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As this keeps happening I continue to wonder when Europe and the UK will finally realize how badly they need to air conditioning. The units are (or were in the past year or 3)b way more expensive there than here in America. I dunno about current costs. It's worth it though, even if you only need it for like 1 month out of the year.
In France the government is helping people get Aircon by subsidising heatpumps, also way more carbon efficient than Gaz or fioul based central heating.
It depends on the kind of heatpumps, in a lot of cases the heatpump is installed to replace a boiler, reusing the radiators and hot water circulation already available.
Unfortunately in this case the heatpump cannot be used as AC.
Not as AC, but a reversible heat pump can use the heating system for cold water circulation.
It's rather limited, because you run into condensation concerns, but it's still a possibility. A place I used to work at did this. It wasn't perfect, but took some of the edge off.
Even better: quite a few models allow the installation of an extra module that works as a split water circuit air cooler. So no condensation on radiators but cool air blown from an AC looking thing. Daikin and mitsubishi has such models (from memory).
On the other hand reversible heatpumps work great with floor heating.
Having a cool floor during a heatwave is amazing, plus no noise,
Does that work for ground source heat pumps too? Like could I literally cool my floor with one? For summer and light winter, my air to air unit is fine and air to water is great too, but when it's like -25 or -30 out, the air source units start getting pretty inefficient.
Probably, it should be quite efficient as well.
How badly we need AC?
How about “how badly we need to get our shit together to stop human caused climate change”?
It'll be both, even a very aggressive response will take decades for it to Stop getting hotter then at best it will not get hotter. It will be 4-5 decades at best before it gets cooler.
Methane adds some uncertainty to that though. If you were to stop using gas it might cool off after it disappears in a decade in the atmosphere.
But it will keep getting hotter in every circumstance even if we act aggressively on climate change.
I’m just so tired of people dealing with the climate change as if it was inevitable, like some karma shit. A lot of people just don’t want to change. They want to keep going like they used to and that’s driving me insane.
Climate change is inevitable. Its already here. It can be mitigated, however. Pretending its avoidable is folly.
We're very aware in the UK but it's not too easy. We have some the oldest housing stock in the world. We don't have central air with no real way to retrofit so it would have to be one room at a time. Our windows aren't designed to house those units I see in NY. We have to rely on very inefficient portable units so I only use it on the really hot days. Energy prices are still high after Russia's invasion. People are adding proper units when extending but only the rich can really afford that.
For detached houses, you can do split systems with multiple indoor units per one outdoor unit. In a flat, you're a bit more fucked because you might need permission from other people in the building, etc.
Split heat pumps are very common in Southern Europe. Modern units have insane efficiency, in the order of 4 units of heat or cold per unit of energy expended, and can be installed almost anywhere, in contrast to central units. The only downside is that they don't provide hot water.
Add to that, that all these old UK houses have about as much insulation as a cereal box.
I live in Spain, and since temperatures are now reaching 39°C in my area, I ordered two AC units for the most used rooms in my house (living room and bedroom).
With installation it costed 1300€. A months salary basically. In my area the cheapest unit with installation was 450€, but it didn't look very reliable.
I ordered it 11 days ago, and I'm scheduled to receive it and installed either this week or the next. AC installers are oversaturated with orders this time of the year. It's insane.
I live in Estonia, temperatures don't ever get to 39C but they do get up to 33-34 and for some reason my house gets pretty humid even at high temps, so it's worse inside than outside, even if it's hotter outside. I got a heat pump installed about 2 years ago, cost around 2k installed, but then again I went for a beefy Mitsubishi unit (big house and only one unit for now). It's an absolute game changer in the summer, and in the winter when it gets cold, it saves me effort as well - I have to load the furnace less.
I figure it's already earned its keep via the heating, but also if I do 2 extra hours of productive work 2 days a week, that's 10 weeks of summertime heat till it's paid off in full and while most summers don't come with 10 weeks of heat, every summer has at least 4-5 hot weeks here.
They are trying to push people to heat pumps (basically air conditioners tech wise)
They are also moving towards building/efficiency regs that require completely sealed houses and forced air systems in new builds.
So new houses will effectively be required/encouraged to have an air con capable houses.
The old housing stock though? Oof. I'm on a private estate that even bans that kind of stuff!
We have it (UK) but its not solving the issue long term , we need titanic change that isnt coming.
You can just say Europe.
Ik Dutch, and have airco in every room in the house that isnt a bathroom or toilet. It's awesome. Also have 30+ solar panels so whenever I use the airco, it's run on solar power.
My living room is around 36 square meters and the cheapest AC unit for that area was 650 - 850 euros. You also have to pay a certified company to install it, which cost another 200 - 300 euros.
The median salary is like 900 euros, which makes it out of reach for a large portion of the population.
I wonder what's the cost for them to install one. I got mine installed and it cost around €350(rm1600 in my currency), everything included, for a japanese brand(Daikin). shouldn't be too horribly expensive for european country, especially when people started to adopt it.
Edit: but honestly, i wonder how well aircond would work in 40°c+ temperature, it relies on pumping heat away from the room, and if outside is so hot it wouldn't able to effectively cool the refrigerant. Still better than nothing.
Air conditioning works just like a refrigerator in that the cooling is accomplished by the compression and decompression of gas. The outside temperature has no effect on the ability of the unit to cool the inside space. Air conditioning just vents to outside, it doesnt use outside air. The same is true for a window unit as it is for a central system
to a point. It still relies on radiating the heat produced at the compression stage outside to the outside air. Due to how thermodynamics work this becomes less efficient or even impossible once the outside air approaches the same temperature as the compressed gas. Once the gas can't cool down after the compressing step the ac starts to lose effectiveness fast