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It’s not the AC that are incredible. Modern heat pumps are incredible. They are the best thing since the sliced bread. I could talk for hours about heat pumps. They’re just so efficient.
Heat pumps - they pump my heat.
Did I mention I like heat pumps?
Are the twin of Technology Connections?
You’ve surely seen one of the many videos from Technology Connections, then?
Of course I have. Matt Ferrell has some nice videos too.
It’s literally the same machine
Non-native English speaker, but I looked it up the other day and it seems that pedantically an A/C only cools things down and heat pumps can both heat and cool.
ACs are just heat pumps where they forgot to install the reversing valve.
Heat pumps running in heating mode are basically ACs that are trying to cool down the outside. The fundamental technology just moves heat from one place to another, leaving one place warmer and one place colder.
This is also how fridges and freezers work - they have heat pumps that pump out the heat from inside their box and as such make the room they are in warmer.
Yes, an air conditioner is a heat pump with a fixed orientation, what basically equates to a handful of valves to switch the direction of the refrigerant. The actual expensive parts that generate the temperature difference are identical between the two machines.
Nope AC at least where I have been can do both. Heat pumps are for water.
Probably a local nomenclature thing. Heat Pump is the most common name for phase change cooling/heating system. (No matter the medium(s) being heated/cooled)
Yet I have never seen a food refrigerator called a heat pump. Air-to-air always seems to be called AC to differentiate it from the air-to-water the UK government wants to push.
There are also heat pumps that only heat. It takes a second valve or so to enable it to switch directions.
I could just mount it backwards in my window!
Well… Kind of. Heat pumps are a more modern iteration, which can both heat or cool a room. And they’re not like a traditional central AC system, where you have a central compressor and ducts running to each vent. Instead, you run refrigerant lines to each room, then the individual room unit actually does the cooling locally. It’s the same basic principle (using refrigerant to move heat outside, thus cooling the air,) but heat pumps are a more modern take.
And as an added bonus, a heat pump can also be used as a heater (and be much more efficient than a traditional heating coil.) Because it’s just moving heat around from the interior and exterior, and that can include moving heat indoors to warm the interior. And since they’re just moving heat (instead of using a coil to generate it) they can be over 100% efficient when you’re measuring wattage consumed vs heat produced.
AC is a version of heatpump that cools your house. Refridgerator is a heatpump that keeps your food cool. Freezer is a heatpump wäthat freezes things.
AC is not the same thing as heatpump. AC is just one application of an heatpump.
It is the exact same hardware running in different configurations, all that changes is refrigerant flow direction.
That is exactly what I said. I was just trying to say that heatpump is not the same thing as AC just as car is not the same thing as an engine.
Seems like you’re talking about heat pump (technology) and I’m talking about heat pump (commercial product)
But yeah, heat pumps (technology) are used in lots of every day places.
The refrigeration cycle is humanity’s greatest invention.
I have that ingrained in my brain.
This is the way.
Im gonna have a nice long wank listening to this user passionately talk about heat pumps
You meant walk, right? Right???
You heard the man.
Did they fucking stutter?
We’ve got a ground source heat pump with underfloor heating and cooling since two years. It’s always a comfortable 19-22 degrees Celsius inside (66-72 Fahrenheit) and we’d never want anything else.
Tell that to the vast majority of Germans. They’d rather throw their relatives into the furnace for heating than buying a heat pump. That’s all thanks to far right populism by the way.
They’d rather throw their relatives into the furnace for heating than buying a heat pump.
Sounds more like a german tradition.
Yeah, in hindsight that was some unfortunate wording Ü
We tried guns 90 years ago, and found the results not to our liking.
Yeah but guns have become so much more efficient since then!
Weird, AC is very popular in many parts of Europe.
Just like it’s not popular in Alaska…
It must get humid in those igloos tho. Do people who live in igloos have fires inside?
I think some of them
That would be an awesome night out!
Like an engineer told me recently, the image of AC is biased in most of us towards the electricity-sucking devices of the previous century. Contemporary AC tech is to 1980s-90s AC what LED lightbulbs are to incandescent ones.
Moreover, the very same units are often also super efficient heating devices that embarrass their gas/oil burning counterparts.
Assuming the manufacturer has bothered to make the tiny modification necessary to turn AC into a heat pump and then not charge you 50% markup for the privilege.
Heat pumps are still stupid expensive.
https://youtu.be/_hAuKtoRxJI?si=3LO40Ih8XGKmbWmC
Tldr, gouging exists, but people regularly also get systems that are way bigger than they need, which drives costs up by many multiples.
It’s an even bigger problem in countries that don’t traditionally have air conditioning systems because basically no one knows how to size these things.
But even disregarding that, a similarly sized AC, (similar to whatever heat pump you are quoted for, which as you say will probably be too big) will still be more expensive than an AC on its own even though it’s basically the same thing.
this escalated so quickly
literally me now that summer’s getting real annoying here
I did, they’re pretty fun.
The American pro-gun community calls anything stricter than “fill out a one page form without lying too much” a “gun ban”.
The only exception to this is when they claim “It can’t be our permissive gun laws because Switzerland has permissive gun laws and they don’t have all the homicides, armed robbery and mass shootings”.
Which is just a lie in the other direction since Switzerland has regulations the pro-gun community staunchly opposes for America, calling them a “gun ban”.
We in EU also have AC, what’s the difference?
North vs South. AC is not very common in homes in countries like Netherlands and Germany. Mostly because it’s only really hot for one or two months and those are the months that Germans and Dutch people are on holiday. So it’s either go on holiday or stay at home for one summer and buy AC.
I wish we did in Sweden.
It’s fairly rare in family homes.
You can’t buy a window unit? I literally don’t get this…explain how you can’t go to a hardware store in your country and buy an air conditioner or order one online
A lot of houses were built before window units were a thing, so you get windows that just won’t fit them, and you need slightly to moderately more complicated systems to make it work, like “air conditioner bolted to wall with a hose into the window or through a wall” style.
Their climate is also on average vaguely more forgiving in the heat, with temperature ranges that are comparable but lower sustained highs and generally lower humidity resulting in generally more tolerable conditions even during the warm season.
Remember that Europe is much further north than we typically think. Italy is as far north as new York, and Germany is about as far north as Canada. “Why aren’t air conditioners as popular in nova Scotia as they are in Florida” has a more obvious ring to it.Finally, if you’re used to it it’s not a problem you feel compelled to solve.
They don’t exist in my country and our windows doesn’t work with one either. We don’t have sliding windows.
You can of course install real air conditioning but that’s expensive as fuck.
The northern most states in the USA also have the same arrangement. It’s (historically) in a cooler climate, where a “heatwave” is anything above 80F, so just open your windows if it’s stuffy indoors. Combine that with fossil-fuel heating, and heat-pumps just aren’t a thing.
It’s pretty much the same here. Fossil-fuel heating is fairly rare though.
Heating is usually done with geothermal heat-pumps, district heating, direct electric heating, or with regular heat-pumps which are actually fairly popular.
Most of my friends in Germany and UK do not have AC, or have such undersized units for their homes it barely makes a difference. Or they don’t want to run it because energy costs to utilize it during the day are ridiculous.
What I’ve learned at least about the houses in the UK is that the homes are old and drafty so it’s not about the size of the unit but the insulation being poor.
Shit insulation is actually more of a pro argument for AC. I mean, the houses in the USA are made out of cardboard and gipsum. They dont insulate a thing. My house has great insulation. In summer I just keep the windows closed and roll down the shutters during daytime and it’s freezing cold inside. At night we get cool wind from either the North or Baltic sea, we then open up the windows to freshen the air up a bit.
In the us, there is insulation in the outer walls to maintenance indoor temperature.
Shit insulation means you have to do a lot more work to heat or cool a sapce.
Guns are fun as hell, it’s true. Unfortunately as with most things in the world, shit gets ruined because people don’t know how to act right
I’m Australian and guns are really strictly regulated here, I also believe that guns are FUCKING FUN. Sometimes I get shitty about how hard it is to own a gun for recreational shooting then I see a smackhead at the supermarket screaming at random people and how unlikely it is that they have a gun and I think “Yep, Ill take that trade”.
Honestly it’s not that bad if the building is made right. Especially old stone houses that also happen to be surrounded by trees are absolutely godly in these scenarios (the down side is the heating bill in the winter :P or rather that used to be the downside…). I honestly wouldn’t have ever considered an AC a couple years ago, but now that summer means a constant 30°C I’m reconsidering. Like bro, 30°C used to be a HOT exceptional couple days, not the entire summer!
You are absolutely right about old stone houses. I live in an old stone cottage surrounded by trees and it’s amazing in the summer. We turn our ac on a few weeks to a month after everyone else does(in the US).
The winters aren’t too bad either. We have a tiny wood stove and even when using the oil furnace it holds heat in pretty well.
Side bonus! Home owners insurance gives us a break because the risk of fires goes way down when the outside is made of rocks.
Trees are OP. Please nerf.
At 40 cents / kwh you learn to tolerate heat very quickly.
Or, you know, buy a solar array. I hear it’s windy in the UK too. 🙄🙄🙄🙄
Or get solar on your roof. Usually when it’s hot enough outside to need AC, then that means the sun is shining
At 40 cents/kWh I would buy a solar array.
Gotta buy a house first!
Heat is quickly becoming deadly around the globe. Better figure out how to budget that cost, asap.
Keep yourself cool to worsen the problem? sounds like a great plan! /s
AC users anywhere in the world where temperatures / humidity are in a range that humans can adapt to are morons.
Passive cooling and designing buildings to not overheat during summer in the first place is the way. And phoenix or Las Vegas shouldn’t be much more than a gas station, they’re unlivable hellholes without permanently pumping enormous amounts of energy in.
I have AC and heating and live in a very human-fiendly climate. I don’t feel like a moron running it off my green power to heat and cool a very well insulated house beyond what the geothermal handles.
Exactly. You can use a kajillion megawatts to power your A/C, who cares if it’s all renewable. Especially if it’s onsite generated (solar).
I want to buy one of these when Midea sells them to the public. A portable heat pump that doesn’t kill the very little sunlight I get seems like a godsend for apartment living
How is AC being a game changer surprising?? When it is hot I see my contacts in the UK sitting with icepacks in their laps or with fans all around them spraying themselves with water. Imagine if the whole room was just a tolerable temperature, it isn’t hard to picture. Seems odd.
(Yes I get it just isn’t a thing there and they have buildings older than time itself…but still…)
I just got hit by beryl, it is hell on earth here right now. Now power for two days so far with temps arouns 90-95 f andn%100 humidity. Sleeping is now considered a water sport and no ac in sight.
The worst part? You cant cool off even with a fan, there’s too much humidity forntour sweat to evaporate and cool you. I wish i at least had cold drinks
Yeah, some parts of the US recently experienced something called a wet bulb event. Basically, that’s a phenomenon where the heat and humidity are both so high that your body’s natural cooling mechanism (sweating) stops working entirely and people will overheat simply by being outside. No amount of shade or cool drinks will help, because your body’s primary cooling mechanism has been defeated.
Basically, sweat works by evaporating. When water evaporates, it takes heat with it. This allows sweat to cool you down as it dries. To be able to accurately determine what the temperature feels like, you can’t just use a regular dry thermometer. You need to use something called a wet bulb thermometer. This is basically a thermometer with some wet cotton wrapped around it, to simulate sweat. As the wet cotton dries, it creates a more accurate gauge of what the ambient temperature feels like, the same way sweat cools you.
But a wet bulb event is when the wet bulb thermometer reads above 95°F. At that point, it means the cotton isn’t drying fast enough to cool a person down. At this point, the temperatures are dangerous even to fit and healthy individuals in the shade with fans and cool drinks. Because a breeze won’t even cool you down when it’s that hot outside; A fan will actually heat you up even faster, because the air is adding heat faster than evaporative cooling can remove it.
That is basically life down here from may to september lol
Nah, true wet bulb events are pretty rare. With a wet bulb event, you overheat even while sitting still in the shade with a breeze. Because again, you’ve reached the point where a breeze is actually warming you up instead of cooling you down. They’re becoming more common nowadays due to global warming, but they still only happen occasionally. Again, a wet bulb thermometer will typically read significantly lower than the ambient temperature, because it’s being cooled by evaporation.
At wet bulb temps in the 90’s, construction crews start delaying, school athletics aren’t allowed to practice outdoors, cities start setting up pop-up cooling centers for the homeless, etc… Even the army limits outdoor work to 10 minutes per hour, because the risk of heat stroke is too high. Wet bulb temps above ~87 are rare, so when it reaches the 90’s emergency management crews go into full blown crisis mode as people start getting heat exhaustion just from walking around the block.
Leave
Easier said than done for most
My house always is cool anyway - it’s well-insulated so heat doesn’t come in unless I open a window, and I open the windows every evening when it’s cool outside.
Air conditioning would just waste energy and increase humidity
Air condition decreases humidity.
Oh? My workplace has one of these that you fill with water that then cools the water and very slowly sprays it into the air, mixed with air of course. Works well to make the room cooler, but even in the manual it says that it shouldn’t be running all the time because the increased humidity can cause mold.
So which kind of air conditioning are you using?
(and even when it decreases humidity the other reasons still stand)
Also if room is too humid it stops working
That’s not air con, that’s a swamp cooler. Air-conditioning works by the same mechanism your fridge does. And the cool coils condense water vapour in the air, thus reducing humidity.
Interesting, thanks.
Air-conditioning works by the same mechanism your fridge does.
Boiling-cold)
Haha holy shit…they thought THAT WAS AC?
This right here is the bare minimum as to why education is so important.
Just so you know, there are places where people live differently from you.
Would you expect the same level of knowledge about keeping a house warm at the equator? Because I’d argue you need to better your education if you do.
I’m living in an area where AC is completely unnecessary. About +15°C in warm summer nights (that’s when I open my windows to let fresh air in), +30°C peak but all houses here are well-insulated (they have to be because of winter).
Of course it’s different in the USA, you have higher temperatures and don’t insulate your houses (a well-insulated house keeps its temperature: it stays warm in winter and cool in summer).
Yeah and that is my problem with them. I often get a sore throat when in airconditioned rooms, especially in smaller rooms. But it is not as bad as it used to be. Don’t know if my body changed or the ACs became better.
Then you can add humidity
Lots of places in the US don’t even get to a comfortable temperature at night. Right now I’m in Pennsylvania which is pretty far north and the lowest it’s going to get tonight is 80F with 80% humidity. It was 100F today with the same humidity. I actually got sick at work from it.
Damn, I didn’t expect it to be that bad outside of the southern states.
I’m currently getting ~30°C peak but about 15°C at night. We only have a few nights every year that reach 20°C. Austria.
Honestly, for me a reason why humans shouldn’t live in such places. For the Europeans here (that have not much clue of weird American units):
80 F = 26.667 C
100 F = 38 C
26? It’s pretty warm, but not too hot.
Over night, with 80% humidity? Are you sure? I’d be close to hospital with that temperature without some kind of AC, or at the very least ventilation… (I’m sensitive to heat). And sleeping with that temperature even with ventilation is going to be very uncomfortable and not relaxing…
Also we’re talking about lows, so this is likely not the temperature inside when there’s no AC, more like 30+C
https://meteoinfo.ru/pogoda/russia/moscow-area/moscow
80%, 20°C at 10.07 01:00
I’d be close to hospital with that temperature without some kind of AC, or at the very least ventilation… (I’m sensitive to heat).
Then you certanly need ventilation or AC. I just have window open.
The temperature is not a big problem imo. The humidity though.
Temperature is absolutely a problem. Without getting too deeply technical, a heat index above 99F/37C is dangerous even for healthy adults. Las Vegas this week has seen temperatures up to 120F. The forecast today is for a temperature high of 118F/48C (low of 90F/32C overnight), with a relative humidity of 8%. That works out to be a heat index of 111F/44C.
Where I am, today’s high will be 82F, but humidity is sitting at 90%, which is a heat index of 92F.
You can also look at wet bulb temperatures; at a certain point, your body can’t cool fast enough through evaporative cooling, and you’ll die from heat.
I lived through dry summers around 40°C without ACs without a problem my whole 40+ years of life. But 30°C with a high humidity is a different thing. Much comes down to being accustomed to things though naturally. I have friends who grew up in southern China who get problems when the heat is dry.
But people live in areas that get 35+°C every year for several month since the beginning of humanity itself.
So you’re trying to say most of North America is uninhabitable? I’m in North Carolina, the temperature and relative humidity were in the 90’s yesterday. It’s July.
I mean it’s thanks to modern technology not uninhabitable, but we’re “wasting” a lot of energy to make it habitable, and this is getting worse in the future, because of climate change. I couldn’t imagine living somewhere where, I can’t get out (of AC cooled buildings) because it’s too hot.
25º during summer nights either already was or is going to become normal around gigantic areas of the world. Getting all Indians to just live anywhere else is never going to be plausible.
The other thing in the UK is that screen doors and windows are non-existent so if you want to open them for fresh air you’re inviting all the bugs in as well
There are nets with velcro tape.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/tesa-insect-net/s?k=tesa+insect+net
They don’t even have screening? Guys wtf get a hardware store that’s worth a shit.
I wish we did in Sweden as well. Parts of the country has a fuck ton of mosquitos during summer.
Inward opening windows are unfortunately not uncommon which makes screens a pain.
Newer windows can usually do that fancy flip trick and a bunch of other fancy stuff though.
Inward opening windows are the standard in Germany and nearly everyone just buys a cheap bug-screen set that you can simply wedge into the window frame. They cost like 20€ a pop. There are all kinds of solutions for this.
But America is DC, Europe is already AC!
Australia has AC/DC. Can’t beat that.
That… Explains so many things.
America is AC…
Explain Washington then
He had like 30 goddamn dicks…
He’s coming
He’ll save children, but not the British children
I’m pretty sure that access to guns would instantly end my depression.
