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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

#191

Post by vlyan »

tempfile wrote: post #180
vlyan wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

acknowledging that climate has changed is climate change denialism?

What did you mean by "preserve the klimat for someone else's children" then?

aboriginal Europeans' TFR is about 1.2 and falling. even if did remain that high (it won't!), 750M will become so I don't think it's fair to scold Hans from Hamburg over his carbon footprint. Abdul from Mogadishu may emit less CO2 over his own lifetime, but each of his 5 children will have 5 children, and no one will scold him for it.

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

#192

Post by lstodd »

elil17 wrote: post #185
lstodd wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ceiling (or for that matter any) fans work on your own evaporation. So unless you accept unacceptable levels of humidity or acclimatized to much hotter climate than Sweden and are there for a short time they are not a solution. Ground source is overhyped and overpriced. District heating and air-exchange AC is still the winning solution.

Unacceptable levels of humidity? You can just open your window when the sun goes down to vent off the heat and humidity that built up during the day.

haha. no.

try opening your window in +15C high humidity and then sleep.

I assure you, sleeping in a 0-5C sleeping bag on the nearby sea shore would be a more acceptable experience.

You just never lived there, yes?

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

#193

Post by pdhborges »

elil17 wrote: post #93
pdhborges wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use your AC as a fan when it is not too bad.

If you think that then you've never used a ceiling fan before - they are substantially more powerful than the air blowing out of your AC.

This was an half usefull joke. I can still make it with the exterior unit off for an extra 1 or 2 degrees with just the interior unit blowing during the day and the use the AC to cool during the night when it is more efficient.

In any case where I live fans are not a meaningfull stopgap measure.

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

#194

Post by unknownfuture »

koalalimpo wrote: post #167
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…

I think you misunderstand what isolation does. It will also keep the heat out. Having window awnings to block sunlight from directly warming up the room will go a long way.

Yes and no.

The problem is if you can't get the home cooled off, then heat that does build up can't escape.

In western Canada until recently we got away with very good insulation coupled with opening windows at night as daytime-vs-nighttime temperatures could swing as much as 15C.

But as both daytime and nighttime temperatures increase, or in more humid climates where the temperature doesn't drop enough, that's no longer effective.

The net result is the home just gets hot and stays hot.

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

#195

Post by throwaway473825 »

kleiba2 wrote: post #135
ricardobayes wrote: post #34

I tend to stay away from topics like this which generalize and basically tell a whole continent they are living their lives "wrongly". But I have to say, AC is not "banned" anywhere in Europe, apart from certain cantons of Switzerland. In Germany you have a right to AC actually, if your community votes to "veto" the installation a court can overturn that.

> But I have to say, AC is not "banned" anywhere in Europe Exactly, the whole premise of the article is a bit of a strawman. In fact, where I live, the demand for AC installation is so high that you have to wait months for a company to install a unit for you. These extreme heat waves are a fairly new phenomenon, summers in central Europe just didn't use to get so hot for such a long stretch of time even a few decades…

> But let's not forget that energy is also on average a lot more expensive in Europe than in the US. The cost plus environmental concerns, which seem to fair less high in the public conscience on the other side of the Atlantic, have also been reasons why people were not keen on AC units in the past.

The price of energy in Europe is largely determined by taxes and policy costs. Gas is mostly unencumbered. Electricity could be as well. It's a political choice to make electricity expensive.

Furthermore, given that many Europeans couldn't care less about the negative externalities of gas heating, it's very hard to argue that this is a major concern for AC, especially when AC is already mainstream in cars.

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

#196

Post by ImJamal »

kalleboo wrote: post #113
michelsedgh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these countries are pushing EV's so I don't understand how it could be about energy use lol?

EVs use less energy than ICE cars, they are more efficient.

Well filling up your ICE car doesn't impact the energy grid (the electric use of the pumps is minimal). Charging your EV does.

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

#197

Post by tlamponi »

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…

> But A/C it a necessity like water/sewage/electricity? In Europe, nah.

s/Europe/all parts of Europe/

I.e., Europe has a lot of different climate (sub)zones, and it heavily depends on where you actually live.

I'm fine with a fan in the Alps, where I sleep at 1,000 metres above sea level, and nights with the minimum temperature above 20°C are still very rare. I even don't bother turning the fan on most of the time, or just for an hour or so to clear the trapped heat in the bedroom at like 22:00 o'clock once outside cooled down enough.

OTOH I'm NOT fine in my Vienna flat with just a fan. There, this summer we got quite a few nights where the minimum temperature did not go below 25°C, even some with a minimum of 28°C and a maximum of 41°C. The flat is an old building and has only windows on one side facing a small curtilage without any trees or grass, so it traps heat, and I cannot even cool it well at night, even if the outside temperature goes a few degrees below the inside one, as the yard also traps heat.

Without an AC I could not sleep at all-even with a fan, it's very hard to sleep well above 25°, and frankly even above 23° for me. And I had to buy a much less efficient portable one (before the Midea Portasplit was a thing) because of braindead local regulations.

Ironically, in the winter the local gov suddenly starts calling those "bad ACs" again by their alternative "heat pumps" name, and they become the best thing ever for heating. I really cannot figure out how one can do that mental gymnastics without getting a headache.

Anyway, don't assume that your local conditions hold for all of Europe.

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

#198

Post by kwarcode »

matt-p wrote: post #160
kwarcode wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Actually there is permitted development in Scotland but flats aren't excluded. There's no "Part P" either so an AC could be DIY with no notification or fees.

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

#199

Post by tempfile »

vlyan wrote: post #191
tempfile wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you mean by "preserve the klimat for someone else's children" then?

aboriginal Europeans' TFR is about 1.2 and falling. even if did remain that high (it won't!), 750M will become so I don't think it's fair to scold Hans from Hamburg over his carbon footprint. Abdul from Mogadishu may emit less CO2 over his own lifetime, but each of his 5 children will have 5 children, and no one will scold him for it.

So Hans can do whatever he likes because you want to blame Abdul for the cumulative sum of all his descendants?

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

#200

Post by anal_reactor »

elil17 wrote: post #73
roelschroeven wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of years ago that would have been correct, but circumstances have changed. We've had a series of heat waves this summer, and temperatures have gotten very high inside. Much depends on the location of course, and the type of building, and stuff like that, but the fact is that in Belgium alone thousands of people have died because of the heat. Thousands of people that would still be with us if they would have…

How is the inside of your home getting to 40 in Belgium? Our hottest recorded air temperature was 36 this year. There were many excess deaths, but there was also a shortage of fans here. Good fans could have also saved their lives.

I live in the Netherlands. My apartment has two floors. The upper floor is basically a greenhouse, so 40C is absolutely normal if I close the windows. During the summer I always keep at least one window open, which cools down the house to around 30-35C. This sucks during summer but during winter it's a blessing because I can have 30C on a sunny day even if it's 0C outside. The only drawback is that the windows are very old so in winter that heat escapes immediately once the sun is gone. HOA has been planning window replacement for years already.

The lower floor has windows facing north so it's always much cooler there. I've never seen it reach more than 30C, which was in the middle of a heatwave, usually it keeps 25C during summer.

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