111–120 of 184 posts
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After moving from Phoenix to the Seattle area, I've noticed the 'feels like' temperature is about 11C difference. 30C in Phoenix feels like 19C in Seattle.
Humidity and/or wind? I've noticed temperatures in Scotland on mountains feeling much colder than lower temperatures in the Alps.
In Denver, I could run for an hour in direct sunlight with the temperature about 30 C. In Washington, DC, that would have been suicidal.
Let's not forget about health and the breeding ground for pathogens and bacteria that AC's are. I used to get really bad colds and coughs during summer, when the AC's went on. I now carry a spray that puts bacteria in the air that displace other bacteria and no colds and coughs anymore. But that's not mainstream. There's probably a lot of sick people out there, thanks to AC.
> I now carry a spray that puts bacteria in the air that displace other bacteria and no colds and coughs anymore. But that's not mainstream. No, it's not, I've never heard of it! I'm pretty skeptical of new medical claims, though, and I'm curious about this description. From my limited understanding, don't think the bacteria in air are like a bathtub full of objects that take up space, or like an ecosystem that compe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US, centralized AC is the norm in the numerous suburban houses. Newer apartment buildings in cities have centralized AC and window units are usually only used in older buildings.
You are speaking centralized as in having one central unit for the building, are you not? I am speaking about having a big company, usually city-run, making the cool in a huge plant and then pump it out (in insulated pipes) to the rest of the city/town. The heat version of it is very common here in Sweden (for towns bigger than, say, 10k people) and it is a lot more efficient (and therefore, cheaper) than having heat…
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.
I wonder why central cooling hasn't taken off like central heating has. It seems to me that the economy of scale would work really well with cold just as it does with heat.
Historically most refrigerants have had "issues" when leaked either environmental or being toxic or otherwise it minimizes danger to keep as little as possible. Even if we could afford to use 1000x as much refrigerant with a central compressor station, it would be bad for the environment to use it that way.
You can move a huge amount of heat with water pressurized to merely 14 psi or so, but I have a puron aka R-410A conditioner at home and that dude runs near 400 psi on a hot day and its difficult to run miles of high pressure pipe.
I'm not sure bigger compressors are that much more efficient than smaller compressors, taking into account the environmental and economic expense of the pipes.
From an engineering standpoint its cheaper safer and less environmentally destructive to push kilowatts thru copper wire than push high pressure expensive refrigerant thru long high pressure pipes if all other things were equal which they mostly are.
The downside of air conditioned homes is that houses are now built with very little regard to insulation and intelligent use of the sun (to warm the house at winter) and the wind (to cool it during summertime). My house has a large, paper-thin southern wall and during the summer it gets so hot that it radiates heat into the house at night. So I have to air-condition my bedroom at night. And the windows are stupidly d…
I find that hard to believe. Where I live the local muni delegates to a state wide "uniform dwelling building code" I googled it for laughs and the minimum ceiling insulation as of the '09 revision was R-49 which is about 14 inches of fiberglass.
My concrete block basement walls met code 50 years ago at about R-2 insulation value, as of '09 the mandatory minimum for new basement walls is R-15, OK then..
The biggest problem I see with post-AC era houses like mine is very poor cross ventilation. I must run the AC when its 60 degrees outside because the windows are not oriented for cross ventilation so I will roast alive at 85 degrees indoors when its 60 outside without AC.
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.
I wonder why central cooling hasn't taken off like central heating has. It seems to me that the economy of scale would work really well with cold just as it does with heat.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 insane…
I wasn't sweating heavily, or any at all, just my arms were sticky to the desk. It was warm enough that long sleeves were out of the question, so contact was unavoidable. Also, my desk was next to a window facing east, and our blinds were a bit tricky to raise and lower (decide between, darkness and heat filtering).
It is easier to deal with 26C as a baseline temperature in LA than BJ given that humidity is much lower in the former.
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Better have it too cold and people where extra clothing than have people sweating themselves. You can always put more clothes on, you can't take off your skin.
Ever try coding with mittens :-) ? Humor aside, there's a point for me at which even with more clothes the AC is too cold or aggressive and I end up with headaches. Fortunately I am aware of it and I try to be preventive about it (by moving away from the thing).
Let's not forget about health and the breeding ground for pathogens and bacteria that AC's are. I used to get really bad colds and coughs during summer, when the AC's went on. I now carry a spray that puts bacteria in the air that displace other bacteria and no colds and coughs anymore. But that's not mainstream. There's probably a lot of sick people out there, thanks to AC.
> I now carry a spray that puts bacteria in the air that displace other bacteria and no colds and coughs anymore. But that's not mainstream. No, it's not, I've never heard of it! I'm pretty skeptical of new medical claims, though, and I'm curious about this description. From my limited understanding, don't think the bacteria in air are like a bathtub full of objects that take up space, or like an ecosystem that compe…
I cant give a name though; I just bought a box of 'samples' from a guy that's doing some research with it. But it's years away from market, judging from his story. Could send you a 20ml spray if you'd like. :)
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.
It seems nobody has mentioned a near-epidemic of respiratory system infections caused by air-conditioning. And I do not mean the cases where A/C is infected with some rare bacteria (e.g. Legionella) often causing death. Usually it is just common cold or sinusitis caused by overly chilled and dry air. I wonder what are the health-related costs of overusing A/C in moderate climate.
The dew point in January during a cold snap spends weeks around -20F. This is fairly self evident, we have some crisp dry snow free mornings around -10 to -20 every winter and obviously if the dew point were above -20 it would be snowing at that time, or at least cloudy. If I try to humidify the house it'll just get moldy so I let it dry out instead.
I have noticed my hands get dry skin problems, skin cracks and gets infected, when the dew point is below freezing for a couple weeks. Winter is a bad time for static sensitive electronic experimentation. I participate in many winter sports activities and when the dew point is -20F you don't have to sweat much to get hypothermia or dehydrated. Dehydration is a big problem for long distance hikers in the winter, you have to carry the water in a thermos or it'll freeze and tradition is to drink caffeinated hot beverages which makes you pee which dehydrates you faster than not drinking at all.
You'd have to live in an interesting climate where the dew point in the winter is higher than the dew point in an air conditioned house in the summer.