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Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

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Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#151

Post by Moldoteck »

orwin wrote: post #118

At least in France, almost all excess deaths were in hospitals and retirement homes. The rest were workers. And we had more heat than Germany. Yes, it is a necessity in some places (schools, nursing homes, hospitals). an AC at home is a luxury. Which, great if you can afford it.

Hearing that ac at home is a luxury in France when piss poor romania/moldova do install them left and right sounds borderline satirical. Ffs an ac is not that expensive. And running it is not that expensive, especially with french nuclear

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#152

Post by rdtsc »

> During a heat wave in 2022, one Frenchwoman said AC “makes you sick, and it gives you a headache.” Left-wing French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon has claimed air conditioning “destroys your sinuses.”

AC giving people headaches and destroying their sinuses sounds a bit bonkers. Ok let people install it then, slap a “government believes this may give you headaches and destroy your sinuses” sticker on it and let people decide.

I guess before the heat wave this could have a been a litmus test for stupidity but now it should be a litmus test for maliciousness.

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#153

Post by Moldoteck »

slfnflctd wrote: post #64

I've been thinking for a while about whether it would be feasible to produce an affordable 'personal cooling chamber' for lower income people in places getting scorched in the summer that don't have A/C. Basically an automotive air conditioning unit hooked up to a battery and solar panel, with a tanning bed type form factor (up to maybe capsule hotel size), painted or coated to reflect light & heat. Highly portable.…

Acs are not that expensive. The problem is getting approval

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#154

Post by eemil »

titzer wrote: post #47
deanc wrote: post #4

We have those stupid regulations in Finland about how the outside of our apartments buildings should look - meaning you cannot put the condenser visibly on the outside of the building. I've heard stories of residents being scalded for putting flowers on their balcony railings that face outwards as it ruins the "look". Given almost all apartment buildings are built consistently between every floor they could ensure co…

Is it really so hard to put a small fence around it to hide the ugly?

Doesn't matter what it looks like, problem is it changes the facade. For that you need to submit some paperwork and get it approved.

You can actually install a heat pump in most apartment buildings, as long as it's on the balcony and not visible from the street (=below waist-level). Main reason you wouldn't, is condensate output which has to be piped indoors or into a heated drain during the winter. Or you just pipe it into your balcony's rainwater drain and accept that you can't use the heatpump below 0C.

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#155

Post by t_mahmood »

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #72

You might be surprised how far you can get with a simple fan. What your body needs is to evaporate heat. You sweat, it evaporates, skin cools down. Airflow helps that process a whole bunch. It's physics. It may not make hot weather feel perfect but it will cover the necessity pretty much anywhere. Same goes for tree shade and sensible city planning, also architecture (see all those textured dark grey or black condos…

I am from an SE-Asian country, AC usage has increased a lot, and, also we are hell bent on devastating every green that is available, as much as possible.

Dehumidifier works pretty well, provided it's built in to the AC unit, portable one's will increase the room temp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_QfX0SYCE8

Portable one's heat dispenser is inside your room, AC unit's outside. But the issue being, as it disperses the heat outside, it's probably still increasing the ambient heat?

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#156

Post by ux266478 »

iso1631 wrote: post #131
danek_szy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't sound like "basically free" to me... It still uses electricity, which doesn't help with climate change (even if it mostly comes from renewables).

Install 8kWp of solar panel on your roof (£5k), add a battery (£3k) and AC (£3k) Charge the battery from the solar and it powers the AC in the evening. You'll generate more than enough during the day to run AC and fill the battery to run it overnight. Still using grid sources in winter, but you aren't using the AC. Although you might find air-air AC in heat mode is better than your gas boiler.

More or less the only people who can do that in Europe are rich people with detached homes in the suburbs, which is a vanishingly small minority. European governments could do a lot more to invest in photovoltaics, but it's a bit complicated with how cramped the continent is.

You can replace farmland, but that seems like a really bad idea with Globalism's decline. Who knows what's going to happen to the food supply chain over the next 30 years. The only other option is attaching them to the exterior of historic buildings, and heaven forbid! Think about the character of the neighborhood!

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#157

Post by beardyw »

blitzar wrote: post #51
beardyw wrote: post #37

"This article was originally published in The Washington Post" Pretty much all you need to know in 2026.

I presume the original had affiliate links to air conditioners on Amazon

I was thinking more of climate change (in) denial.

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#158

Post by Moldoteck »

probably_wrong wrote: post #22

I'm not convinced by the author's point that ACs do not impose a burden on the electrical grid. They write that ACs have gotten more efficient, which may be true, but that's the same Windows developers have been saying over years and yet boot times and hardware requirements have gone way up. One million efficient units still require more energy than no units. And while I definitely believe that European hospitals and…

Most of the grid is built for winter. Summer has huge overcapacity. That's also why France exported every single day and hour this summer despite all the stories of shut down nuclear plants

Europe had tens of thousands of excess deaths from heatwaves this year. It's not about american think tank but basic will to avoid suffering

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#159

Post by owisd »

slfnflctd wrote: post #64

I've been thinking for a while about whether it would be feasible to produce an affordable 'personal cooling chamber' for lower income people in places getting scorched in the summer that don't have A/C. Basically an automotive air conditioning unit hooked up to a battery and solar panel, with a tanning bed type form factor (up to maybe capsule hotel size), painted or coated to reflect light & heat. Highly portable.…

Japan already did it - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cjej4y3gvzlo

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#160

Post by matt-p »

kwarcode wrote: post #150
matt-p wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not banned, but getting permission to install the outside unit is essentially “hard” in some parts of Europe. In England, if you own a house, you generally have permitted development rights to install one, subject to some fairly common-sense rules. If you live in a flat, though, it’s a very different story: you will need planning permission *as well as* freeholder consent, and the process generally involves engi…

> In the UK You mean "In England".

I mean yes, true, thank you - fixed. Though I honestly thought permitted development existed for them in scotland and stuff too.
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