L’Europa finalmente abbraccia l’aria condizionata mentre le onde di calore colpiscono duramente

“Finally” – as if that’s a good thing…

American journal writing news directed towards Americans who complain about not freezing inside our buildings when they come visit to raise their ego. Can we just erase this?

This is so stupid. We’ve had a heatpump in the summer home, for what, 20 years? I’m assuming more or less every newish Scandinavian summer home has one, mainly to keep the winter temps up when the house isn’t in use.

Currently in a stone house, having to mount one of those suckers would be extremely annoying – those walls are very thick. It was 38 (in the shade) yesterday, if you’re careful with the doors and windows the house stays at 24.

Today there’s a severe thunderstorm warning and I can’t wait.

I hate them titles, so far we could live decently without AC and they present that like a fucking progress

For what it’s worth.

In the Netherlands people are also looking for was to UP THEIR ENERGY usage. This is because on some moments in the day the price for electricity becomes negative, which means your solar energy delivery to the net COSTS YOU MONEY. At these moments it is wise to have a way to burn energy, and even earn money on that.

Yeah, cool, except the bureaucracy required makes it basically impossible, at least here in Prague.

The National Heritage Institute covers a wide area of Prague (not just the historic center) and they do NOT want to see facade mounted A/C units on 100 year old apartment buildings in the protected regions, even on the rear side. Every tiny change or color repaint goes through them and needs to be approved.

If you somehow get their approval, you still need to make modifications to the outer layer of the building, which requires approval from other owners of the apartments in your building. That’s Home Owner Association level of toxicity to go through.

Any kind of central system installation is an order of magnitude larger bunch of troubles both a bureaucratic and “diplomatic” nature between neighbors. A quest on par with bringing One Ring to Mount Doom.

We live with ceiling fans and two layers of insulated wooden windows, one with two-layered glass and the other with regular. That was the most insulating variant NHI approved for our building several years ago.

The buildings from the beginning of the 20th century have also tall ceilings (3.2-4m), which are amazing in other regards, but require a lot of extra energy to warm or cool down.

Our NHI needs to figure our some acceptable solution for the areas like ours, that’s probably the biggest obstacle. The rest can be solved by giving particularly annoying neighbours to Mola Ram.

We are not embracing air conditionning.
We are forced to adapt to climate change.

Plus heat pumps also heat the outside, making life harder for people without heat pumps.

It’s not a progress at all

I never understood this trope that “Europeans don’t use AC”.

In Croatia they are ubiquitous, especially on the coast. Italy too. So much so that I don’t even pay attention to them, they re like visual background noise.

Perhaps they don’t have them much in Northern Europe which is expected.

What´s with all these American ´Europe and its AC-problem´ articles lately? Most of Europe never needed AC and still doesn´t. It´s fairly warm now in Belgium and while AC would be nice to have in my home it´s simply not worth the expense because it would mean major work cutting through walls and stuff. I also don´t want ugly cooling units inside my house.

With heat pumps becoming more common in new construction or during major renovations of existing houses, the problem will partially solve itself.

Something I rarely if ever read in these news articles is the benefit of decent insulation. Maybe Americans don´t insulate their houses 🤷‍♂️. Decent insulation goes a long way to keep out the heat and keep the warmth inside depending on the season. Roller shutters also keep out a lot of heat from direct sunlight. The trend toward houses with huge glass windows isn´t new but when exposed to direct sunlight those are great to quickly heat your home.

Even in cases where AC is needed, we shouldn´t run them as dumb as in the US where they´re often blowing at 18°C while 25°C is recommended. The quality of AC in the US is not always the best either with many units blowing air which is too moist.

No, we should definitely not follow the US example in viewing AC as *the* solution. It´s only part of a wider solution where IMO insulation is by far more important with AC playing a secondary role in most cases.

My biggest gripe with this that if we actually had good urban design, and smart construction principles, we’d lessen the need for ACs.

This is just a bandaid.

paywalled article, asks for email to read

Beware euros.

https://www.consoglobe.com/choc-thermique-coup-de-froid-climatisation-sante-cg

Heat pumps. Renewable energy for both heating and cooling.

“You’ll catch a draft”

Tell that to the Swiss

Air conditioning is an inefficient way to survive the heat, but it’s easy to implement.

What we would need in addition is revolutionary urban design, with passive cooling with reflective surfaces, optional isolation and ventilation, and TREES. The cooling effect of trees is significant, combining the effects of shade and water evaporation. Building urban industrial deserts full of shopping malls and company buildings without any trees is very detrimental to us.

Lol. Well, at least my rent corporation doesn’t and isn’t going to.

It’s currently 27C in my apartment and while that’s “unfortunate”, I’m also “free to buy and place AC myself as long as I return the apartment to the same state it was before without actually changing something to the apartment itself.”

That’s too expensive and quite impossible as well if I want AC that works properly/isnt going to run up my electric bill to heights never before seen.