates. Cooling the walls will just lead to condensation and wet walls. There's certainly a lot that can be done without AC, but humidity control is required in some regions of the world.

Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning

#55

Post by kijin »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #36
kijin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every summer, I see a couple of posts on HN about some supposedly groundbreaking scheme to cool a building by a few degrees without using an traditional A/C. Usually it's a combination of ventilation and evaporation, resulting in somewhat cooler but much more humid air. I guess it might work in the Bay Area. But as someone who lives where I regularly see temperatures higher than the human body temperature with humidi…

Most people in the Bay Area don't need AC. Swamp coolers don't work in the tropics, obviously. They are great in the desert though (except during monsoon season). In the tropics, you cool by extracting humidity, not injecting it. And extracting humidity might not work very well in a very dry desert...so... The ice block thing worked perfectly fine in Iran, at least.

> In the tropics, you cool by extracting humidity, not injecting it. And extracting humidity might not work very well in a very dry desert...so...

You seem to be saying that an air conditioner requires significant ambient humidity in order to be effective. That doesn't make sense, as anyone from Phoenix, Arizona can testify.

A typical air conditioner does not cool the air by extracting humidity. It extracts humidity by cooling the air and so bringing it below its condensation point. Extracting humidity is a welcome side effect, since it helps us feel more comfortable, but it is not the primary function of a modern air conditioner.

Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning

#56

Post by pavlov »

_0nac wrote: post #11

Lee Kuan Yew, founder of modern Singapore: "Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics. Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings whe…

Japan is further ahead, as they have optimized this with a decade-old policy called "Cool Biz".

To save energy and money by reducing AC, office workers are allowed to wear more casual clothing in the summer:

https://qz.com/465327/ditch-the-tie-and-reduce-the-ac-japans...

Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning

#57

Post by huac »

jay-anderson wrote: post #5

> A study in Phoenix, Arizona, found the hot air pumped out of air conditioning units increased the city's night-time temperature by 2C Often I wish places of business and work places wouldn't turn up the AC so much. I have a jacket at work in Phoenix during the summer because they keep it so cold.

Some trading floors keep it very chilly in order to keep traders awake (and issue fleeces to keep the rest of their body warm).

Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning

#58

Post by stevoski »

superasn wrote: post #31

Throughout the article I was waiting for the "But.." As in some how it also deteriorated the global weather, caused some unknown sort of pollution, etc. It was good to see that Air conditioning has only improved the world and has no side-effects.

FTA:

"But there's an inconvenient truth: you can only make it cooler inside by making it warmer outside."

Followed by several paragraphs of the contribution of air-conditioning to hotter cities.

Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning

#59

Post by MandieD »

pluma wrote: post #50
eBombzor wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decreasing the AC doesn't mean people will start sweating themselves. 75 - 78 F is perfect but most buildings for some reason turn their ACs all the way down to the 60s. For athletic centers, of course it makes sense. But in big open libraries, lecture halls, places with little activity in general, it's awful. It's especially bad for your health if you live in a hot region like southern California since your body has…

In Germany ~70°F (19-20°C) is considered "room temperature". 75°F is too damn warm. My brain pretty much stops working around 77°F.

It seems to be common practice here in northern Bavaria to only cool offices to about 5 C below outside temp - so if it's 35 C (95 F) outside, only cooling to 30 (86 F).

Fortunately, wearing shorts to work on extremely hot (over 30 C) days is also more socially acceptable here.

Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning

#60

Post by ownagefool »

arethuza wrote: post #48
eBombzor wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decreasing the AC doesn't mean people will start sweating themselves. 75 - 78 F is perfect but most buildings for some reason turn their ACs all the way down to the 60s. For athletic centers, of course it makes sense. But in big open libraries, lecture halls, places with little activity in general, it's awful. It's especially bad for your health if you live in a hot region like southern California since your body has…

I suspect it very much depends what you are used to - I probably think of 15C as "comfortable" and 25C inside would be sweltering. Having said that I'm in Scotland - the other day we had heavy rain and it was 8C which is weather we could get at any time of the year!

Funny. I'm Scottish and I would find 15c utterly baltic, especially when inside.
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