9 ms·

How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America

89 points by mattraibert 15y ago

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
blantonl 15y ago
Our family lives in San Antonio, TX where we are obviously dependent on air conditioning during at least 9 months of the year, but we typically keep our temps at about 76-78 degrees. I cannot even imagine keep our place at 72 degrees since the kiddos would complain it is cold and I would receive a $700 electric bill. Yes, electricity is very expensive in Texas. However, we have a second home in Montana where we spend our summer away from the heat and humidity of South Texas. It has no air conditioning and, some summer days get well into the upper 90's here. It is amazing the techniques we'll employ to keep the place cool during the hot days, and they always keep the place in the 70's. We close certain blinds, open the upper windows and lower windows at night. When it cools off we will allow the cool air to pool in our downstairs areas and then close it off and "save" it. We will alternate between upstairs and downstairs sleeping based on the weather. Being from New Orleans, I treasure cool air, and being in Montana right now I realize how cool it is. No pun intended :)
- dhughes 15y ago
  Why not use that sunshine to generate power?
  - chopsueyar 15y ago
    Solar panels are expensive and not very efficient and require a decent amount of square footage. Plus, batteries are expensive too and can take up a decent amount of space.
    - mmagin 15y ago
      Probably some kind of absorption chiller like this is a more sensible idea for solar powered airconditioning: http://www.solarpanelsplus.com/yazaki-solar-HVAC/ http://www.solarpanelsplus.com/yazaki-solar-HVAC/
      - chopsueyar 15y ago
        Good link. I have been looking for something like this?
gregpilling 15y ago
I live in Tucson, Arizona, and I own a few houses built before A/C became common. I have one house (a rental) made of mud adobe, which is essentially mudbricks made into 14" thick walls. It was built in 1919 and has the interesting feature that it takes a few days to change temperature. There is always a week here that it changes from a nice spring to a hot summer and the house takes a long time to make the transition. It also stays cool pretty effectively with only a small window A/C unit. My current residence is a 50 yr old double brick wall house that doesn't do as well, but better than you might think for a house with zero insulation in the walls. Average bill in the summer was $300 before I put solar in this year (3300 ft house). I definitely agree with the article - this city would look a lot different without A/C. But the mud adobe and high ceilings work surprisingly well. The heat isn't as bad as you might think either - as one of my wife's colleagues remarked "It is a city that you can eat at least one meal a day outside" which means breakfast or dinner in the summer and lunch in the winter.
- chopsueyar 15y ago
  Its a dry heat. I live in the Tampa, Florida area, and once it gets past 84 degrees, I feel quite miserable. My current dwelling is a 50s ranchette with concrete block walls. The orginal Jalousie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalousie_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalousie_window) windows have been replaced, but the house has no insulation in the attic. The house had several window A/Cs, one was from the early 80s. I replaced them with a 3-zone minisplit. I cannot recommend the minisplit enough. Of course, this house is less than 1,000 sqft of A/C'ed space. You're lucky, you can just use swampcoolers. We have to use electricity to keep cool. I've been to Arizona in the summer and prefer that kind of heat.
  - ams6110 15y ago
    So why don't you insulate the attic?
    - chopsueyar 15y ago
      I am waiting to have spray-foam insulation installed. If I use traditional fiberglass and a radiant heat barrier, I will then have to pay to have it removed and disposed of, prior to the spray foam insulation. There is a soy-based spray foam insulation I plan on having installed. http://soythane.mybigcommerce.com/ http://soythane.mybigcommerce.com/ http://www.biobased.net/ http://www.biobased.net/ A bit more expensive, but I believe it is worth it.
techiferous 15y ago
I've heard that air conditioning had an effect on culture, too. Before A/C, you'd sit out on your porch to cool off and as a consequence get to know your neighbors. After A/C, you'd retreat indoors and live a socially isolated life.
- maw 15y ago
  I live in a relatively wealthy part of Mexico City. I don't know my neighbors, and, for the most part, I don't think that they know each other either. Nobody here has air conditioning or proper heating. The climate is very benign, rarely getting hot or cold. There's little need for interior climate control, and even less insulation: windows are paper thin and don't shut very tight, among other things. (However, a lot of people do have small portable electric heaters, which are very inefficient to begin with and made more so by the lack of insulation.) Maybe having or not having AC plays a role as to whether you get to know your neighbors, but it's not the only and certainly not the defining one. Television and not working where you live are, I suspect, far more important.
  - chopsueyar 15y ago
    What type of internet connectivity is available in your area? How much is housing/cost-of-living expenses?
    - maw 15y ago
      It's adequate to work remotely, at least if you don't need to upload large amounts of data often. As to cost of living in general, that's the kind of question that sounds very simple but turns out to have a rather complex answer. Get in touch (see the contact info in my profile) you're interested.
  - WildUtah 15y ago
    When I lived in Colonia Roma (not wealthy but higher than average Mexico City income), I knew all my neighbors and I'm a typical programmer introvert. The air conditioning and heating situation was the same. Knowing your neighbors has less to do with air conditioning and more to do with personal motorcar ownership. None of my neighbors owned cars. Of course, really wealthy neighborhoods in Mexico have tall concrete walls with broken glass embedded in the top around every house. That keeps the neighbors from getting too friendly.
datboi448 15y ago
I've lived in the two heat extremes in Texas. Dry Dallas and humid Houston. A/C is definitely important but I've always found myself needing to use it less in Dallas. I can open the window in the evening and let the breeze blow into my room and close it before I leave to class in the morning. In Houston A/C is necessary even into the night as the heat in water vapor lingers around.
lukeschlather 15y ago
>Minneapolis seems like an odd place for the first home air conditioner, but, hey, if you've got the cash, who's to stop you? I'm guessing the author hasn't lived in Minnesota. For one thing, the temperature differential is much higher than in Southern States. It may reach 110 degrees F in Phoenix, but it almost never drops below 32 F. In contrast, Minnesota gets temperatures from 0 F to 90 F. There's also the question of energy use. The Minnesotan winter makes a huge amount of energy (for heating) an absolute need for survival. When you're used to expending all that energy 4-6 months out of the year, using a much smaller amount to stay comfortable when the temperature peaks above 80 F or so is not an incredibly noticeable loss. When some sort of active climate control is a requirement for life, it's unsurprising that Minnesota did it first - since AC is more a luxury in the Southern states, even though the heat can kill you if you don't have some sort of effective cooling.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  The view of HVAC varies wildly depending on where you live. It's similar to big trucks, guns, and heavy machinery. In suburbia, these things are pure decadence and waste. In the outback they are tools of the trade, no different from the briefcase a businessman carries.
- raldi 15y ago
  Can you rephrase your last sentence? I've reread it a few times, and I just can't make heads or tails of it. Thanks!
  - lukeschlather 15y ago
    Powered heating is a fundamental human need in Minnesota. You cannot survive without it. Even in antiquity I can't imagine people surviving without fire. Passive cooling, by contrast, is pretty much adequate (though that's not to say the heat can't kill you if you're out in the sun.) But in any case, when you look at the amount of energy expended on heating, the modest amount expended on cooling is a natural expenditure. I think in general that's why a lot of colder countries like Norway are more rich and prosperous than their warmer counterparts. When it costs $30,000/year just to survive, luxuries start to become a lot less costly as a percentage of income.
jamesbkel 15y ago
I definitely agree with author's point about how A/C has shaped American life - not necessarily for the better and perhaps with significant downsides, most notably at a social level. However, I feel like this section (which I consider beneficial without question) was glossed over. And hubs of business and technology in hot regions of the globe, such as Dubai, may never have taken off... Computers throw off a lot of heat, too. The development of the entire IT industry might not have happened without cooling technologies first pioneered by air conditioning. That said, I'm just as guilty as the next American. Living in Boston, there's not much I can do about avoiding snow, so at least I have the comfort of my A/C if it gets really bad in the summer. Though I do try to be responsible and limit use to primarily Air Conditioning (eliminating humidity) vs. Air Cooling unit. [update] As a follow up for anyone in climates which experience hot days but cool nights: if you own a house with an attic, a whole-house fan is a great investment vs. central A/C. In a matter of minutes a whole-house fan can create massive delta temp if it's cool outside at night. It's actually quite shocking how effective it is. If you're home all day then perhaps not for you, since the best use is to get home from work and turn it on around dusk, turn off overnight (I have a timer set on mine) and next day close up all the windows first thing before work.
- lutorm 15y ago
  We're using the window procedure to keep our house near Boston cool, and it definitely works. Most of the time it's sufficient (except when I turn on the 3x24" monitors...), but when there's a heat spell and nighttime temps don't drop below 22C or so, it heats up to a very uncomfortable level over a few days and we have to use the AC at least to keep the bedroom at a reasonable temperature.
  - chopsueyar 15y ago
    It would be cool if you could automate a system like that with window sensors, multiple temperature sensors around the house, and the ability to automatically enable/disable the A/C and the attic fan. It could text/email/call you to open the windows, and not stop bothering you until it detects the windows are open.
Create 15y ago
The journalist completely misses the point: high level of urbanisation, high population density was allowed by skyscrapers. To have skyscrapers, you famously had to have 2-3 conditions: - solid rock for the base to hold the structure (hence no marsh, see NYC) - steel, steel concrete (look at any skyscraper photos) for the structure - no open windows above the hight of 2-3 floors because of the wind etc. (neither below, because of the smog) -> hence AC. And elevator. AC was a key building block for the hubs of "Modern North America". The other key was feeding (artificial fertilisers and huge mechanised farms). And an Empire to finance it (just lift the debt ceiling PR euphemism in today's economics terms).
- mahyarm 15y ago
  You can open windows in apartments higher than 3 stories. I remember opening windows on the 12th floor of apartments.
  - mnutt 15y ago
    You can open windows on the 35th floor of my apartment building here in NYC. It was built in the early 1900s, so perhaps it's related to architecture choices / liability issues which weren't around back then.
c1sc0 15y ago
A thought just occurred to me: instead of bailing out Europe's Southern countries, why don't we just install airco instead?
cstross 15y ago
As a point of note, domestic air conditioning is close to universal in Japan ... but in the UK, less than 3% of dwellings have a/c. Even in parts of southern Europe that get pretty hot, such as Italy and Greece, domestic a/c is relatively uncommon (with penetration in the 20-40% level despite regular 32-42 celsius temperatures on summer). The nature of the housing stock is partly responsible, of course. The average British dwelling is 75 years old; retrofitting central aircon to a cramped dwelling with stone or brick walls that wasn't designed for it is a lot hairier than installing pipes for hot water radiator driven central heating.
- asdkl234890 15y ago
  >Even in parts of southern Europe that get pretty hot Mediterranean climate - dry heat, nothing like the American South.
  - ido 15y ago
    As someone who grew up near the Mediterranean shore I assure you it's not dry heat, at least not close (tens of kilometers) to the sea (which is where most people live). Tel Aviv has a similar climate to Atlanta only with less rain (which doesn't mean it doesn't get extremely humid, just doesn't rain as often).
    - asdkl234890 15y ago
      As someone who lived outside the 10 kilometer radius, but did vacation there, I agree with you. I forgot about those last kilometers.

89 points by mattraibert 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

Our family lives in San Antonio, TX where we are obviously dependent on air conditioning during at least 9 months of the year, but we typically keep our temps at about 76-78 degrees. I cannot even imagine keep our place at 72 degrees since the kiddos would complain it is cold and I would receive a $700 electric bill. Yes, electricity is very expensive in Texas. However, we have a second home in Montana where we spend our summer away from the heat and humidity of South Texas. It has no air conditioning and, some summer days get well into the upper 90's here. It is amazing the techniques we'll employ to keep the place cool during the hot days, and they always keep the place in the 70's. We close certain blinds, open the upper windows and lower windows at night. When it cools off we will allow the cool air to pool in our downstairs areas and then close it off and "save" it. We will alternate between upstairs and downstairs sleeping based on the weather. Being from New Orleans, I treasure cool air, and being in Montana right now I realize how cool it is. No pun intended :)

dhughes 15y ago
Why not use that sunshine to generate power?
- chopsueyar 15y ago
  Solar panels are expensive and not very efficient and require a decent amount of square footage. Plus, batteries are expensive too and can take up a decent amount of space.
  - mmagin 15y ago
    Probably some kind of absorption chiller like this is a more sensible idea for solar powered airconditioning: http://www.solarpanelsplus.com/yazaki-solar-HVAC/ http://www.solarpanelsplus.com/yazaki-solar-HVAC/
    - chopsueyar 15y ago
      Good link. I have been looking for something like this?

gregpilling 15y ago

I live in Tucson, Arizona, and I own a few houses built before A/C became common. I have one house (a rental) made of mud adobe, which is essentially mudbricks made into 14" thick walls. It was built in 1919 and has the interesting feature that it takes a few days to change temperature. There is always a week here that it changes from a nice spring to a hot summer and the house takes a long time to make the transition. It also stays cool pretty effectively with only a small window A/C unit. My current residence is a 50 yr old double brick wall house that doesn't do as well, but better than you might think for a house with zero insulation in the walls. Average bill in the summer was $300 before I put solar in this year (3300 ft house). I definitely agree with the article - this city would look a lot different without A/C. But the mud adobe and high ceilings work surprisingly well. The heat isn't as bad as you might think either - as one of my wife's colleagues remarked "It is a city that you can eat at least one meal a day outside" which means breakfast or dinner in the summer and lunch in the winter.

chopsueyar 15y ago
Its a dry heat. I live in the Tampa, Florida area, and once it gets past 84 degrees, I feel quite miserable. My current dwelling is a 50s ranchette with concrete block walls. The orginal Jalousie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalousie_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalousie_window) windows have been replaced, but the house has no insulation in the attic. The house had several window A/Cs, one was from the early 80s. I replaced them with a 3-zone minisplit. I cannot recommend the minisplit enough. Of course, this house is less than 1,000 sqft of A/C'ed space. You're lucky, you can just use swampcoolers. We have to use electricity to keep cool. I've been to Arizona in the summer and prefer that kind of heat.
- ams6110 15y ago
  So why don't you insulate the attic?
  - chopsueyar 15y ago
    I am waiting to have spray-foam insulation installed. If I use traditional fiberglass and a radiant heat barrier, I will then have to pay to have it removed and disposed of, prior to the spray foam insulation. There is a soy-based spray foam insulation I plan on having installed. http://soythane.mybigcommerce.com/ http://soythane.mybigcommerce.com/ http://www.biobased.net/ http://www.biobased.net/ A bit more expensive, but I believe it is worth it.

techiferous 15y ago

I've heard that air conditioning had an effect on culture, too. Before A/C, you'd sit out on your porch to cool off and as a consequence get to know your neighbors. After A/C, you'd retreat indoors and live a socially isolated life.

maw 15y ago
I live in a relatively wealthy part of Mexico City. I don't know my neighbors, and, for the most part, I don't think that they know each other either. Nobody here has air conditioning or proper heating. The climate is very benign, rarely getting hot or cold. There's little need for interior climate control, and even less insulation: windows are paper thin and don't shut very tight, among other things. (However, a lot of people do have small portable electric heaters, which are very inefficient to begin with and made more so by the lack of insulation.) Maybe having or not having AC plays a role as to whether you get to know your neighbors, but it's not the only and certainly not the defining one. Television and not working where you live are, I suspect, far more important.
- chopsueyar 15y ago
  What type of internet connectivity is available in your area? How much is housing/cost-of-living expenses?
  - maw 15y ago
    It's adequate to work remotely, at least if you don't need to upload large amounts of data often. As to cost of living in general, that's the kind of question that sounds very simple but turns out to have a rather complex answer. Get in touch (see the contact info in my profile) you're interested.
- WildUtah 15y ago
  When I lived in Colonia Roma (not wealthy but higher than average Mexico City income), I knew all my neighbors and I'm a typical programmer introvert. The air conditioning and heating situation was the same. Knowing your neighbors has less to do with air conditioning and more to do with personal motorcar ownership. None of my neighbors owned cars. Of course, really wealthy neighborhoods in Mexico have tall concrete walls with broken glass embedded in the top around every house. That keeps the neighbors from getting too friendly.

datboi448 15y ago

I've lived in the two heat extremes in Texas. Dry Dallas and humid Houston. A/C is definitely important but I've always found myself needing to use it less in Dallas. I can open the window in the evening and let the breeze blow into my room and close it before I leave to class in the morning. In Houston A/C is necessary even into the night as the heat in water vapor lingers around.

lukeschlather 15y ago

>Minneapolis seems like an odd place for the first home air conditioner, but, hey, if you've got the cash, who's to stop you? I'm guessing the author hasn't lived in Minnesota. For one thing, the temperature differential is much higher than in Southern States. It may reach 110 degrees F in Phoenix, but it almost never drops below 32 F. In contrast, Minnesota gets temperatures from 0 F to 90 F. There's also the question of energy use. The Minnesotan winter makes a huge amount of energy (for heating) an absolute need for survival. When you're used to expending all that energy 4-6 months out of the year, using a much smaller amount to stay comfortable when the temperature peaks above 80 F or so is not an incredibly noticeable loss. When some sort of active climate control is a requirement for life, it's unsurprising that Minnesota did it first - since AC is more a luxury in the Southern states, even though the heat can kill you if you don't have some sort of effective cooling.

sliverstorm 15y ago
The view of HVAC varies wildly depending on where you live. It's similar to big trucks, guns, and heavy machinery. In suburbia, these things are pure decadence and waste. In the outback they are tools of the trade, no different from the briefcase a businessman carries.
raldi 15y ago
Can you rephrase your last sentence? I've reread it a few times, and I just can't make heads or tails of it. Thanks!
- lukeschlather 15y ago
  Powered heating is a fundamental human need in Minnesota. You cannot survive without it. Even in antiquity I can't imagine people surviving without fire. Passive cooling, by contrast, is pretty much adequate (though that's not to say the heat can't kill you if you're out in the sun.) But in any case, when you look at the amount of energy expended on heating, the modest amount expended on cooling is a natural expenditure. I think in general that's why a lot of colder countries like Norway are more rich and prosperous than their warmer counterparts. When it costs $30,000/year just to survive, luxuries start to become a lot less costly as a percentage of income.

jamesbkel 15y ago

I definitely agree with author's point about how A/C has shaped American life - not necessarily for the better and perhaps with significant downsides, most notably at a social level. However, I feel like this section (which I consider beneficial without question) was glossed over. And hubs of business and technology in hot regions of the globe, such as Dubai, may never have taken off... Computers throw off a lot of heat, too. The development of the entire IT industry might not have happened without cooling technologies first pioneered by air conditioning. That said, I'm just as guilty as the next American. Living in Boston, there's not much I can do about avoiding snow, so at least I have the comfort of my A/C if it gets really bad in the summer. Though I do try to be responsible and limit use to primarily Air Conditioning (eliminating humidity) vs. Air Cooling unit. [update] As a follow up for anyone in climates which experience hot days but cool nights: if you own a house with an attic, a whole-house fan is a great investment vs. central A/C. In a matter of minutes a whole-house fan can create massive delta temp if it's cool outside at night. It's actually quite shocking how effective it is. If you're home all day then perhaps not for you, since the best use is to get home from work and turn it on around dusk, turn off overnight (I have a timer set on mine) and next day close up all the windows first thing before work.

lutorm 15y ago
We're using the window procedure to keep our house near Boston cool, and it definitely works. Most of the time it's sufficient (except when I turn on the 3x24" monitors...), but when there's a heat spell and nighttime temps don't drop below 22C or so, it heats up to a very uncomfortable level over a few days and we have to use the AC at least to keep the bedroom at a reasonable temperature.
- chopsueyar 15y ago
  It would be cool if you could automate a system like that with window sensors, multiple temperature sensors around the house, and the ability to automatically enable/disable the A/C and the attic fan. It could text/email/call you to open the windows, and not stop bothering you until it detects the windows are open.

Create 15y ago

The journalist completely misses the point: high level of urbanisation, high population density was allowed by skyscrapers. To have skyscrapers, you famously had to have 2-3 conditions: - solid rock for the base to hold the structure (hence no marsh, see NYC) - steel, steel concrete (look at any skyscraper photos) for the structure - no open windows above the hight of 2-3 floors because of the wind etc. (neither below, because of the smog) -> hence AC. And elevator. AC was a key building block for the hubs of "Modern North America". The other key was feeding (artificial fertilisers and huge mechanised farms). And an Empire to finance it (just lift the debt ceiling PR euphemism in today's economics terms).

mahyarm 15y ago
You can open windows in apartments higher than 3 stories. I remember opening windows on the 12th floor of apartments.
- mnutt 15y ago
  You can open windows on the 35th floor of my apartment building here in NYC. It was built in the early 1900s, so perhaps it's related to architecture choices / liability issues which weren't around back then.

c1sc0 15y ago

A thought just occurred to me: instead of bailing out Europe's Southern countries, why don't we just install airco instead?

cstross 15y ago

As a point of note, domestic air conditioning is close to universal in Japan ... but in the UK, less than 3% of dwellings have a/c. Even in parts of southern Europe that get pretty hot, such as Italy and Greece, domestic a/c is relatively uncommon (with penetration in the 20-40% level despite regular 32-42 celsius temperatures on summer). The nature of the housing stock is partly responsible, of course. The average British dwelling is 75 years old; retrofitting central aircon to a cramped dwelling with stone or brick walls that wasn't designed for it is a lot hairier than installing pipes for hot water radiator driven central heating.

asdkl234890 15y ago
>Even in parts of southern Europe that get pretty hot Mediterranean climate - dry heat, nothing like the American South.
- ido 15y ago
  As someone who grew up near the Mediterranean shore I assure you it's not dry heat, at least not close (tens of kilometers) to the sea (which is where most people live). Tel Aviv has a similar climate to Atlanta only with less rain (which doesn't mean it doesn't get extremely humid, just doesn't rain as often).
  - asdkl234890 15y ago
    As someone who lived outside the 10 kilometer radius, but did vacation there, I agree with you. I forgot about those last kilometers.