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Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup

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Re: Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup

#111

Post by guerby »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #72
rsync wrote: post #24

Having individual heating and cooling units ( per unit gas heaters! ) is stupendously inefficient. I travel in Asia fairly regularly so this isn't new to me, but even after all of these years I can't believe I continue to see shiny, brand new "high end" condo buildings in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, etc., with individual AC units hanging out the window. Contrast this with a condo in Minneapolis that I own wher…

When I moved to UK I was shocked that each house amd apartment (!) has a separate gas boiler, a device that need maintenance, takes up space, makes noise and regularly kills people with carbon monoxide. I then met a person who lost a loved one to that thing! In Russia and Czech Republic we have district heating, you just get billed for the amount of hot water consumed. Some of that heat comes from industrial sources…

In Paris there's even a cold water network:

https://www.climespace.fr/en

In addition to hot water since 1927:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnie_parisienne_de_chauff...

Re: Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup

#112

Post by gowld »

7thaccount wrote: post #7
calvinmorrison wrote: post #2

I like that the schematics are included on the air conditioner. I have a few older appliances like this that have it, and it has helped me a few times replacing/diagnosing parts. I laughed a bit where he explains about "Humidity" and the temperature. I know Americans are fat and lazy and love our AC's, but if you spend any time on the east coast, it's a giant swamp. Life is pretty insufferable without an AC when you…

In Louisiana and Arkansas (probably several other states), the temperature can get over 100 Farenheit with super high humidity. This leads to "swamp @$$" without copious amounts of AC. Being comfortable requires AC in the home, car, and at work. In highschool gym class we would just sit in the shade under the bleachers during the summer (too hot to do anything) and be dripping sweat everywhere back in class. It was m…

What's amazing is that covid and politics at eso crazy that the hurricane gets nearly no news headlines.

Re: Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup

#113

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

sgc wrote: post #91
Melkman wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's only one datapoint but recently we had four indoor airco units installed in our house for the bedrooms and livingroom. I expected a single outdoor unit. However during talks with the installer he advised us to go for two outdoor units. This was cheaper in hardware, a bit more efficient and way cheaper to install by placing one outdoor unit on the front of the house and one on the back so all rooms could b…

For heat pumps more outdoor units is definitely more efficient, since the outdoor unit needs to be big enough to accommodate all connected indoor units at once, and will be on even if only one is in use. Two per unit is my go to trade off on that one, with an attempt to group together units that are more likely to be used at the same time (so no bedroom / living room split, try to stick with bedroom/bedroom and livin…

those ceiling mount units ... not sized for typical US construction techniques, so installing them in an existing ceiling can be quite complex. If you're doing new construction, it is possible to correctly frame up the ceiling so that installing them becomes trivial.

Re: Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup

#114

Post by andechs »

reaperducer wrote: post #86
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I moved to UK I was shocked that each house amd apartment (!) has a separate gas boiler, a device that need maintenance, takes up space, makes noise and regularly kills people with carbon monoxide. I then met a person who lost a loved one to that thing! In Russia and Czech Republic we have district heating, you just get billed for the amount of hot water consumed. Some of that heat comes from industrial sources…

In Russia and Czech Republic we have district heating This exists in some cities in the United States, but it's usually older cities like New York and Chicago. The plus side, is that often if you have a building with district heating, you will also have district cooling. On a somewhat related note, some of the buildings in Chicago heat and cool themselves with water pumped directly from the Chicago River. Lake Michig…

Toronto's deep water cooling system is the largest in the world, and air conditions a good chunk of the downtown core.

http://buildipedia.com/aec-pros/engineering-news/torontos-de...

Re: Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup

#115

Post by jk700 »

rsync wrote: post #58
amluto wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having individual heating and cooling units (per unit gas heaters!) is stupendously inefficient. > Contrast this with a condo in Minneapolis that I own wherein heat and AC are central in the building and individual units can set their temperature to whatever they like - all run with tremendously higher efficiency. This needs some real data. There are a few central technologies that might be used. A condensing gas-f…

"This needs some real data." I agree and I, admittedly, have none. I will say, however, that a deeper dive into these efficiencies would also have to take into account the production, distribution and installation costs (embedded pollution, not dollars) of several hundred little devices vs. a single plant that is integrated into each unit during building construction. Even considering room by room optimization (turni…

A common form of central heating, like burning fossils kind that delivers hot water over insulated pipes to each building, is more efficient in pretty much every way and is cheap to add during building construction than doing it individually. But it's not the case with a "central AC", it's less efficient, more expensive to add during building construction and operating costs are no better. Just think about it, you can't just deliver cold over a pipe and rely on air convection, like with heat, you need to literally move cold air into each room and make it individually adjustable. It's a ridiculously inefficient complicated expensive system requiring extra space and with installation costs higher than that of all AC units individually installed.

Re: Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup

#116

Post by bluGill »

criddell wrote: post #94
bluGill wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heating the air drys it out... The article is about Japan. I would expect Korea has a different climate which means different considerations. (but I'm not an expert in climate)

> Heating the air drys it out... I'm not sure that's true. Hot air can hold a lot of moisture, the extreme example being steam.

This is complex...

Hot air can hold a lot more moisture than cold air. (what you said). However when you take cold air and heat it the amount of water in the air doesn't change, while the amount of water than the air can hold did. When talking about water in the air the important part is how much it can hold relative to how much it does hold, not how much it actually is holding.

Re: Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup

#117

Post by eropple »

bradlys wrote: post #103

Someone said Japan used to be in the title - and now that it isn't - I think it should go back. HN is mostly a US based website (with an emphasis on Silicon Valley). This methodology is wildly uncommon in the US. There's very little likelihood this kind of thing would happen in well over 90%+ of the USA. First off - if you're renting - you're not putting holes in the walls that go to the exterior and there certainly…

Most of your points are very good ones, but one thing jumped out at me - in my experience, 12000 BTU 110v mini-splits aren't that hard to source, nor crazy-expensive, in the US. Super worth it, too, if you can manage it.

Re: Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup

#118

Post by bluGill »

larrywright wrote: post #100
criddell wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Heating the air drys it out... I'm not sure that's true. Hot air can hold a lot of moisture, the extreme example being steam.

I think what is more true is that typical furnace designs remove moisture from the air that they heat. Most comfortable place I ever lived in, heating wise, was an old house that had been converted into apartments. It still had steam heat. I loved that.

A furnace doesn't remove moisture.

Steam heat is radiant which feels very good. Nothing to do with moisture added, steam heat is almost always a closed loop so no water is put into the air.

Re: Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup

#119

Post by sandworm101 »

driverdan wrote: post #68
gcds wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impossible to live without AC in Japan. Also almost every move company can remove/install AC's pretty easily so it's kinda convient. Also if all rooms already have installed AC's then apartment rent price is much higher than similar without it so it's 50/50 what you want.

> Impossible to live without AC in Japan Come on. People lived there for thousands of years before AC.

Not in highrises. Not in megacities.

Re: Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup

#120

Post by l3s2d »

rsync wrote: post #24

Having individual heating and cooling units ( per unit gas heaters! ) is stupendously inefficient. I travel in Asia fairly regularly so this isn't new to me, but even after all of these years I can't believe I continue to see shiny, brand new "high end" condo buildings in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, etc., with individual AC units hanging out the window. Contrast this with a condo in Minneapolis that I own wher…

The bit about attitudes towards shared payments is fascinating. I wonder if this is truly attitude or just lack of choice.

Are there any concrete examples of existing systems where people choose to pay more when the alternatives are significantly cheaper but pricing is shared?

Hypothetical example scenario: Someone would choose to pay $10 for their own water instead of $2.50 (on average, with minor fluctuations), in order to avoid subsidizing other tenants' water usage. The difference in cost could be attributed to the maintenance burden of many monitoring devices. I have a hard time believing anyone would choose the more expensive option.

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