5 ms·

Cooling technologies are a necessity and air conditioning is one of many possible options. Europe north of France is substantially cooler than much of the US,

by elil17 1mo ago

Cooling technologies are a necessity and air conditioning is one of many possible options. Europe north of France is substantially cooler than much of the US, even on the hottest days. Many homes could get by on ceiling fans, but they are very uncommon here.

boxed 1mo ago
I live in Sweden. You are incorrect. Having your home basically unlivable a few weeks every year is not ok, and ground heat exchange pumps that provide cooling are energetically basically free, so just do it.
- danek_szy 1mo ago
  What technology are these heat pumps using that make them "energetically basically free"?
  - fhackenberger 1mo ago
    Run on solar (sun usually shines when it's hot) and use geothermic energy. The ground below your house is significantly cooler than the surrounding air. I'd still favour the fan, I've lived in India for longer periods with consistently around 32-36 C and a fan is perfectly enough after a little while of adapting.
  - ane 1mo ago
    They have very good thermal coeffiency: ground source heat pumps will typically generate 3-6kWh of thermal energy from 1kWh of electricity. By reversing the flow you can also use ground source heat pumps for cooling as well.
    - danek_szy 1mo ago
      Doesn't sound like "basically free" to me... It still uses electricity, which doesn't help with climate change (even if it mostly comes from renewables).
      - D-Machine 1mo ago
        Hard to see how you can read what GP said as anything other than "basically free", and failing to quantify, like you are doing here, and just categorically calling all electricity use bad is not coherent or helpful either.
      - sampo 1mo ago
        Swedish electricity generation is 99% low-carbon sources.
      - iso1631 1mo ago
        Install 8kWp of solar panel on your roof (£5k), add a battery (£3k) and AC (£3k) Charge the battery from the solar and it powers the AC in the evening. You'll generate more than enough during the day to run AC and fill the battery to run it overnight. Still using grid sources in winter, but you aren't using the AC. Although you might find air-air AC in heat mode is better than your gas boiler.
        ux266478 1mo ago
        More or less the only people who can do that in Europe are rich people with detached homes in the suburbs, which is a vanishingly small minority. European governments could do a lot more to invest in photovoltaics, but it's a bit complicated with how cramped the continent is. You can replace farmland, but that seems like a really bad idea with Globalism's decline. Who knows what's going to happen to the food supply chain over the next 30 years. The only other option is attaching them to the exterior of historic buildings, and heaven forbid! Think about the character of the neighborhood!
        iso1631 1mo ago
        Plenty of semis and terraces have solar. Including the semis I can see out the window right now. In the UK Semi, Terrace and Detached is about 75% of households and 80% of people. If you look only at owners it's about 90% of households (and even higher for population) And anyone who owns a home is rich. If you can afford 300k for a house you can afford 15k on reducing your electric bill. Now rental of course is a separate matter, and the real problem. As housing is so constrained landlords can extract all the money from tenants regardless of the quality, but even if it isn't, renters tend not to value things like solar or aircon. You can spend £10k adding solar to a house, but you probably aren't going to get enough from extra rent to offset the cost of installing it. In the US a property owner has to provide AC because renters will expect it, same as you have to provide a washing machine connection in a rented place. This is a mindset thing which can't be changed. In other European countries, but its not changing. Among owner-occupiers its France 80% houses, Germany and Austria 70%. However the rental issue is far more in those countries, where nearly half the country live in rental. Things like balcony solar work well there, and they can power a portable AC.
- elil17 1mo ago
  I think you underestimate how powerful ceiling fans can be. The highest temperature in Sweden this year was only 36, you would be absolutely fine with a ceiling fan unless you wanted to exercise. That said, if you are able to get a ground source heat pump, that's awesome, but it's something like 10x to 20x the price of even a really good ceiling fan.
  - lstodd 1mo ago
    Ceiling (or for that matter any) fans work on your own evaporation. So unless you accept unacceptable levels of humidity or acclimatized to much hotter climate than Sweden and are there for a short time they are not a solution. Ground source is overhyped and overpriced. District heating and air-exchange AC is still the winning solution.
    - elil17 1mo ago
      Unacceptable levels of humidity? You can just open your window when the sun goes down to vent off the heat and humidity that built up during the day.
      - lstodd 1mo ago
        haha. no. try opening your window in +15C high humidity and then sleep. I assure you, sleeping in a 0-5C sleeping bag on the nearby sea shore would be a more acceptable experience. You just never lived there, yes?
        elil17 1mo ago
        Perhaps 15C is a typo? That is perfectly comfortable even at 100% RH + no air movement.
        lstodd 1mo ago
        nope, no typo. 15C+100RH+no convection = you just die in a few hours.
- bcjdjsndon 1mo ago
  [flagged]
bewareofscams 1mo ago
>Many homes could get by on ceiling fans Tell me you're German without telling me you're German
- elil17 1mo ago
  I'm from the US, although I live in Europe. Most Germans don't own ceiling fans, which is the problem.
- Arodex 1mo ago
  Ceiling fans are extremely efficient, and they also improve enormously the efficiency of AC - by reducing by several degrees the amount of cooling to reach a comfortable level. Ceiling fans should be installed before any AC. If you are not convinced, there is a one-hour video by Technology Connections on YouTube that will argue the point more in-depth that anything I could write here.
  - bewareofscams 1mo ago
    I'll check it out
roelschroeven 1mo ago
A couple of years ago that would have been correct, but circumstances have changed. We've had a series of heat waves this summer, and temperatures have gotten very high inside. Much depends on the location of course, and the type of building, and stuff like that, but the fact is that in Belgium alone thousands of people have died because of the heat. Thousands of people that would still be with us if they would have had adequate cooling. When it's close to 40 °C in your home, a ceiling fan is not going to make a meaningful difference. And we need to keep in mind that summers are in all likelihood going to get hotter and hotter.
- elil17 1mo ago
  How is the inside of your home getting to 40 in Belgium? Our hottest recorded air temperature was 36 this year. There were many excess deaths, but there was also a shortage of fans here. Good fans could have also saved their lives.
  - petu 1mo ago
    Air temp is measured in the shade, sun hitting windows/interior floors would take you past that. IR blocking film/tint on outside works great if you can't get windows shaded.
  - anal_reactor 1mo ago
    I live in the Netherlands. My apartment has two floors. The upper floor is basically a greenhouse, so 40C is absolutely normal if I close the windows. During the summer I always keep at least one window open, which cools down the house to around 30-35C. This sucks during summer but during winter it's a blessing because I can have 30C on a sunny day even if it's 0C outside. The only drawback is that the windows are very old so in winter that heat escapes immediately once the sun is gone. HOA has been planning window replacement for years already. The lower floor has windows facing north so it's always much cooler there. I've never seen it reach more than 30C, which was in the middle of a heatwave, usually it keeps 25C during summer.
    - elil17 1mo ago
numpad0 1mo ago
Forced air cooling require air to be colder than the heatsink surface and evaporative cooling require relative humidity to be less than 100%. I don't know how bad the situation in Europe is, but we're already at point where there are times and places on Earth where one can construct a primal instinctive understanding of that by simply walking out of an air conditioned room(to which you SHOULD return within half an hour and MUST within an hour). "Just get fans bro" is tone deaf.
- elil17 1mo ago
  > I don't know how bad the situation in Europe is Yeah there are those places, and northern Europe is not one of them!
  - numpad0 1mo ago
    I mean, those places didn't have air conditioning 50-100 years ago and did fine, now air conditioning is life saving devices there. Global warming/climate change is real. The WHO guide others are posting says fans only work under 40C, but that's the absolute maximum. There's no other option than resorting to devices based on refrigeration cycle when people are already dying("estimated through excess mortality" or however you dress it up), beyond being useless(human cognitive performance significantly degrade at above 28C). The upper bound of 40C quoted in other comments is also just absolute maximum temperature - it's just saying that there's no way fans do anything if temperature of air and body are actually equal. The practical upper bound is lower than that(humidity and metabolism dependent, I guess).
    - SAI_Peregrinus 1mo ago
      Practical upper bound is closer to 35°C, at 100% relative humidity. Or equivalent wet bulb temperature for lower humidities.
pdhborges 1mo ago
You can use your AC as a fan when it is not too bad.
- elil17 1mo ago
  If you think that then you've never used a ceiling fan before - they are substantially more powerful than the air blowing out of your AC.
  - pdhborges 1mo ago
    This was an half usefull joke. I can still make it with the exterior unit off for an extra 1 or 2 degrees with just the interior unit blowing during the day and the use the AC to cool during the night when it is more efficient. In any case where I live fans are not a meaningfull stopgap measure.
Moldoteck 1mo ago
During recent heatwaves ceiling fans will still not help you. They'll help with ac efficiency but you'll still feel miserable
Markoff 1mo ago
yeah, I honestly dont understand why every apartment doesnt have ceiling fan, it's almost zero investment like 40-60EUR and it can be combined with light, so you don't even need any new power line personally I tried one summer back here in Europe without AC just with ceiling fans in each room and gave up and installed AC next year, that was like 10 years ago, can't imagine just ceiling fans in these 35-40C heatwaves, you will be just moving hot air since building can't cool down even in night

by elil17 1mo ago

boxed 1mo ago

I live in Sweden. You are incorrect. Having your home basically unlivable a few weeks every year is not ok, and ground heat exchange pumps that provide cooling are energetically basically free, so just do it.

danek_szy 1mo ago
What technology are these heat pumps using that make them "energetically basically free"?
- fhackenberger 1mo ago
  Run on solar (sun usually shines when it's hot) and use geothermic energy. The ground below your house is significantly cooler than the surrounding air. I'd still favour the fan, I've lived in India for longer periods with consistently around 32-36 C and a fan is perfectly enough after a little while of adapting.
- ane 1mo ago
  They have very good thermal coeffiency: ground source heat pumps will typically generate 3-6kWh of thermal energy from 1kWh of electricity. By reversing the flow you can also use ground source heat pumps for cooling as well.
  - danek_szy 1mo ago
    Doesn't sound like "basically free" to me... It still uses electricity, which doesn't help with climate change (even if it mostly comes from renewables).
    - D-Machine 1mo ago
      Hard to see how you can read what GP said as anything other than "basically free", and failing to quantify, like you are doing here, and just categorically calling all electricity use bad is not coherent or helpful either.
    - sampo 1mo ago
      Swedish electricity generation is 99% low-carbon sources.
    - iso1631 1mo ago
      Install 8kWp of solar panel on your roof (£5k), add a battery (£3k) and AC (£3k) Charge the battery from the solar and it powers the AC in the evening. You'll generate more than enough during the day to run AC and fill the battery to run it overnight. Still using grid sources in winter, but you aren't using the AC. Although you might find air-air AC in heat mode is better than your gas boiler.
      - ux266478 1mo ago
        More or less the only people who can do that in Europe are rich people with detached homes in the suburbs, which is a vanishingly small minority. European governments could do a lot more to invest in photovoltaics, but it's a bit complicated with how cramped the continent is. You can replace farmland, but that seems like a really bad idea with Globalism's decline. Who knows what's going to happen to the food supply chain over the next 30 years. The only other option is attaching them to the exterior of historic buildings, and heaven forbid! Think about the character of the neighborhood!
        iso1631 1mo ago
        Plenty of semis and terraces have solar. Including the semis I can see out the window right now. In the UK Semi, Terrace and Detached is about 75% of households and 80% of people. If you look only at owners it's about 90% of households (and even higher for population) And anyone who owns a home is rich. If you can afford 300k for a house you can afford 15k on reducing your electric bill. Now rental of course is a separate matter, and the real problem. As housing is so constrained landlords can extract all the money from tenants regardless of the quality, but even if it isn't, renters tend not to value things like solar or aircon. You can spend £10k adding solar to a house, but you probably aren't going to get enough from extra rent to offset the cost of installing it. In the US a property owner has to provide AC because renters will expect it, same as you have to provide a washing machine connection in a rented place. This is a mindset thing which can't be changed. In other European countries, but its not changing. Among owner-occupiers its France 80% houses, Germany and Austria 70%. However the rental issue is far more in those countries, where nearly half the country live in rental. Things like balcony solar work well there, and they can power a portable AC.
elil17 1mo ago
I think you underestimate how powerful ceiling fans can be. The highest temperature in Sweden this year was only 36, you would be absolutely fine with a ceiling fan unless you wanted to exercise. That said, if you are able to get a ground source heat pump, that's awesome, but it's something like 10x to 20x the price of even a really good ceiling fan.
- lstodd 1mo ago
  Ceiling (or for that matter any) fans work on your own evaporation. So unless you accept unacceptable levels of humidity or acclimatized to much hotter climate than Sweden and are there for a short time they are not a solution. Ground source is overhyped and overpriced. District heating and air-exchange AC is still the winning solution.
  - elil17 1mo ago
    Unacceptable levels of humidity? You can just open your window when the sun goes down to vent off the heat and humidity that built up during the day.
    - lstodd 1mo ago
      haha. no. try opening your window in +15C high humidity and then sleep. I assure you, sleeping in a 0-5C sleeping bag on the nearby sea shore would be a more acceptable experience. You just never lived there, yes?
      - elil17 1mo ago
        Perhaps 15C is a typo? That is perfectly comfortable even at 100% RH + no air movement.
        lstodd 1mo ago
        nope, no typo. 15C+100RH+no convection = you just die in a few hours.
bcjdjsndon 1mo ago
[flagged]

bewareofscams 1mo ago

>Many homes could get by on ceiling fans Tell me you're German without telling me you're German

elil17 1mo ago
I'm from the US, although I live in Europe. Most Germans don't own ceiling fans, which is the problem.
Arodex 1mo ago
Ceiling fans are extremely efficient, and they also improve enormously the efficiency of AC - by reducing by several degrees the amount of cooling to reach a comfortable level. Ceiling fans should be installed before any AC. If you are not convinced, there is a one-hour video by Technology Connections on YouTube that will argue the point more in-depth that anything I could write here.
- bewareofscams 1mo ago
  I'll check it out

roelschroeven 1mo ago

A couple of years ago that would have been correct, but circumstances have changed. We've had a series of heat waves this summer, and temperatures have gotten very high inside. Much depends on the location of course, and the type of building, and stuff like that, but the fact is that in Belgium alone thousands of people have died because of the heat. Thousands of people that would still be with us if they would have had adequate cooling. When it's close to 40 °C in your home, a ceiling fan is not going to make a meaningful difference. And we need to keep in mind that summers are in all likelihood going to get hotter and hotter.

elil17 1mo ago
How is the inside of your home getting to 40 in Belgium? Our hottest recorded air temperature was 36 this year. There were many excess deaths, but there was also a shortage of fans here. Good fans could have also saved their lives.
- petu 1mo ago
  Air temp is measured in the shade, sun hitting windows/interior floors would take you past that. IR blocking film/tint on outside works great if you can't get windows shaded.
- anal_reactor 1mo ago
  I live in the Netherlands. My apartment has two floors. The upper floor is basically a greenhouse, so 40C is absolutely normal if I close the windows. During the summer I always keep at least one window open, which cools down the house to around 30-35C. This sucks during summer but during winter it's a blessing because I can have 30C on a sunny day even if it's 0C outside. The only drawback is that the windows are very old so in winter that heat escapes immediately once the sun is gone. HOA has been planning window replacement for years already. The lower floor has windows facing north so it's always much cooler there. I've never seen it reach more than 30C, which was in the middle of a heatwave, usually it keeps 25C during summer.
  - elil17 1mo ago

numpad0 1mo ago

Forced air cooling require air to be colder than the heatsink surface and evaporative cooling require relative humidity to be less than 100%. I don't know how bad the situation in Europe is, but we're already at point where there are times and places on Earth where one can construct a primal instinctive understanding of that by simply walking out of an air conditioned room(to which you SHOULD return within half an hour and MUST within an hour). "Just get fans bro" is tone deaf.

elil17 1mo ago
> I don't know how bad the situation in Europe is Yeah there are those places, and northern Europe is not one of them!
- numpad0 1mo ago
  I mean, those places didn't have air conditioning 50-100 years ago and did fine, now air conditioning is life saving devices there. Global warming/climate change is real. The WHO guide others are posting says fans only work under 40C, but that's the absolute maximum. There's no other option than resorting to devices based on refrigeration cycle when people are already dying("estimated through excess mortality" or however you dress it up), beyond being useless(human cognitive performance significantly degrade at above 28C). The upper bound of 40C quoted in other comments is also just absolute maximum temperature - it's just saying that there's no way fans do anything if temperature of air and body are actually equal. The practical upper bound is lower than that(humidity and metabolism dependent, I guess).
  - SAI_Peregrinus 1mo ago
    Practical upper bound is closer to 35°C, at 100% relative humidity. Or equivalent wet bulb temperature for lower humidities.

pdhborges 1mo ago

You can use your AC as a fan when it is not too bad.

elil17 1mo ago
If you think that then you've never used a ceiling fan before - they are substantially more powerful than the air blowing out of your AC.
- pdhborges 1mo ago
  This was an half usefull joke. I can still make it with the exterior unit off for an extra 1 or 2 degrees with just the interior unit blowing during the day and the use the AC to cool during the night when it is more efficient. In any case where I live fans are not a meaningfull stopgap measure.

Moldoteck 1mo ago

During recent heatwaves ceiling fans will still not help you. They'll help with ac efficiency but you'll still feel miserable

Markoff 1mo ago

yeah, I honestly dont understand why every apartment doesnt have ceiling fan, it's almost zero investment like 40-60EUR and it can be combined with light, so you don't even need any new power line personally I tried one summer back here in Europe without AC just with ceiling fans in each room and gave up and installed AC next year, that was like 10 years ago, can't imagine just ceiling fans in these 35-40C heatwaves, you will be just moving hot air since building can't cool down even in night