5 ms·

Well yeah, because it requires re-engineering the entire built environment! Heat waves only became a serious problem in Europe in the last decade. The vast maj

by crote 4mo ago

Well yeah, because it requires re-engineering the entire built environment! Heat waves only became a serious problem in Europe in the last decade. The vast majority of buildings predate the need for air conditioning by several decades - and in plenty of cases by several centuries. The buildings are designed around being livable in a pre-climate-catastrophe climate without needing air conditioning - which is perfectly achievable if you aren't stupid enough to build a city in the middle of a desert. Adapting all those buildings and streets will take time. Blindly putting AC everywhere and forcing everyone to drive from building to building in an ACed car isn't going to work, that kind of wasteful behavior is how we got into this situation in the first place. You need to redesign the heat management, and you need to start with things like mandating shades to prevent heat from entering buildings in the first place, and planting trees to avoid the heat island effect. AC will indeed be needed to deal with the final heat peak when outside night temperature is in excess of 30C, but it isn't the one-size-fits-all solution for every heat-related problem it might seem at first glance. If your AC needs to run for more than a few days per year, you've seriously screwed up.

ianm218 4mo ago
This is completely ridiculous you just need to let people use AC properly and it will solve most of the problem with people dying. That doesn’t mean you need to go from place to place in AC or never be out of AC, but every person in southern Europe should have an AC unit in their bedroom and deaths will go down substantially. Another thing that would help is if Europe stopped being so averse to new construction so that people could build new buildings with central AC that matches the current reality of its climate and demographics, rather than the climate and demographics of last millennium.
- crote 4mo ago
  > you just need to let people use AC properly (..) every person in southern Europe should have an AC unit in their bedroom and deaths will go down substantially. Yes, exactly: install AC where it truly helps and where it is truly needed. That's the point I was trying to make. Most of the rest is solved far more efficient by things like installing shades. In other words: don't go all-out on giant whole-home AC without first stopping the huge inflow of new heat. > if Europe stopped being so averse to new construction We're not, there's plenty of new construction over in Europe. The difference is that European buildings are built to last, so structurally there's no need to tear them down after a couple of decades. They are perfectly usable for another half-century after a minor renovation (including retrofitting AC!), so why destroy a charming historic district for absolutely no reason? That doesn't mean buildings are never torn down, of course. Right now a lot of post-WWII rental units are being replaced by new construction, as they are architecturally nothing special and renovating them to modern standards is simply way more expensive than replacing them entirely.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 4mo ago
    I get rage when I hear those "5 clever tips to stay cool without A/C". Many buildings already have shades, but please tell me more how those shades and "properly ventilating during the night" (aka not getting sleep half the night due to outside noise) will keep my apartment at a livable temperature when the air temperature outside never drops below 23 degrees for more than an hour. You can't effectively remove the heat that has pooled in the apartment with a 2-3 degree temperature difference, let alone in the few hours where you actually have that difference. So because of thinking like the one in your post, we can't have real AC's (because to "protect the environment" we'd first need to install every other system that doesn't help then prove that with a mountain of paperwork), so my only option is to open the well-insulated window so I can stick the coolant hose of a portable unit through it. I think the "properly installed AC bad" mentality will only change once the entire population of renters has those inefficient portable units (that are de facto impossible to regulate) and even the anti-AC group realizes that encouraging "real" ACs is much better than the workarounds that the status quo forces.
    - eudamoniac 4mo ago
      23C is downright frigid where I'm concerned. You'll be fine
      - fellowmartian 4mo ago
        It is scientifically proven cognitive performance starts falling above 22C, but feel free to continue your baseless moralizing.
        eudamoniac 4mo ago
        The vast majority of the world lives in summers above 22C and they are pretty much fine. It's not moralizing, it's just living on this planet
      - tgsovlerkhgsel 4mo ago
        I think you missed the point - when the outside temperature doesn't go below 23, you can't really get the inside temperature below 26 or so, because as the difference gets smaller, your ability to remove heat disappears.
- MrDresden 4mo ago
  > "Another thing that would help is if Europe..." Europe is a continent with a lot of different countries, all with different laws and regulations. Even the ones who are in the European Union have different rules and regulations. So please realize that any blanket statements about Europe work as well as making one about the Americas (ie North/South).
  - nikanj 4mo ago
    Europeans say ”Americans xxx while the French yyy” all the time. Member states should be compared to member states, or the US to the EU.
    - leononame 4mo ago
      A US state is not a country. I get that there is a lot of federalism in the US and that states often have different laws and regulations, but the same is true for European countries. You can compare the US to Germany, or Sourh Carolina to Bavaria, by your own logic.
      - nikanj 4mo ago
        You can compare all of the US to just a suburb of Paris, if you insist on making stupid comparisons, but lumping all member states into one monolith is pointless both ways. Oregon is incredibly different from Florida, and so is France from Romania
        leononame 4mo ago
        Sure. But Occitaine is also incredibly different to Normandie, so it'd be a fairer comparison. Romania and France are different in a way that Oregon and Florida aren't. They have the same federal government, the same official language and relatively similar culture. Yeah, there are differences, and they can feel huge if you're in the western bubble, but differences like those are also found in other countries. I will concede that the US is more ethnically or racially diverse than most parts of Europe, but that's about it. Saying that Oregon and Florida are as different to each other as France and Romania is, in my book, incredibly incorrect and it feels a bit insulting, though I can't out my finger on why exactly.
- preisschild 4mo ago
  > Another thing that would help is if Europe stopped being so averse to new construction so that people could build new buildings with central AC that matches the current reality of its climate and demographics, rather than the climate and demographics of last millennium. Agreed. I live in an apartment complex finished in 2020 and they have no provisions for AC, really not optimal. At least add provisions for holes so renters can easily install a mini split.
quotemstr 4mo ago
> Blindly putting AC everywhere ... actually works just fine. How do you think mass AC adoption in the US happened? Window units work just fine. Fancy splits and central ducting can come later. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.
- crote 4mo ago
  Look at the population graph of a city like Las Vegas. It basically didn't exist before the invention of AC. Window units don't work in most of Europe because our windows aren't compatible with them. If they were, I would have one. And again, it doesn't solve the core cause. If you want to cool down your home, your first step should be to stop heat from entering. If you can get the same result from €900 of shades and €100 of AC as from €1000 of AC, you'd have to be stupid to go for an energy-guzzling AC-only approach.
  - ajmurmann 4mo ago
    I was under the same impression about window units till recently as well. However, I learned that there are units with hoses and foam seals that just require to put the window on tilt and then the hose goes out at the top and the surrounding area is sealed with the foam. Not as good as a minisplit but it works and is DIY.
    - physicsguy 4mo ago
      This might sound ridiculous to you but in the U.K. we generally don’t have tilting windows. They are really common in Germany though.
      - ajmurmann 4mo ago
        So you don't have sliding windows but also not tilting windows? They can only swing open?
        physicsguy 4mo ago
zarzavat 4mo ago
An AC unit essentially requires just a small hole in the wall and a bracket to hold the compressor unit. Europeans have walls don't they? I'm European and I have a wall that could host an AC unit. The barrier is regulatory not engineering.
- ajmurmann 4mo ago
  Is this actually illegal in many places? I proposed this to my parents in Germany and they seemed to be under the impression that they could install one but their village is getting a village-wide heat pump system this fall that can also cool in summer, so they are just sitting this summer out as is.
  - crote 4mo ago
    I highly doubt there are many (if any) places with "installing any kind of AC is illegal" laws. On the other hand, there are plenty of noise-related laws preventing you from installing an AC loud enough to be a nuisance for your neighbors. But that's solved by getting one with proper sound isolation, or placing it in such a way that the noise doesn't travel to the neighboring properties. Similarly, you aren't allowed to install an AC on the facade of a protected historical building. But that can be solved by installing it on the rear of the building (where it is invisible), or by placing the unit itself indoors and using hidden air vents. There's also the issue of landlords and HoAs banning you from making modifications, but that's not really a matter of legality.
    - CalRobert 4mo ago
      Grumpy old German and Dutch boomers whine if the AC isn’t literally inaudible. Modern ones are very quiet but will still get complaints.
    - PeterStuer 4mo ago
      In plenty of rental accomodation you are not even allowed to put a nail in the wall to hang a picture from.
CalRobert 4mo ago
Even now planners are forcing people to build horrible ovens that make no accounting for heat. The planners in Ireland laughed when I talked about over heating in our self built house due to lack of eaves.
- asdff 4mo ago
  People don't value design that cools. Most all the spanish style houses you see in California, if you go back to photos from when they were built in the 1920s they all had awnings over all the windows. Those awnings are basically extinct now. Some people are even painting their buildings dark colors. They will chop down shade trees too in a quest for "natural light" aka heat they are now mitigating with a noisy central AC the whole neighborhood gets to listen to now. No one understands cross breeze and opening windows either. Just run up the AC.
  - CalRobert 4mo ago
    True, though the places I lived in California (Sacramento, San Luis Obispo in particular) all had eaves. Covered patios were common too.
    - asdff 4mo ago
      I feel eaves are more to keep the drip line from rain from hitting the foundation than for any heat abatement. Typical spanish style roof will not have anything on the side that isn't sloping for example. Just sort of ends flush with the wall. Some don't have any eaves at all really.
      - CalRobert 4mo ago
        Strange then then places with lots of rain and wind (Ireland, Netherlands come to mind) hate eaves. I guess it keeps builders in business. Ironically when I had a 200 year old thatched cottage it had 'eaves' by virtue of the thatch extending almost a meter from the wall. It had built up slowly over centuries of rethatching. My experience is mostly with Californian houses that definitely had eaves.
tgsovlerkhgsel 4mo ago
How do you suggest to keep buildings livable during the decades that it takes to (as you suggest) essentially rebuild cities?
- radishingr 4mo ago
  By switching from burning Russian hydrocarbons for heat to heat pumps so you can heat and cool while being more efficient? This isn't a rebuild, it is a moderate adaptation to the actual requirements to live in the Europe of today. For steam based heat systems there is also cooling options, so that is a fix for those cities with central heat service.
  - adrianN 4mo ago
    Cooling buildings with air-water heat pumps like you would use to replace an oil or gas furnace doesn't work very well.
    - CalRobert 4mo ago
      Yes, which is why we should stop installing them and use air to air heat pumps instead, which do both. Bonus - you can throw your bulky, ugly radiators out too!
      - tpm 4mo ago
        They are noisy though and many people including me would hate air heating, my airways suffer enough already.
        CalRobert 4mo ago
        the interior units are very quiet in my experience... What's wrong with heating air? It was the norm in every house I grew up in...
        tpm 4mo ago
PeterStuer 4mo ago
We have had heatwaves in Europe forever. The thing is people were used to adapting to them with shades and night/morning ventilation, and shifting their activities out of the hottest part of the day. This somehow seems to be beyond today's population and society. How dare this weather impact my schedule!
- kharak 4mo ago
  This is the kind of ignorant comment we thankfully see less and less. You can no longer shift your activities when the weather reaches 35C (95f) every day for weeks without noticeably cooling down in the night. And even if activity shifting was possible, which again, it is not anymore, the authoritative, fatalistic poverty mindset required to demand that one does not actively cool during hot hours is a European mentality not many other cultures, if any, understand.
  - PeterStuer 4mo ago
    Where is the 'ignorance'? People have lived and trived in places with prolonged 35C stretches for millenia before airco. I do not 'demand' you do the same. I just point out that there were options besides cancelling the meeting, some involved airco, LSE has airconditioned meeting rooms, admittedly without the gorgeous historic atmosphere, some didn't.
    - kharak 4mo ago
      The ignorant part is claiming we have workable alternatives to AC. Now you one-up your previous statement by claiming people thrive(d) in these temperatures. Even if you had mistaken thrive for survive, it would still be incorrect, indicated by excess mortality during high temperatures. I'd grant you that you didn't explicitly advocated for restrictive AC regulation, but I claim your dismissive attitude is implicitly part of the reason AC regulation remains restrictive.
      - PeterStuer 4mo ago
        People 'thrived', not just 'survived' in e.g. the Mediterranean long before AC. I speculate the restriction on AC in that conference room is because it is a unique historic location they want to preserve, not some ideological anti-AC dogma.
aaron695 4mo ago
[dead]
ianmarcinkowski 4mo ago
Such a scold-y attitude. Window air conditioning units work in any fully-openable window. They are $150CAD. Portable air conditioners work in almost every configuration of openable window. They are $250-500CAD. It does take time, but it MOSTLY takes a shipment of small units to local retailers for normal lower-and-middle-class people to buy for the price of a month's worth of beer. Canada's economy is much smaller than the EU, yet somehow you can walk into a Walmart, Home Depot or Canadian Tire and buy a $150 air conditioner to install in your own home with 15-20 minutes of effort. Canadian houses and older buildings are built to withstand winter and somehow we manage. We have a lot of 100 year old buildings (my house for example). Office buildings and hospitals are slightly more complicated, but I think Europe invented windows a long time ago
- deliciousturkey 4mo ago
  Window AC's don't really work with the styles of windows that are common here (at least in Finland). The windows typically swivel from the side, with multiple planes opening separately. They don't open vertically like in the US. This is also why window AC units are not sold here. But getting a portable AC unit is relatively simple, they definitely don't need "re-engineering the environment". Sadly most portable AC's here are single-hose units which are not great. They are cheap though with prices similar to yours, cheapest at around €200. Mini-split systems are very common though as a retrofit: On apartments you can almost always put the outside unit on the balcony.
marysol5 4mo ago
My "European" house pre-dates the invention of the AC

by crote 4mo ago

ianm218 4mo ago

This is completely ridiculous you just need to let people use AC properly and it will solve most of the problem with people dying. That doesn’t mean you need to go from place to place in AC or never be out of AC, but every person in southern Europe should have an AC unit in their bedroom and deaths will go down substantially. Another thing that would help is if Europe stopped being so averse to new construction so that people could build new buildings with central AC that matches the current reality of its climate and demographics, rather than the climate and demographics of last millennium.

crote 4mo ago
> you just need to let people use AC properly (..) every person in southern Europe should have an AC unit in their bedroom and deaths will go down substantially. Yes, exactly: install AC where it truly helps and where it is truly needed. That's the point I was trying to make. Most of the rest is solved far more efficient by things like installing shades. In other words: don't go all-out on giant whole-home AC without first stopping the huge inflow of new heat. > if Europe stopped being so averse to new construction We're not, there's plenty of new construction over in Europe. The difference is that European buildings are built to last, so structurally there's no need to tear them down after a couple of decades. They are perfectly usable for another half-century after a minor renovation (including retrofitting AC!), so why destroy a charming historic district for absolutely no reason? That doesn't mean buildings are never torn down, of course. Right now a lot of post-WWII rental units are being replaced by new construction, as they are architecturally nothing special and renovating them to modern standards is simply way more expensive than replacing them entirely.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4mo ago
  I get rage when I hear those "5 clever tips to stay cool without A/C". Many buildings already have shades, but please tell me more how those shades and "properly ventilating during the night" (aka not getting sleep half the night due to outside noise) will keep my apartment at a livable temperature when the air temperature outside never drops below 23 degrees for more than an hour. You can't effectively remove the heat that has pooled in the apartment with a 2-3 degree temperature difference, let alone in the few hours where you actually have that difference. So because of thinking like the one in your post, we can't have real AC's (because to "protect the environment" we'd first need to install every other system that doesn't help then prove that with a mountain of paperwork), so my only option is to open the well-insulated window so I can stick the coolant hose of a portable unit through it. I think the "properly installed AC bad" mentality will only change once the entire population of renters has those inefficient portable units (that are de facto impossible to regulate) and even the anti-AC group realizes that encouraging "real" ACs is much better than the workarounds that the status quo forces.
  - eudamoniac 4mo ago
    23C is downright frigid where I'm concerned. You'll be fine
    - fellowmartian 4mo ago
      It is scientifically proven cognitive performance starts falling above 22C, but feel free to continue your baseless moralizing.
      - eudamoniac 4mo ago
        The vast majority of the world lives in summers above 22C and they are pretty much fine. It's not moralizing, it's just living on this planet
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 4mo ago
      I think you missed the point - when the outside temperature doesn't go below 23, you can't really get the inside temperature below 26 or so, because as the difference gets smaller, your ability to remove heat disappears.
MrDresden 4mo ago
> "Another thing that would help is if Europe..." Europe is a continent with a lot of different countries, all with different laws and regulations. Even the ones who are in the European Union have different rules and regulations. So please realize that any blanket statements about Europe work as well as making one about the Americas (ie North/South).
- nikanj 4mo ago
  Europeans say ”Americans xxx while the French yyy” all the time. Member states should be compared to member states, or the US to the EU.
  - leononame 4mo ago
    A US state is not a country. I get that there is a lot of federalism in the US and that states often have different laws and regulations, but the same is true for European countries. You can compare the US to Germany, or Sourh Carolina to Bavaria, by your own logic.
    - nikanj 4mo ago
      You can compare all of the US to just a suburb of Paris, if you insist on making stupid comparisons, but lumping all member states into one monolith is pointless both ways. Oregon is incredibly different from Florida, and so is France from Romania
      - leononame 4mo ago
        Sure. But Occitaine is also incredibly different to Normandie, so it'd be a fairer comparison. Romania and France are different in a way that Oregon and Florida aren't. They have the same federal government, the same official language and relatively similar culture. Yeah, there are differences, and they can feel huge if you're in the western bubble, but differences like those are also found in other countries. I will concede that the US is more ethnically or racially diverse than most parts of Europe, but that's about it. Saying that Oregon and Florida are as different to each other as France and Romania is, in my book, incredibly incorrect and it feels a bit insulting, though I can't out my finger on why exactly.
preisschild 4mo ago
> Another thing that would help is if Europe stopped being so averse to new construction so that people could build new buildings with central AC that matches the current reality of its climate and demographics, rather than the climate and demographics of last millennium. Agreed. I live in an apartment complex finished in 2020 and they have no provisions for AC, really not optimal. At least add provisions for holes so renters can easily install a mini split.

quotemstr 4mo ago

> Blindly putting AC everywhere ... actually works just fine. How do you think mass AC adoption in the US happened? Window units work just fine. Fancy splits and central ducting can come later. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.

crote 4mo ago
Look at the population graph of a city like Las Vegas. It basically didn't exist before the invention of AC. Window units don't work in most of Europe because our windows aren't compatible with them. If they were, I would have one. And again, it doesn't solve the core cause. If you want to cool down your home, your first step should be to stop heat from entering. If you can get the same result from €900 of shades and €100 of AC as from €1000 of AC, you'd have to be stupid to go for an energy-guzzling AC-only approach.
- ajmurmann 4mo ago
  I was under the same impression about window units till recently as well. However, I learned that there are units with hoses and foam seals that just require to put the window on tilt and then the hose goes out at the top and the surrounding area is sealed with the foam. Not as good as a minisplit but it works and is DIY.
  - physicsguy 4mo ago
    This might sound ridiculous to you but in the U.K. we generally don’t have tilting windows. They are really common in Germany though.
    - ajmurmann 4mo ago
      So you don't have sliding windows but also not tilting windows? They can only swing open?
      - physicsguy 4mo ago

zarzavat 4mo ago

An AC unit essentially requires just a small hole in the wall and a bracket to hold the compressor unit. Europeans have walls don't they? I'm European and I have a wall that could host an AC unit. The barrier is regulatory not engineering.

ajmurmann 4mo ago
Is this actually illegal in many places? I proposed this to my parents in Germany and they seemed to be under the impression that they could install one but their village is getting a village-wide heat pump system this fall that can also cool in summer, so they are just sitting this summer out as is.
- crote 4mo ago
  I highly doubt there are many (if any) places with "installing any kind of AC is illegal" laws. On the other hand, there are plenty of noise-related laws preventing you from installing an AC loud enough to be a nuisance for your neighbors. But that's solved by getting one with proper sound isolation, or placing it in such a way that the noise doesn't travel to the neighboring properties. Similarly, you aren't allowed to install an AC on the facade of a protected historical building. But that can be solved by installing it on the rear of the building (where it is invisible), or by placing the unit itself indoors and using hidden air vents. There's also the issue of landlords and HoAs banning you from making modifications, but that's not really a matter of legality.
  - CalRobert 4mo ago
    Grumpy old German and Dutch boomers whine if the AC isn’t literally inaudible. Modern ones are very quiet but will still get complaints.
  - PeterStuer 4mo ago
    In plenty of rental accomodation you are not even allowed to put a nail in the wall to hang a picture from.

CalRobert 4mo ago

Even now planners are forcing people to build horrible ovens that make no accounting for heat. The planners in Ireland laughed when I talked about over heating in our self built house due to lack of eaves.

asdff 4mo ago
People don't value design that cools. Most all the spanish style houses you see in California, if you go back to photos from when they were built in the 1920s they all had awnings over all the windows. Those awnings are basically extinct now. Some people are even painting their buildings dark colors. They will chop down shade trees too in a quest for "natural light" aka heat they are now mitigating with a noisy central AC the whole neighborhood gets to listen to now. No one understands cross breeze and opening windows either. Just run up the AC.
- CalRobert 4mo ago
  True, though the places I lived in California (Sacramento, San Luis Obispo in particular) all had eaves. Covered patios were common too.
  - asdff 4mo ago
    I feel eaves are more to keep the drip line from rain from hitting the foundation than for any heat abatement. Typical spanish style roof will not have anything on the side that isn't sloping for example. Just sort of ends flush with the wall. Some don't have any eaves at all really.
    - CalRobert 4mo ago
      Strange then then places with lots of rain and wind (Ireland, Netherlands come to mind) hate eaves. I guess it keeps builders in business. Ironically when I had a 200 year old thatched cottage it had 'eaves' by virtue of the thatch extending almost a meter from the wall. It had built up slowly over centuries of rethatching. My experience is mostly with Californian houses that definitely had eaves.

tgsovlerkhgsel 4mo ago

How do you suggest to keep buildings livable during the decades that it takes to (as you suggest) essentially rebuild cities?

radishingr 4mo ago
By switching from burning Russian hydrocarbons for heat to heat pumps so you can heat and cool while being more efficient? This isn't a rebuild, it is a moderate adaptation to the actual requirements to live in the Europe of today. For steam based heat systems there is also cooling options, so that is a fix for those cities with central heat service.
- adrianN 4mo ago
  Cooling buildings with air-water heat pumps like you would use to replace an oil or gas furnace doesn't work very well.
  - CalRobert 4mo ago
    Yes, which is why we should stop installing them and use air to air heat pumps instead, which do both. Bonus - you can throw your bulky, ugly radiators out too!
    - tpm 4mo ago
      They are noisy though and many people including me would hate air heating, my airways suffer enough already.
      - CalRobert 4mo ago
        the interior units are very quiet in my experience... What's wrong with heating air? It was the norm in every house I grew up in...
        tpm 4mo ago

PeterStuer 4mo ago

We have had heatwaves in Europe forever. The thing is people were used to adapting to them with shades and night/morning ventilation, and shifting their activities out of the hottest part of the day. This somehow seems to be beyond today's population and society. How dare this weather impact my schedule!

kharak 4mo ago
This is the kind of ignorant comment we thankfully see less and less. You can no longer shift your activities when the weather reaches 35C (95f) every day for weeks without noticeably cooling down in the night. And even if activity shifting was possible, which again, it is not anymore, the authoritative, fatalistic poverty mindset required to demand that one does not actively cool during hot hours is a European mentality not many other cultures, if any, understand.
- PeterStuer 4mo ago
  Where is the 'ignorance'? People have lived and trived in places with prolonged 35C stretches for millenia before airco. I do not 'demand' you do the same. I just point out that there were options besides cancelling the meeting, some involved airco, LSE has airconditioned meeting rooms, admittedly without the gorgeous historic atmosphere, some didn't.
  - kharak 4mo ago
    The ignorant part is claiming we have workable alternatives to AC. Now you one-up your previous statement by claiming people thrive(d) in these temperatures. Even if you had mistaken thrive for survive, it would still be incorrect, indicated by excess mortality during high temperatures. I'd grant you that you didn't explicitly advocated for restrictive AC regulation, but I claim your dismissive attitude is implicitly part of the reason AC regulation remains restrictive.
    - PeterStuer 4mo ago
      People 'thrived', not just 'survived' in e.g. the Mediterranean long before AC. I speculate the restriction on AC in that conference room is because it is a unique historic location they want to preserve, not some ideological anti-AC dogma.

aaron695 4mo ago

[dead]

ianmarcinkowski 4mo ago

Such a scold-y attitude. Window air conditioning units work in any fully-openable window. They are $150CAD. Portable air conditioners work in almost every configuration of openable window. They are $250-500CAD. It does take time, but it MOSTLY takes a shipment of small units to local retailers for normal lower-and-middle-class people to buy for the price of a month's worth of beer. Canada's economy is much smaller than the EU, yet somehow you can walk into a Walmart, Home Depot or Canadian Tire and buy a $150 air conditioner to install in your own home with 15-20 minutes of effort. Canadian houses and older buildings are built to withstand winter and somehow we manage. We have a lot of 100 year old buildings (my house for example). Office buildings and hospitals are slightly more complicated, but I think Europe invented windows a long time ago

deliciousturkey 4mo ago
Window AC's don't really work with the styles of windows that are common here (at least in Finland). The windows typically swivel from the side, with multiple planes opening separately. They don't open vertically like in the US. This is also why window AC units are not sold here. But getting a portable AC unit is relatively simple, they definitely don't need "re-engineering the environment". Sadly most portable AC's here are single-hose units which are not great. They are cheap though with prices similar to yours, cheapest at around €200. Mini-split systems are very common though as a retrofit: On apartments you can almost always put the outside unit on the balcony.

marysol5 4mo ago

My "European" house pre-dates the invention of the AC