Hope this helps someone struggling to survive the heat
I’ll have to get one at some point. It just seems a lot for the one week a year it’s needed.
Pretty spent this heatwave with a damp cloth wrapped around an ice pack and stuffed under my plums. Working from home is no fun when it’s 35C in your room. I even stole the cat’s cooling mat at one point (she hated it anyway) to use as a pillow.
Americans when they find one single thing to be smug against Europeans for, in spite of having no fucking clue why:
I have a portable AC for the main part of my house and a window unit in my bedroom. Where I live in the US it is literally a necessity. People without AC can get heat stroke and die in their own homes here in the hotter parts of the summer
I installed both AC and solar panels when heat got too dangerous for my kids.
Yes, many everyday problems can be solved with money, money were literally invented for that exact purpose. Other problems can be solved with time, for example - trees need a fuckton of time to grow, but I still replaced most of the grass in my garden with trees and bushes. I will most likely never rest under their shade in my life, but is that really important to see the benefits fast?
A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.
There’s a ton of variants of this, and saying (in a form or another) apparently goes back to 1700s.
Mark Twain, actually.
I was actually being faeticious, pointing out how half of the quotes in the internet are attributed to Mr. Clemens, half to Groucho Marx, and half to Tsun Zu.
That particular quote is from D. Elton Trueblood. Mark Twain said “The best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago. The second best time is now.”. A bit different twist, but the same idea.
There’s also (alledeg) Indian proverb: “Blessed is he who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit.”. And many other variations of the same over the last 300 years or so.
Hmmm wasn’t there also chinese proverb that said “plan for a year? - rice, plan for ten years? - orchard, plan for 100 years? - education”
The new climate denial? Using wealth to insulate yourself from discomfort and change
Converting electricity into heat via silicon (ironically data centers turn electricity into heat with incredible efficiency) then moving that heat outside with HVAC units (heat exchangers again, the best way to move heat outside).
Then this sunufabich buys an ac
Unfortunately I bought a portable unit for my room. My reasoning, rooms gets to 38c and sleepless nights could mean sleeping through alarms, future health concerns and also, this heat won’t be going down any time soon.
Portable units are serviceable. Not nearly as good as split airco units but you can make them better by adding a second hose.
The air inlet for cooling the compressor needs to draw air in from outside instead of from the room the unit is in.
Portable units are absolute shit. For a little more you can buy a split like the OP’s picture, that is an Air source heat pump, which is 3 to 4 times more economical to run than any other heat source. Plus they can run off solar panels, if the roof is yours.
Thing is if you’re renting you don’t really have the freedom to install those units. And since AC is only really needed a few days per year it’s good enough.
I’d also much rather get the one from the OP but my options are limited.
wow a shocking amount of people here have no idea how AC works
What are you referring to the image? I assume it is piped out the wall to the other portion of the heat pump?
It actually does require some basic knowledge of thermodynamics. Many people think “there are space heaters, so why not space coolers?” The reality is that the heat needs to be pumped out of the room (meaning hot air needs to be vented to the outside of the building).
It makes the air cold. What’s there to understand?
It makes the room cold unfortunately to make the room cold you have to whack a sodding great hole in your wall. You explain that to the landlord who doesn’t care about your comfort, but they could care immensely about the wall having a hold on it.
It makes the air cold. What’s there to understand?
With that logic, leaving your refrigerator door open should cool the room. But doing so would actually heat it up.
Yes because the job of the refrigerator is to extract heat from the small area and dump it out the back. An air conditioner is the same thing but it is designed to extract heat from the entire room and dump it outside.
The problem is unless you have ducted heating all that’s going to do is cool one room. UK homes aren’t built with ducted heating. So the best you can get away with is one room cool and everything else is still unbearably hot. All of which is assuming that the landlord is ok with me punching sodding great holes in the wall. Even for people who own their own homes the cost isn’t worth it, it’s incredibly expensive to buy an air conditioning system in the UK and then literally no one knows how to fit them. Isn’t just a matter of buying one.
whack a sodding great hole
Ours have a hole about 50mm in diameter. It’s not going to bring your wall down and if you decide that you don’t need the efficient heating/cooling with minisplit-unit it’s easy enough to patch. I own the house, so I didn’t need to think nothing else than the location of the hole, but any sensible landlord would see a minisplit-unit as an increase of property value.
A sensible landlord would recognise that yes but only if they got to keep the air conditioning system. Realistically though the tenant would probably want to take it with them when they left after all they bought it. And the landlord might not want the owners to be on them to buy it off the tenant when the tenant leaves.
In a sensible world landlord would purchase the unit in the first place for tenant. It’s somewhat common in here that if you want to use your own time and effort to make your (rental) home nicer the landlord pays for the materials. It’s commonly used for things like paint or wallpaper, but replacing kitchen kabinets or other bigger renovations are not unheard of either.
But yeah, that’s obvious issue which should be resolved before installing anything. I wouldn’t buy 1000+€ unit as a gift for the landlord. And you’ll likely need a permit or two before drilling trough apartment walls anyways.
I wish I could upvote this 100x.
Do y’all not have windows?
Not the type you’re thinking of. We have windows that open like doors rather than the American style guillotine things, which have always struck me as inherently unsafe, but I suppose it does have that one benefit.
Let me fix that for you. A shocking number of Europeans have no idea how AC works.
The northern half, basically. Down south we very well do. What a lot of people are unaware of is that an air source split costs peanuts, and lowers your heating bills like 300-400%. Yeah not 30, 300%
300% reduction would mean you no longer pay for heating and instead get paid twice as much as you used to pay
Hey one of you finally realize that air conditioning is necessary to sleep at night when it gets really hot, a problem which is only going to continue to grow worse thanks to climate change. At least until the ocean conveyor breaks completely and y’all start freezing your balls off like you live in Siberia.
Maybe invest in a reversible heat pump so you’re ready!
I think the vast majority, if not all, splits sold in Europe are reversible. Currently, the majority are air source heat pumps, even if buyers, and often sellers, are unaware. That means that they pump 3-5 units of heat or cold for every unit of energy, making them, by far, the most economical heating and cooling available. They are cheap, too, like under 300€ in Spain, 400-500 for a top of the line Mitsubishi, or Daikin. Burning gas in the winter to heat a home is dumb.
I wish; I rent, so it’s whatever they’ve given me - specifically a window unit currently.
So you volunteer to fund one for me and convince my landlord and the mayor to allows its installation ?
Don’t forget you need the compressor installed outside too!
So? If you want a fireplace you need a chimney.
Everyone knows what a fireplace is.
I have just one thing to say: 🖕
that’s only half of it
Shit, really? Wow, I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to find out the rest.
The electricity bill I’m guessing.
No, it’s a split ac, the other half is literally out of the picture(hopefully out of tne house)
Protip: condensers function better when its cooler. You can save money by putting the condenser in the neighboring, air-conditioned apartments.
Which is why most people cant get one of these because their landlords are shitheads.
They make portable minisplits now.
As far as I know they are mosty designed for vertically sliding windows, uncommon in Europe. For american style sliding windows a think they are brilliant.
That’s not really a portable AC, or even a minisplit. I am talking about a portable AC with two parts (thus called a split unit), one for the outside that dumps the heat, and one on the inside blowing cool air. They are connected with flexible pipes.
„Nicht verfügbar“
Yeah with the current heatwave that’s to be expected. Just get one during fall or winter, and be ready for the next year.
Or just portable, single unit ACs. I got one of those recently.
It blasts hot air through a duct that hopefully you’re able to direct outside while preventing outside air from getting in. Also noisy as heck, since the full unit is inside the house, and not as efficient as split units, but they do work…
Portables are hot garbage. Get a proper air source wall split. Cheap and immensly cheaper as a heat source that anything you use right now.
while preventing outside air from getting in
If that worked you’d slowly turn your dwelling into a vacuum chamber :-)
The same volume of air will enter your home in one way or the other, the important bit is that it’s cooler than the exhausted air. In particular you don’t want the hot exhaust to recirculate back in.
Ideally you’d get medium warm air from another room into yours, and warm outside air into an unoccupied room.
Yeah those are much more common and way cheaper, but also much less efficient.
I see, like a heat pump.
Yes, ac is a heat pump that can only work in one direction of cooling.
Not necessarily, a lot can reverse and pump the heat inside
? It is a heat pump
Heat pumps are like heat pumps
They fucking better be
Have you tried not being hot?
Heat cannot legally enter your body without your consent.
If you open a window, that’s legally consent.
This is why we need “yes means yes”
If it’s legitimate heat, your body has ways of shutting that down.
Yes, that’s called death…
this is it. they’re trying
👄
They make my 2 fav things: air conditioners and the lancer evo final
Evo VI TME needs a word.
Source: I am old.
Oh that one can have a word with me anytime! Honestly id be happy with any Lancer
Any lancer or any evo specifically?
Because the standard lancer is pretty boring
My dream car (that i could most realistically get) is the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution Final Edition 2016. I love Mitsubishi’s transmission and there’s just something about how the Lancer Evo Final looks. I love rally and ideally i’d love the Mitsubishi Lancer WRC (or anything from the Group B Rally era lol)
Forester XT SG ( STi if possible) would like a word. Actually the SF with the manual transmission and the high/low lever that worked in all speeds (effectively 8 speed manual, if you knew how to use it, with the most forgiving AWD) was a fucking blast. I owned one, and it was a blast. A soccer-mom-looking station wagon/early SUV that would humble BMWs daily.
Billionaires who want to boil the proles alive hate this one trick
I’m going to leave this running and open the Windows for a little while. Hope that helps all you folks out there.
Why don’t we solve global warming that way? Just put a bunch of A/C units outside and turn them all on in the summer! (/s, obvs)
How considerate. For instance, my friend’s Internet went out today. I mailed him a cup of Internet, he should be good to go on Monday when it arrives.
A whole cup, eh? Make sure he doesn’t spend all that internet in one place!
You’re doing gods work sir
What is that?
Its called a heat pump or mini split. Really well made system for air conditioning.
Becoming more common in the states. Rest of the developed world already uses them.
Central air conditioning, but designed better. It services individual rooms instead of taking the temperature of the entire house from one location and then distributing based on that.
That’s not what central air conditioning means. Central air conditioning has forced air ducts and a single chiller unit. This is called a mini-split or split unit system.
It is in fact literally the opposite of central, aka decentral
I consider these superior to central air due to its ability for zone control.
That would depend on just how many zones you want to control. If you have multiple rooms then you will need multiple mini splits. That adds up real fast. And multiple minis are more expensive to operate and maintain than one central HVAC system. Plus doors can be closed and duct vents can be adjusted easily.
Got you, a fancy cold-blowy box :)
I think I’ve seen one of those once in an office somewhere - though I feel like that one blew out warm air instead/as well (I may be mistaken).
Fun fact about air conditioning units. They are basically a glorified heat pump. And many of the newer units that are being produced can pump heat into the house as well as pumping it out of the house.
That’s not just a fun fact - it’s a useful fact :)
