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Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

nytimes.com

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Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#141

Post by erikpukinskis »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #96
jriot wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin doesn't nearly get as hot as the United States. Try sitting inside a house in Mobile, AL in July without air conditioner and see how long you last. Using your water example, what about the deserts in the US that don't have a nearby water source to cool everything. Europe is much cooler in comparison to the US.

My bedroom in Tampa, FL reaches 90F at night without air conditioning. There is no way I could live without AC here.

That's because your house is designed with active cooling as a presumption. If your house was designed to utilize passive cooling effects (thermal mass, green roof, evaporative cooling, overhangs, shades, airflow compression, etc) your bedroom wouldn't get that hot.

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#142

Post by stardek »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #39
klodolph wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off the top of my head, * A lot of home conditioners are fighting the weather in conditions with poor insulation, running when nobody is home, or running in rooms when people are in different parts of the house. * Office air conditioners are often set too cold, subjectively speaking, sometimes resulting in workers bringing sweaters or even space heaters to their desks. This is shockingly common. Multi-zone cooling ca…

The issue in cooling preferences is that if it is too cold, people can wear sweaters or even bring space heaters. If it is too hot, there is not much you can do. I think this problem is exacerbated by open office plans. If you have private/semi-private offices, you can probably do a much better job of controlling local temperature.

This is something being explored in a small trial here at the University of Waterloo. A lab has distributed several small fan/heaters that sense your presence and learn your temperature preferences then heat/cool just your local area.

https://blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca/spotstar

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#143

Post by hughw »

djsumdog wrote: post #119

So we curb emissions by building a bunch of new A/C units? Sorry, that's silly. CO2 is just one of many many forms of pollution. Think you're doing your part by purchasing a hybrid or electric vehicle? There are barrels of oil that go into those tiers, the plastics, not to mention all the pollution that goes into battery production. If your car is fuel efficient, the best thing you can do for the environment is drive…

Reducing the number of humans could be one approach. The idea causes rancorous response from religious people who believe God told us to be fruitful and multiply. To reduce births might require coercion, it's true, but it would not require killing people or making them suffer. I don't see how else we can continue to enjoy the benefits and power of technology while keeping the planet habitable and enjoyable.

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#144

Post by cknight »

amatwl wrote: post #105
axelfontaine wrote: post #64

American air conditioners running at full power, chilling the interior and dripping on the sidewalk below on a hot day always deeply trouble me. Maybe it's my european view on things, but for contrast here in Munich we aren't just building out a city-wide heat network, but we also have a cold network! Cold river water flows through the pipe network that traverses the city and large office building can get connected t…

Here is why air conditioning is important: it's estimated nearly 70,000 died in Europe during the 2003 heat wave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave

Yep. The architecture is fundamentally not capable of dealing with the heat. I moved from Sydney to Germany a few years ago and 30°C has gone from being perfectly fine to abject misery, long before air conditioning comes in to the equation.

In Australia we have houses built with sizeable gaps to allow the frames to warp with the heat, while also allowing air to easily flow in and out of the building. Windows are single-glazed. Exactly what you don't want in a German house, in other words.

In Germany the houses are heat traps and the focus has largely been to conserve energy in winter time (and rightfully so). I've had doors here which stop closing smoothly in the summer because of the slightest warping, the gaps are so tiny. Houses are often air-tight, and the external walls are half a meter thick due to the hefty insulation. All windows are at least double-glazed, one place I've stayed was triple.

New German builds using the Passivhaus specification are generally pretty good as they have constant machine-generated airflow at a set temperature, but as far as I am aware, this specification can only be built new - it's not possible (within reasonable cost) to retrofit an older house to the new specifications. For those, air conditioning seems the only reasonable option moving forward.

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#145

Post by grogenaut »

microcolonel wrote: post #76
klodolph wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off the top of my head, * A lot of home conditioners are fighting the weather in conditions with poor insulation, running when nobody is home, or running in rooms when people are in different parts of the house. * Office air conditioners are often set too cold, subjectively speaking, sometimes resulting in workers bringing sweaters or even space heaters to their desks. This is shockingly common. Multi-zone cooling ca…

In addition to men preferring cooler temperatures in general (probably for metabolic reasons), men in offices are usually required to wear warmer clothing than women (though anecdotally I suspect that because of the AC, pantsuits are becoming more popular). In one office I worked at, the AC controls were not accessible, and because there was no dress code whatsoever, everyone complained about the temperatures being t…

"Looks professional" is all about what "successful people" wear. If everyone in the US who was successful took to wearing Moomoos... then we'd all be wearing moomoos and the schlubs would be wearing suits.

Just look at the hoodie pre and post zuckerberg.

If Mark had instead wore a tank-top and board shorts 50% of SF would be wearing that year round instead.

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#146

Post by MisterBastahrd »

lucb1e wrote: post #136
toomuchtodo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bedroom in Tampa, FL reaches 90F at night without air conditioning. There is no way I could live without AC here.

Yeah you could, if you weren't so used to AC. But do you want to live there if you're not used to the heat?

I went 5 years without A/C in my car in southeastern Louisiana. I was fine in the daytime heat and humidity, even in the summer, but I would never want to sleep in it. I suppose if everyone got hammocks it'd be fine, but beds are insulators. Your body heat works against you.

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#147

Post by lucb1e »

ramses0 wrote: post #95
axelfontaine wrote: post #64

American air conditioners running at full power, chilling the interior and dripping on the sidewalk below on a hot day always deeply trouble me. Maybe it's my european view on things, but for contrast here in Munich we aren't just building out a city-wide heat network, but we also have a cold network! Cold river water flows through the pipe network that traverses the city and large office building can get connected t…

http://www.ugra.org/pdfs/SurfaceWaterTemp.pdf Random Texas river temperature ranges from 55º (winter) to 85º (summer). The world is a big place with lots of climate variety. :-)

Just FYI, the symbol you're using is an "ordinal indicator" (it has a tiny line below it), e.g. 1º means "first" according to Wikipedia (I copied the symbol and put it in duckduckgo). TIL. For me, on Linux with US-international keyboard (with dead keys), the degrees symbol is on AltGr+Shift+0 (and then either a letter, like å, or space to just make the degrees symbol).

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#148

Post by rplst8 »

DannyBee wrote: post #93
rplst8 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge for these is the cost. First, you either have to drill wells that are ~500 feet deep or lay coils of tubing under your yard (if you have one) below the frost line. Doing either is expensive, though the wells are much more so. The downside of the cheaper option (the coils under yard) is that earth shifts, and the coils will too. I've had two separate friends install these (usually 4-6 separate coils) onl…

Sure, it's cost, but that's solvable. 1. Drilling the wells is not actually that expensive depending where you are. For me, 3 300 ft wells, bored, piped, and grouted, was about 5k. 2. The units can be gotten for that price with install. You need to take into account the fact that they are significantly more efficient at both heating, and cooling, and hot water, over their lifetime. (also, their specs and submittal da…

That's cheap for drilling from what I've been quoted. Most systems I looked at when I had a house before were in the $30k range installed.

I have three friends/co-workers that had the systems installed. None were particularly impressed with the average cost savings. They said bills went down, but not dramatically. One person had the whole system redone at the suggestion of another HVAC contractor (saying the first cut many corners) the re-done system wasn't much better.

While they may "pretty much never die" this is basically the "cheap on average, but expensive for the unlucky person" argument. This quickly turns into a prisoner's dilemma. No one buys because of potential repair costs, therefore everyone suffers (from higher bills, and eventually global warming).

Wells are not always an option depending on what your land is sitting on. If you are over a big granite deposit, good luck.

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#149

Post by quicklyfrozen »

timmaah wrote: post #32
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a big fire/explosion risk as these are very flammable?

Most RV's use this combo for the fridge. They don't seem to explode but there does seem to be a number of fires.

Well, RV fridges are burning propane to heat ammonia (so it can function when electricity is not available).

This is not the same as actually replacing the refrigerant with propane (or a propane/isobutane blend). Still seems less risky then a gas dryer.

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#150

Post by sandov »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #96
jriot wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin doesn't nearly get as hot as the United States. Try sitting inside a house in Mobile, AL in July without air conditioner and see how long you last. Using your water example, what about the deserts in the US that don't have a nearby water source to cool everything. Europe is much cooler in comparison to the US.

My bedroom in Tampa, FL reaches 90F at night without air conditioning. There is no way I could live without AC here.

90F = 32.2 °C for anyone wondering, I just had to look it up.
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