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EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on
- Varelion 4mo agoUp vs down, always. Not surprising in the least.
- rappatic 4mo ago> Due to extreme weather conditions, forced shut down of air cooling system from floor 1 to 7 for the rest of the day It's like satire. What is AC for if not extreme heat?
- gambiting 4mo agoNormal day to day cooling, I mean, obviously? Like if you have a system designed to operate in 25-30C(normal summer in most of Europe) but then you have a spike of temperatures going to 40C for a few days in a row, it shouldn't really be a surprise the system doesn't work in conditions it wasn't designed for? The compressor overheats and shuts down, especially if it wasn't installed in the shade. Just like heat pumps for heating in winter are amazing for our regular mild-ish winters, but if you get a really cold spell and it drops to -35C, it's just not going to work at all to a point where it might not even start - you could also say "well what's the point of a heating system that can't heat in extreme cold". The extreme is the keyword.
- rappatic 4mo ago> but if you get a really cold spell and it drops to -35C Temperatures near 40C have been recorded in Paris dozens of times since the early 2000s. I don't think the winter temperature in Paris has ever dropped much below -20C, let alone -35C. So this isn't a very fair analogy.
- wongarsu 4mo agoHistorically temperatures above 30C (86F) were rare in Europe, so thats what many ACs are sized for. Now they face 40C (104F), and many AC installations can't keep up Shutting down AC on floors 1 to 7 likely allows them to get better performance on floors 8 to 13
- mytailorisrich 4mo agoThat's not true. Temperature above 30C are the norm in summer in Southern Europe (which means quite higher in the Sun and in a heat trap location). Now, yes 40C isn't. But I am unconvinced that AC manufacturers have different "sizing"... An AC unit is for hot places and the outdoor unit may be in a very hot spots with ambient easily above 40C. Edit: Yes, AC systems for a whole building are different but still the system on the roof experiences the full Sun and very hot conditions, this isn't the issue. Perhaps they simply badly designed it so that it hasn't got the capacity to cool the whole building when it's actually hot so they prioritised (actually now I get that this is what you meant). Obviously it is easier to blame "weather conditions"...
- wongarsu 4mo agoBrussels is however not in Southern Europe By sizing I simply mean the number and capacity of roof units. Cooling an office building down by 8C is a lot easier than cooling it by 18C. I doubt half the roof units are shut down. Maybe some are, but most will have their output redirected to cooling the top half of the building
- mytailorisrich 4mo agoIn which case it would be just plain bad design if you can't have the whole building on AC when you actually need it... Edit: it'd be interesting to know how many buildings in Belgium have had the same issue.
- gambiting 4mo agoYou can leave it on when you actually need it - meaning all summer long, in the conditions that are typical for that location. It's like saying what's the point of having a house if you aren't safe in it during a tornado. It's an exceptional event. The problem is that these truly exceptional events which only happened once every 10 days for a day or two, are now becoming a norm. My own 12k BTU minisplit could cool my house down every summer, no problem, even down to 18C if I wanted it to. But in the recent heatwave it just can't keep up, there is more heat coming into the house than the system can remove.
- slillibri 4mo agoWhen there is not enough AC, people sweat. It’s better for half to sweat to death so the other half can remain frosty.
- Arnt 4mo agoFWIW this happened on Friday afternoon and the AC was back in working order on Monday morning.
- Oras 4mo ago> The heat wave has prompted a renewed discussion about the lack of air-conditioning systems in homes and offices across much of Europe Discussion, common sense requires discussion. All you need to know about them in one sentence.
- basisword 4mo agoMost ordinary working people can't afford the cost of installing a system. Even a portable one. Edit: Downvoted because HN users don't understand living paycheque to paycheque. Talk about an echo chamber.
- christkv 4mo agoWhat are you on about. They are not expensive at all. What they can't afford is to pay the electrical bill of running one.
- caycep 4mo agounless they also come w/ rooftop solar? new mini splits are way more efficient than older systems as well. insulation in older homes/buildings might be an issue though
- cineticdaffodil 4mo agoIronically- while often having solar on the roof.
- antonkochubey 4mo agoMy multisplit system costs <€60 a month to run even during the hottest months, which is way below heating costs during winter. And that's keeping entire apartment at constant 22ºC - people with higher "comfort temperature" can keep the bill significantly lower.
- basisword 4mo agoI got a 7000BTU one last week. One of cheapest I could find (I suspect some price gouging given the timing of my purchase). Very small, works in one small room. It was about £400. None of my family or friends have £400 sitting around that they can spend on a whim to save them a few weeks of suffering. A huge number of people live paycheque to paycheque and have no savings or credit lines available to them.
- cbarnes99 4mo agoWhy the fuck does extreme heat require turning off the AC?
- nickff 4mo agoSeems like power shortages: >”The European Parliament has also faced blackouts this week due to energy consumption from cranking up its cooling system.”
- dranudin 4mo agoThe A/C cannot keep up the load, due to the exteme heat. So they decided to just not cool one part of the building, to be able to keep cooling the other part .. It is now interesting who was in which part ;)
- mytailorisrich 4mo agoIf that's the case then the building's system was very badly designed...
- alistairSH 4mo agoThat seems true - it's not a historic building - it was built in the mid- to late-1960s.
- gwbas1c 4mo agoIt was designed for historical, pre-climate-change weather. (Or at least when those were in the know about climate change thought we'd solve it.)
- mytailorisrich 4mo agoThere's probably a "Belgian joke" to be made if their AC is only designed to work when it isn't hot...
- deleted 4mo ago
- vovavili 4mo agoAll animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
- dylan604 4mo agoThis exact quote ran through my mind and I was tempted to post it.
- papichulo2023 4mo agoThis is a reference to Animal Farm, right?
- felooboolooomba 4mo agoNo, Scrooge McDuck right before he sodomized Donald Duck.
- lysace 4mo agoRelated and a little ironic: houses in northern Europe nowadays typically have "AC" in the form of air-to-air heat pumps that both can heat and cool. Houses in southern and central Europe dramatically lag behind in terms of adoption.
- kgwxd 4mo ago[flagged]
- dotcoma 4mo agoReminds me of Animal Farm.
- dylan604 4mo agoAnd all of those Europeans that had comments about the Texas ERCOT warnings of heavy loads during extreme weather. Although, it's been a while since I've received notices/requests to adjust the use even if they were bump it up a few degrees vs turn it off.
- cineticdaffodil 4mo agoImagine offices- who have temperatures of 30+ directly beneath the roof. AC where the heat-exchangers are built inside the buildings and other nonsense on top. Europe is so not ready, while preaching to the world about getting ready.
- caycep 4mo agoWith new inexpensive mini splits that do not require ducts, one would think adoption would go up?
- cassepipe 4mo agoThe first image is telling: A glass building in front of a white hard-floor plaza with just one small tree for shade Nothing specific to the European commission though, we just don't hate mainstream architects enough
- cineticdaffodil 4mo agoIt would burn less, if not all these abstract architects would sit in old art nouveau buildings near a park, with the AC tastefully hidden in the backyard - and there they sit on the MAC, shitting out these etched waver under the ERM buildings and cities for the rest of us to be miserable in.
- 6510 4mo agoIt once struck me that so called school chairs are actually far more fascinating than one would think. To me, they are the ultimate symbol of something one would never buy to use yourself. https://www.google.com/search?num=10&sa=X&sca_esv=9e14c540528a302f&udm=2&q=school+chair https://www.google.com/search?num=10&sa=X&sca_esv=9e14c54052... Look at those torture devices! They don't even look like chairs.
- cineticdaffodil 4mo agoOh, but that is what came from the Bauhaus- because back then wood crafted furniture was ridiculous expensive- and these are just the cheapest thing anyone can afford. Bend pipes and one wooden back plate steambend. Clank it out of a factory for 5 $ and everyone be seated. That is where the hatred for ornamentation originated from- labour was expensive, craftsmen where rare, ornamentation was luxury and a display of wealth disparity. Today everyone could have all the ornamentation he or she wanted. Have your whole insta-history as 3d relief 3d printed as gypsum on your house facade. But thats still mor expensive then ornamentation. Capitalism loves ugly and hates its customers.
- delichon 4mo agoIt's not exactly the Council of Elrond. It's appropriate for the design to be closer to Barad-dûr than Rivendell.
- invictati 4mo agoThe whole conversation about upper and lower floors is absurd. Obviously the upper floors are absorbing more sunlight and need more cooling. Ground level and basement floors have been known as the coolest places in skyscrapers for centuries.
- phendrenad2 4mo agoAny building with modern (last 100 years) insulation is going to have relatively equal distribution of heat between the floors. Except the bottom floor, where people enter/exit and mix in outside air.
- invictati 4mo ago[dead]
- preommr 4mo agoExcept it wasn't the basement and first floor. It was the first seven floors. Coincidentally, also the floors most of the higher-ups don't work on. Or at least that's how it's being reported, so I don't think people's outrage is absurd.
- alistairSH 4mo ago4pm on a Friday, people were likely already heading home. This is being blown out of proportion. The broader discussion about AC in Europe is good to have, but this specific story seems to be borderline click-bait.
- Havoc 4mo agowow that’s an ugly look. Kinda weird though even for Europe that a high profile 10+ floor commercial building doesn’t have suitable climate control
- frollogaston 4mo ago"even with working AC, the temperature inside was still 25.7 degrees." So 78F. I wonder what temp the lower/non-AC floors are at. It's reasonable if they want to prevent the upper floors from becoming insanely hot, since hot air rises.
- lumrn 4mo agoJust adding some context on the AC and the building as well which was explained by journalist David Carretta (who follows EU politics, written in Italian) here https://x.com/davcarretta/status/2071592636260012175 https://x.com/davcarretta/status/2071592636260012175. To summarise, AC was turned off floor by floor, with the switch off starting from 16:00 over a Friday, a time when most administrative personnel is getting off work for the weekend. The entire building had AC switched off by the end of the day, including the upper floors. Note that AC was working fine this Monday.
- throwa356262 4mo agoOh please, I needed my daily dose of internet rage and EU hate and here you are with you damn facts. /s (Seriously, look at these comments. What is happening to HN? Is this what previously productive people now do with their free time while their agents are churning?)
- frollogaston 4mo agoI stopped reading that Twitter the post the moment it said "so the deniers (or former ones) are now building a new campaign" which was the second sentence. But only after I had already dismissed the Politico article as ragebait.
- TMWNN 4mo agoFrom <https://www.euractiv.com/news/heatwave-shuts-down-berlaymonts-air-con/ https://www.euractiv.com/news/heatwave-shuts-down-berlaymont...>, corroborating the Politico report: >Staff working in the building told Euractiv that the air conditioning failure did not affect the floors above level 8, where Ursula von der Leyen, her European commissioners and their cabinets are based.
- otikik 4mo agoIf the people in the lower decks were allowed to go home, I don't see the issue. If they were forced to work without air conditioning and it was me, I would go to a doctor, tell them I am suffering from heat exhaustion, and get a voucher for not returning to work until the situation gets fixed.
- alistairSH 4mo agoThe shutdown began at 4pm on a Friday. So, yes, much of the building was on its way home for the weekend. And the higher floors are mostly allocated to the leadership/commissioners, who are more likely to work after hours. Now, why can't the building handle running the AC without an emergency shutdown? No clue, seems odd to me, unless there was a neighborhood-wide power issue?
- zuzululu 4mo agoWhat really appalls me is that they have now started to blame Americans for the heatwave that the hot air from AC units are to blame and doubling down on their insistence that AC are harmful to the climate and telling people to not use AC. I really think that this is the straw that breaks the camel's back moment for EU. Right now people are learning that EU = unbearable heat and other things.
- frollogaston 4mo agoAre you talking about the Paris deputy mayor, or did someone else also do this?
- anonzzzies 4mo agoAir conditioning weirdness around the EU: I live in the EU and everyone I know, including not too well off people on benefits and pensions, have aircon. I have multiple houses and dozens of aircons, but many friends in small apartments have them too, mostly since covid. In one house I have them running summer and winter 247 and the electric bill is still below 100E, way lower than people with swimming pools.
- kleiba2 4mo agoIt depends on the country. If you live in a place that - traditionally - had only an expected few days of really hot temperatures every summer, it wasn't worth the investment. With climate change, the temperatures are now higher and the heat stretches longer.
- anonzzzies 4mo agoAgreed, the EU is not that small and Southern countries had to go before northern but now I feel it is pretty normal. Might be my circle of course. Or in a shorter way; YMMV. I know zero people without aircon and one couple live fulltime in a yurt.
- kleiba2 4mo agoI don't know anybody with an aircon. Not a single house.
- cmoski 4mo ago"A third staffer working on the 8th floor told POLITICO on Friday that even with working AC, the temperature inside was still 25.7 degrees." I set my AC to 26 degrees. Otherwise it feels too cold.
- deaux 4mo agoThis is Daily Mail (or Fox News for fellow Americans) level tripe, and you can be almost sure of this just based on the title. Designed for dopamine maximization.
- vmilner 4mo agoYes Minister on point as usual https://youtu.be/x-HBsT6GmMs?t=69 https://youtu.be/x-HBsT6GmMs?t=69
- Markoff 4mo agodon't wanna sound like shill but for all people claiming you need some permit when installing one they should look into something like Midea PortaSplit - it's portable, but at same time it's like your regular multisplit unit, much more efficient personally I have at home Toshiba, father has Mitsubishi, but when living in China had experiences with all major Chinese brands like Gree, Midea, Haier, etc. and would have zero worries about their quality, they produce shitton of them for CN market